Tragedy of the Commons Symposium Fully Funded

Way back on March 21 I wrote that I was submitting a $10,000 proposal to fund a 40th Anniversary retrospective on Garret Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons." Today I finally--a month and a half later--received word that I would get the funding. Phew, I had almost given up hope.

So on November 21, 2008, the Adrian College Policy Institute will host the Symposium. Among the panelists will be commons expert Elinor Ostrom, of Indiana University's Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Mathematician J. Marty Anderies of Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Oberlin College Political Scientist Harlan Wilson, and Grand Valley State University biologist (and friend of the late Garrett Hardin) Carl Bajema.

Information about the Symposium is available at the Policy Institute website.

Survey--Day 3: Still Getting Better

Tonight we had 70 responses, bringing our total up to 170. I recalculated the number we need, and decided that we could get a 95% confidence rate by dropping from plus/minus 5% to plus/minus 6%, with 266 responses. I want a few extra, but we're at least looking at a succesful survey now, with maybe two day's more work. I estimate we have about 45 man hours on the phones now, which works out to about 3 3/4 responses per man hour--a lot of work for little payoff.

I Lied

Despite the claim at the top of my blog that I will never lie to you (borrowed from Jimmy Carter, in his 1976 presidential campaign), I lied. I revamped the proposal one more time, eliminating all the alternatives I didn't really like, which left only 1, at a cost of $10,350 (which actually is a high-end estimate, based on top-end costs for many items, meaning we can probably bring it in under budget, if they give us that much).

This was a strategic move. Because most of the other options were less expensive, they might have been too attractive to an administrator who didn't really get what I had in mind. And the $12,000 estimate assumed we didn't charge a registration fee, but I decided it's best to make people to feel invested in the conference by paying a fee for it. Two good meals, a commemorative item, 9 high-quality speakers, and a hotel room, all for $40? That's more than a good enough deal. (

Of course once people pay the $40 it's a sunk cost, and they should ignore it rather than feeling committed, but since people aren't really that economically rational, I'll operate on a basis of how they actually do behave, rather than how they ought to behave.)

I talked to our College's Development Director yesterday, and he sounded positive about raising the money for it. Then I hinted to the Dean that I was going to ask for a lot more than we had talked about, and his response was, "Yeah, after we talked I started thinking that this thing could be really big, but I wasn't sure in what way." Sweet music to my ears! He's primed to think big, and is waiting for me to show him the way!

And I had a nice talk on the phone with Dave Gardner, who commented on my first post about this conference that he'd like to film the event for a documentary he's making. That, noted as a possibility, not a certainty, is now part of my proposal, as one of the selling points. Our President loves publicity for Adrian College.

As much as anything, I'm eager to find out if my strategic choices pay off. As a political scientist, I find it easy to look back at past political events and see what the good and bad strategic choices were, but when you're actually having to make them, it's much harder to see what the best strategy is.

Final Request:$6,500 - $11,700

I've almost finalized my proposal for the Tragedy of the Commons Symposium, and the options I'm presenting range in cost from $6,450 to $11,700. I think the $9,850 one is probably the best. I had to up my estimates, because I realized we'd have to pay for the gas for vans to take people to and from the airports, might have to pay some students to help out (although work-study might cover that), and that I should stick in a few hundred for incidentals like signs, postage, thank you cards, and the inevitable small items I'm not foreseeing, and because one of my colleagues pointed out that at business conferences they never ask people to share rooms. Since I'm trying to create something far better than the average academic cattle-car conference, I changed my target based on this new information.

I've never asked for anything close to this amount before, so it's nerve-wracking. On the other hand, my college pays up to $12,000 plus travel and meal costs for 1 person to come speak at our monthly convocations, so putting on a very high-quality symposium for 75 people, with up to 9 nationally and internationally known scholars, seems like a good price. At least that's what I keep telling myself, and what I'm taking a deep breath and telling them.

On the plus side, I now have three commitments to appear, assuming I get the money to cover them. In addition to Indiana University Political Scientist Lin Ostrom, Grand Valley State biologist Carl Bajema, and Arizona State University mathematician J. Marty Anderies have agreed to come.

If I've ever had a brilliant idea, I think its this--to have an interdisciplinary policy conference. Because that expands the range of possible speakers, and the range of possible attendees, to vast numbers, which maximizes the chances of putting on a very high-quality event. But it also is intellectually very desirable, because it allows people to get very different disciplinary perspectives on a common theme. This could be my one big idea for my lifetime--I'd better find a way to make it work out!

Grand Unveiling: ToC Symposium Logo

After several hours of furious designing, my wife, a soon-to-be Bachelor(ette?) of Fine Arts has produced the logo for the ToC Symposium. Sure, it's a little bit of cart-before-the-horse, but it will look great at the top of the proposal.

Tragedy of the Commons 40 Year Retrospective--Coming this November!

I previously noted that this year is the 40th anniversary of Garret Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" article, which claimed that "freedom to breed is intolerable," and that "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" is the only way to prevent overpopulation. I suggested that I was going to try to organize a 40 year retrospective.

And now I'm actually doing it--I received approval from my Dean to go ahead and start planning it. Of course I can plan anything I want--the real question is whether I receive any financial support to make it good. Here's the fun part, the Dean suggested he could kick in about $2,000, and asked for a formal proposal. After thinking about it, I'm going to ask for $10,000!

Actually I'm going to ask that they commit the $10k up front, then go find a sponsor for it, and give them the naming rights for our symposium. Actually, actually, I'm going to ask that they find a sponsor willing to kick in $10,000 a year to do this every year, with the theme being an annual 1 day interdisciplinary, policy-oriented symposium that brings in top-name scholars, and is limited to only 40 other attendees who get lunch, dinner, and a hotel room free--all they have to pay is their travel.

Here's how I've figured it: By selecting a policy theme, we make it possible to bring in people from multiple fields. For example, a water policy theme could attract policy experts, environmental scientists, sociologists, etc. By tapping multiple fields, we dramatically expand our target audience to potentially vast proportions. By making it free we make it even more desirable. And by dramatically limiting the number of attendees, we make it exclusive and special, and make it possible for us to provide a very personalized and high-quality event that will leave attendees thinking our small College is the best-kept secret in the U.S.

$10,000 will buy a tier 3 nationally known speaker to come in and talk for an hour. (Tier 1 is $50,00 and up; Tier 2 is $15-20,000). Or we can do something that absolutely nobody else is doing.

And consider this: Within a 6 hour drive of our campus are 12 major universities, 30 regional universities, and several dozen smaller colleges and universities. I don't doubt I can get 40 people to come, and have most of them clamoring to come back next year.

And I've already secured a commitment from the world's leading expert on commons problems, Lin Ostrom of Indiana University, possibly both the world's smartest, and the world's nicest, political scientist (with apologies to my graduate advisor, John Orbell, who probably comes in second on both counts). A big name to build my first conference around--it should be good.