Who convenes the field?

The Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) publishes proceedings from its annual meeting. Each volume lists the people the meeting put on its stages: who presented, who moderated or responded, and from which institutions. This page counts them, meeting by meeting, for the 50 volumes in the corpus, 1974 to 2025.

These are people listed in the proceedings, not registrants or attendees. There is no volume for 1976 or 2020. The volumes through 2004 are scans read by OCR and checked by hand against their contents, and 1997 to 2001 print names without institutions in the contents, so institutions come from each paper's byline. In 2009 a third of the listings have no institution, and the 2016 meeting was cancelled for Hurricane Matthew, though its proceedings were published. Shaded bands on the chart mark these breaks. How to read these numbers.

1,504sessions

3,350listings of a person in a session

50volumes of proceedings in the corpus

Measure join the line across the gaps

By year

Each year opens that meeting's volume. A printed institution is matched only when an identical printed form was already matched in the CCCC, IWAC or Computers and Writing readers; the share outside the US uses listings whose institution matched, and is blank where a volume prints none.

Year	City	Sessions	People	First listed	Outside US	Top 10 share
1974	St. Paul, MN	9	9		0.0%	100%
1975	Boston, MA	7	13	77%	0.0%	100%
1977	St. Paul, MN	10	10	90%	0.0%	100%
1978	Troy, NY	15	15	80%	0.0%	100%
1979	Stillwater, OK	17	14	64%	0.0%	100%
1980	Orlando, FL	13	13	85%	0.0%	100%
1981	Seattle, WA	13	13	54%	0.0%	77%
1982	Pittsburgh, PA	18	18	72%	0.0%	89%
1983	Lincoln, NE	12	12	33%	0.0%	100%
1984	Santa Fe, NM	23	25	52%	0.0%	65%
1985	Oxford, OH	23	27	56%	0.0%	72%
1986	Portland, OR	6	27	63%	0.0%	60%
1987	Orlando, FL	24	24	62%	0.0%	60%
1988	Minneapolis, MN	9	15	53%	0.0%	100%
1989	Rochester, NY	10	20	55%	0.0%	100%
1990	San Diego, CA	10	14	43%	0.0%	93%
1991	Cincinnati, OH	18	22	59%	0.0%	79%
1992	Boise, ID	13	18	39%	0.0%	96%
1993	Charlotte, NC	30	42	71%	0.0%	54%
1994	Las Cruces, NM	26	34	38%	0.0%	68%
1995	Houghton, MI	25	31	55%	5.4%	73%
1996	Oxford, OH	34	40	45%	0.0%	75%
1997	Austin, TX	48	54	56%	2.2%	48%
1998	Lewes, DE	40	45	49%	0.0%	53%
1999	Santa Fe, NM	49	56	50%	0.0%	50%
2000	Menomonie, WI	48	56	45%	0.0%	50%
2001	Pittsburgh, PA	42	54	52%	0.0%	61%
2002	Logan, UT	54	66	50%	0.0%	58%
2003	Potsdam, NY	62	82	41%	4.5%	53%
2004	None	60	76	55%	3.2%	48%
2005	Lubbock, TX	20	104	56%	9.7%	60%
2006	San Francisco, CA	16	70	46%	0.0%	51%
2007	Greenville, NC	21	81	44%	3.7%	51%
2008	Minneapolis, MN	24	99	45%	3.1%	45%
2009	Aarhus, Denmark	9	30	47%	0.0%	88%
2010	Boise, ID	18	68	38%	0.0%	51%
2011	Harrisonburg, VA	25	102	61%	0.0%	38%
2012	Houghton, MI	20	73	51%	1.2%	68%
2013	Cincinnati, OH	37	126	51%	0.0%	39%
2014	None	37	171	51%	0.0%	42%
2015	Logan, UT	21	88	50%	0.0%	47%
2016 cancelled	Brunswick, GA	39	141	53%	0.0%	42%
2017	Savannah, GA	58	140	41%	0.0%	40%
2018	Minneapolis, MN	57	120	41%	0.0%	42%
2019	West Chester, PA	60	109	52%	2.0%	45%
2021	Online	48	89	46%	0.0%	48%
2022	Colorado Springs, CO	52	87	43%	1.2%	39%
2023	Charleston, SC	61	123	49%	0.0%	39%
2024	Menomonie, WI	46	74	41%	0.0%	53%
2025	Lubbock, TX	67	97	40%	0.0%	39%

“First listed” counts people whose first listing in this corpus is that year, so early years run high. Names are joined only on an exact match; no reviewed merges have been made for CPTSC yet.