BECAUSE of the conversation around the ICCB 2019 registration fee, Macaranga took to Twitter post-congress to conduct a straw poll and carry out a discussion on this issue.
Though with only 25 respondents, the straw poll confirmed that they all found the fee too high.
Twitter discussions saw solutions offered to this issue.
Others said high speaker fees should be looked at and floated the use of purchasing power parity for differential country pricing.
In contrast, another conservation meeting held days after ICCB in Madagascar, saw local researchers make up 42% of participants. More than half were students.
This was the the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) meeting. As tweeted by ATBC attendee, Malagasy researcher @SarobidyRakoto, the total raised to support local participation at meeting was USD9,000 (RM37,800).
The money was raised by ATBC itself, NGOs and individuals.
Interestingly, a tweet by another ATBC participant—since deleted because it was confusing—gave the impression that foreign researchers attending ATBC had to sponsor a local graduate student. That was not the case.
But the idea went down well with Malaysians discussing the high-registration-fee issue.
“That’s a great model!” said @aini1905 from the ICCB 2019 local organising committee. “Perhaps if we have next <sic> world chapter congress we’d be able to expand this same model.”
Related Stories: About ICCB I Quality Malaysian Research I Marking Attendance
