Must you attend a conference to attend/present at an affiliated event?

Question

Specifically, I'm in the field of Computer Science, where conferences (such as EuroS&P) have lots of cool affiliated events, some of which have proceedings and some which do not.

I am more interested in the affiliated events than the conference itself, and was wanting to submit a paper to one of the workshops and an extended abstract to another -- I am working rather than a student at the moment, and so funding for the conference itself will be hard to come by (in addition to the cost of taking time off work). The affiliated events are held over the weekend, and I was wondering:

• Is it possible to attend/be published at only affiliated events and skip the conference?
• Is this a commonly done thing or, if it were to happen, should I keep quiet about it?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Is it possible to attend/be published at only affiliated events and skip the conference?

This depends a bit on the conference, but in most cases, the relationship between a "main" conference and its satellites and workshops seems to be like this:

• Nobody really cares whether you actually attend the main conference, and there is no reason to be quiet about this. However, some conferences require you to register (I.e., pay) for the main conference in addition to any satellite events, even if you have no intention of attending. So you should keep this, probably significant, additional costs in mind.
• Satellite conferences often have their own proceedings, so it is definitely possible to be published only at the satellite, for whatever that is worth. Associated workshops often publish their proceedings in a companion volume of the main conference. I am not sure whether you would consider this "be published at the main conference", or why this would matter for you.

That being said, the best persons to answer this for you reliably are the organizers of either the main event, or of the satellite events you wish to attend.

Answer 2

There is no need to attend the main event/conference if you are only interested in the affiliated events.

To be sure, you could check the registration forms (of past editions if they are not on line yet): it is there that hard constraints such as compulsory registration for the main event would be listed.

In my field, software engineering, it is not uncommon to skip the main event, especially for people from industry who have a presentation in one of the side events. And workshops can also be more interactive, fun, and useful.

So I see no need at all to keep quiet about this!

Good luck with the submissions!