Successes and Failures of Organizing a Large-Scale Networking Event @ yans 2023

Hello. I am Yoshida, a D1 student at NAIST.
On Wednesday, August 30, 2023, after the yans event, we held a social gathering called the "Shinmai-no-kai" (Newcomers' Association) with over 80 participants. I'm writing down the successes and failures from that event as a memorandum. I hope this will be helpful for anyone planning to organize a large gathering in the future.

Introduction

This social gathering was an unofficial event held by the NLP Shinmai-no-kai after yans 2023.
The NLP Shinmai-no-kai is a "community for students who want to learn or are currently learning NLP," organized by myself and ZeniZeni, an M2 student at the University of Tsukuba. If you'd like to join, please contact us via Twitter DM.
While the Shinmai-no-kai itself is student-only, we didn't set participation requirements for this particular social gathering because we wanted people other than students attending yans to come (as networking with senior researchers from companies is more fruitful than just students hanging out).

ZeniZeni and I discussed and prepared for this gathering in advance. However, I was unable to attend on the day because it coincided with a paper deadline, so ZeniZeni handled everything. I'm very grateful.

Main Topic

First, the good points were:

• Providing one bottle of drink per person
• Setting up a "super thanks" tier (sushi tier)
• Using a ticket service for fee collection

Regarding the first point, I think it was good for increasing mobility and as part of COVID-19 precautions. It also felt significant in avoiding the problem of losing track of your own paper cup, which often happens in a style where people share 1.5L bottles.
Regarding the second point, it was a tier we prepared just for fun, but it was surprisingly well-received (?), and I felt the warmth of the NLP community (there were even extremists who said, "I can't attend, so let me just pay for the sushi." The NLP community is scary). Thanks to everyone, the sushi on the day ended up being the best quality we could order, at around 3,000 yen per person. Thank you.
As for using a ticket service for fee collection, the ease of refunds was a major benefit. With a large number of participants, cancellations and subsequent refunds are inevitable, so a ticket service that handles refunds easily saved a lot of effort. Also, since we could force form input at the time of purchase, it eliminated the hassle of reminding people to fill out forms later.

Next, regarding points for reflection:

• The amount of food provided was too much
• Pizza (especially those with thick crusts)
• Sushi serving plates (deep plates would have been better for holding soy sauce)
• Insufficient venue capacity
• Seating reduces mobility, so it should have been eliminated
• Assigning areas by conversation theme would make networking easier (similar to the yans roundtables)
• Participants should have been equipped with tags indicating their research interests, etc.
• Tax aspects

First, regarding the food:
Even considering that there were many male participants, we estimated about 1.5 slices of pizza and 6 pieces of sushi per person (we thought this was on the lower side). However, even this was too much, so it seems about 6 pieces of sushi alone might have been enough.
As for the pizza, it became difficult to eat once it got cold, and there seemed to be more leftovers than expected. Especially those with thick crusts are hard to eat when cold, so if we order it next time, we need to choose thin crusts.
Regarding food, I also felt that easy-to-carry rice balls (onigiri) could be an option (though we passed on them this time due to cost).

Next, regarding the venue:
In terms of the venue, some commented that providing seats reduced mobility, making it difficult to network with many people. Therefore, I think it's better to eliminate seating.
Regarding the venue capacity, we had 80 participants in a room with a capacity of 80. While it was within the limit, it seemed difficult for voices to carry. It might have been better to aim for capacity minus 10.
However, when we did the preliminary survey on the number of participants, we expected that 30 would be a lot, so the full house was a happy problem, so to speak...

Next, regarding networking:
This was due to a lack of preparation by the organizers. We had the concept, but didn't have the time to think through or prepare for it...
It seems like roundtables could be easily implemented, so that's what I'd try next time. However, since there must be some "socially savvy" people who want to freely go talk to specific individuals, I thought it might not be good for the management to force things too much.

Finally, regarding tax aspects:
This time, we collected fees via PassMarket for venue and catering costs, but the tax implications were unknown. Initially, I hadn't thought about it at all, but after a senior pointed it out (thank you so much!), I was able to avoid any trouble by checking with the tax office. The fact that income equaled expenses and the operating profit was zero might have been a factor that made it easier.

Thoughts on Hosting the Gathering

• The response rate for surveys—both before and after—is poor, so don't rely on them too much.
• We mainly used Twitter for recruitment, and I was happy that it reached people I'm not even connected with on Twitter.
• There are far too many things to think about during advance preparation.

This time, the revenue equaled the venue and catering costs, with zero labor costs calculated for the organizers. However, I felt it wasn't proportionate to the amount of work involved in preparation and on the day, as well as other factors (bearing venue costs if turnout is low, COVID risks, etc.). So, I think it would be better to prepare some form of compensation next time. I've heard that committee work at academic conferences is often almost entirely volunteer-based, which gave me a lot to think about.

That being said, if there's another opportunity, I'll likely host it again, so I look forward to your support then.