Presenting at conferences

We are living in strange times.

Most of the conferences, which used to be a good places to meet with like minded people and listen to interesting talk, are now online. Some of them are starting again to plan some physical presence.

By moving online, we have lost the "meeting people" part of the conferences, but we can still hope to keep the "interesting talk" part. The traveling time to conference is reduced, but content quality should not decrease. The price of the conference is reduced as the local catering (room, food, etc.) has almost disappeared.

But I'm surprised that many conference organizers use the "on-line" excuse to cancel speaker fees. I receive many invitations to the "main" quantitative finance conferences indicating that "speaker budget has been cut due to the pandemic" and that there are only "sponsored" talked at those conferences.

It means that the only speakers they have are biased sponsored speakers and they miss independent views. Sponsored speakers can be good, and many are. But the conferences are missing something, that element of completely out of the box new views, maybe some contrarian opinions, maybe something else!

That is a pity for the quality of the events and their long term relevance.

On my side, I continue to present at many interesting conference, and I continue to use my polite notice to course and conference organizers.

Some of my forthcoming conferences/workshop/trainings:

  • Workshop Benchmarks in transition. CEETA (Warsaw, Poland), 6 September 2021.
  • Interest Rate Modelling in the Multi-curve Framework: Collateral and Regulatory Requirements. LFS Course (on-line), 27-28 September 2020.
  • Workshop Benchmarks in transition. CQF Institute (London, UK), 6-7 October 2021.
  • Benchmarks in transition: hidden convexities. Interest Rate Reform Conference (London, UK), 20-21 October 2021.
  • Workshop LIBOR transition: almost there and so much to do for quants. WBS Interest Rate reform conference (London, UK), 19-21 October 2021.
  • Workshop Multi-curve and collateral framework. CQF Institute (London, UK), 9-10 November 2021.
  • Benchmarks in transition: hidden convexities. The 17th Quantitative Finance Conference (Dubrovnik, Croatia), 17-19 November 2021.

Related blog: polite notice to course and conference organizers

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