“Pulling Back the Curtain”—AOS Annual Meeting Decision Making

We are gearing up for an exciting meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2025, right on the heels of our tremendously successful 2024 annual meeting in Estes Park, Colorado. These annual meetings are our biggest and best opportunity to bring our members and partners together to share science, build community, and make new connections with ornithologists over shared interests and the study of birds. 

Over the last year, many of you have come to us with questions about how we select the locations of our annual meetings and the range of items that we include in our decisions about when and where we host our meetings. Several American Ornithological Society (AOS) members and volunteers have had questions about whether and how we consider factors such as timing, geography, type of venue, and different aspects of meeting accessibility.  

We consider so many different factors in these big decisions; there are many moving pieces to evaluate when selecting meeting locations and dates. We’re glad to share a behind-the-scenes look at the AOS’s decision-making process for our annual meetings and the factors we consider. Thanks for your interest in learning more about how we make these important decisions! 

Space

First, of course, we must select a location and venue that meets our need for space. The AOS emphasizes participation at our meetings, and our meetings have grown. Historically, our predecessor societies, the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society (COS) had some smaller meetings (~500 participants) alternating with larger joint meetings. More recently, AOS meetings have attracted more than 800 in-person participants; this past October, 1,100 members, partners, and colleagues joined us in Estes Park, Colorado. This means we look to places with somewhat larger venues—medium to large cities with large hotels or conference centers, larger university campuses, or other substantial venues with meeting space and accommodations that can house our community. 

Affordability

Making meetings accessible to as many of our members as possible is a top priority in choosing a meeting location and dates. We look at affordability from a variety of perspectives; how much will it cost participants from different regions to travel to the meeting? Can we negotiate a good deal on conference space, food and beverage costs, and other necessities like audio-visual expenses to keep registration costs low, especially for students? Can we negotiate affordable hotel blocks? Are there a variety of reasonably priced food options within walking distance from the meeting site? For 2025, St. Louis is centrally located within the United States. and many of our members can drive there; plus, we were able to negotiate significant hotel rate discounts for students, making our next venue affordable on two important axes.

Geographic Accessibility

With AOS members spread across the globe, but primarily based in North America, we try to rotate our meetings around North America so that many of our members will experience a meeting within their region at some point. In 2019, our annual meeting was in Anchorage, Alaska. In 2022, we held our annual meeting in the Caribbean, followed by a meeting in southeastern Canada in 2023. Our 2024 meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, was in west-central U.S., and our 2025 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, will be in east-central U.S. We’re exploring options in the northeastern U.S. for 2026, and the southwestern U.S. will soon be in our rotation, as well. We also consider how easy it is to travel to the meeting site; how many of our members can drive to the meeting, or can arrive at the meeting with a direct flight? 

Dates

Based on member polls, there is no single time of year that all of our members can travel to a meeting. We work to balance considerations such as academic calendars, field seasons, and holidays (religious or other). Dates in late summer and early fall in the Northern Hemisphere often allow a large number of our members to participate.

Participant Safety

The safety of our participants is an important consideration in selecting a meeting location. Will our members feel safe walking around outside of the conference venue? Will state or local laws prevent some of our members from safe access to health care, or will local laws or culture put them at other safety risks? In some circumstances, these considerations can be tricky; ideally, the AOS identifies meeting locations 3–4 years in advance, and local conditions and laws can change substantially in that timeframe. The Rainbow Lorikeets have worked with AOS leaders to help us better understand how to track laws within the U.S. that may have negative repercussions for our members.

Area Attractions and the Fun Factor

We like birds! We like nature! AOS members often want to get outdoors to see interesting habitats and interesting species. We consider the geographic appeal of our meeting locations: Are there opportunities to see birds close to the conference venue; or are there opportunities to take interesting field trips within the region? It will be a while before we forget the bugling elk of Estes Park and the White-tailed Ptarmigan and rosy-finches of Rocky Mountain National Park! Our 2025 conference venue looks out over the famous St. Louis Arch and the Mississippi River, is within walking distance of urban eBird hotspots, and is an easy drive to prime birding habitat at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Local Partners

Although the AOS has a professional staff that supports many aspects of meeting planning, we rely on our volunteers to develop a strong scientific program, support workshops and other professional development events, and plan opportunities for networking. Our local committee members help to bring local flair to each meeting: identifying a region-relevant meeting theme, inviting local plenary speakers, and engaging local partners to lead field trips and hold events. Historically, we have selected locations that have a strong contingent of local AOS members interested in helping with the meeting. (Want to help plan our 2025 meeting in St. Louis? Reach out to AOS Meeting Manager Ramona Fletcher to explore opportunities to help!)

But That’s a Lot… How do we balance these priorities?

As you may have guessed, any one meeting must balance these different considerations, and we face tradeoffs in our decisions about locations and dates. A desirable location may be more expensive; for example, New England’s prices tend to be high during the North American summer months, while the Southwest is more affordable in the summer because of the heat. Our Alaska 2019 meeting was expensive to get to, but the field trip opportunities were glorious (hello, glacier!). Larger cities that are easy to get to and can accommodate our membership are generally more expensive than smaller cities without easy transportation options; NAOC 2016 in Washington, D.C., had high registration and lodging costs but with three major airports in the region and inexpensive public transportation, travel was more straightforward even for international participants. International meetings, including those in Latin America, may be more accessible for our Central and South American colleagues but can be expensive for the majority of our members and challenging for our U.S.-based staff to navigate the regulations, taxes, and travel requirements of a foreign government.

So there you have it… the tradeoffs, considerations, and opportunities of annual meeting site selection! We recognize that not every meeting will be equally accessible to everyone, but we work hard to ensure that everyone has some meetings that they are able to attend. We love seeing you in person at our annual meetings and can’t wait to bring everyone together again in St. Louis in August 2025!