EAA

Just a heads up, this post is a little more accounting technical than most of my posts.

I’ve attended the AAA (American Accounting Association) annual meeting several times. Here’s my experience, so you can understand my expectations for the EAA:

• Huge – Thousands of attendees.
• Confusing – Multiple hotels with dozens of concurrent sessions.
• Sparsely attended – Many sessions have exactly 6 people: 3 presenters and 3 discussants (sometimes only 4 or 5 people if some play multiple roles).
• Networking – People make lists of who they want to meet and they spend their time looking for people and trying to impress the big names.
• Exclusive evening events – The most important part of the annual meeting happens outside of the scheduled program. The receptions and dinners at night are where the action is. Every year I have the Cornell dinner, the UMass dinner, and several receptions I try to go to.
• Expensive – Meeting registration is over $1000 (including membership fee), hotel is a few hundred per night, and very few meals are included in the registration fee.

The EAA annual congress was pleasantly different.

• Moderate size – There were a lot of people, but maybe only a quarter as many as at the AAA.
• Compact – All sessions were within a single campus building. We moved to a different building for meals, but everything was easy to find.
• Well attended – Every session I went to had a lot of attendees. A few were at maximum capacity (one person had to sit on the floor).
• Genuine – I didn’t feel like there was a lot of game playing. People were there for the conference, not to engage in impression management.
• Inclusive – There were a few evening events organized by the conference. These were open to everyone. Otherwise, people went out for dinner or activities on their own or with friends, but no special invitation-only after-parties.
• Affordable – The conference itself cost 500 euros, and the hotel was pretty reasonable. All lunches and the gala dinner were included in the registration fee.

Overall, I was very impressed with the EAA and I hope to go again next year!