Attend EI - Business Justification Letter

Thank you for your interest in attending the IS&T International Symposium on Electronic Imaging 2017. EI 2017 is shaping up to be a fantastic event filled with deep technical content along with topics that address today’s most engaging challenges in electronic imaging—all delivered by the world’s best and brightest across academia and industry.

We have received requests for a Business Justification letter from some of our attendees; below is a template you can use to help justify your attendance at EI 2017. Simply copy and paste the text below and fill in your specific details. The letter outlines the value that attending EI 2017 provides, not only to you as an electronic imaging professional, but to your entire organization.

Subject: Request to Attend IS&T International Symposium on Electronic Imaging 2017

Dear [Decision Maker Name],

EI 2017 takes place January 29 – February 2, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, California. The Symposium offers five full days of educational and thought provoking presentation and discussion with innovators and leaders in the fields of electronic imaging. It is widely regarded as the world’s leading forum for electronic imaging professionals from academic and industry. Therefore I would like to request approval to attend, as I believe it will further develop my technical skills, and build knowledge around new imaging science innovations and applications.

EI 2017 (electronicimaging.org) offers cutting-edge short course sessions presented by leading scientist and engineers.  EI 2017 covers the breadth of the myriad specialties within the electronic imaging domain and highlights the synergies across specialized application areas.

• More than 32 hours of educational and thought-provoking sessions. This year’s program includes session presentations touching on several important topics for us. More than 150 sessions present the work of more than a thousand authors, covering a wide variety of topics – for example: computer vision, machine vision, computational photography, light-field imagery, 3D depth-sensing, 3D scanning, virtual reality, augmented reality, multi-modal imaging, deep learning, big (visual) data, autonomous vehicles, aerial imaging, telepresence, collaborative robots, object and content identification, food imaging, advanced manufacturing, mobile and connected health imaging, medical imaging, bioinformatics, computational topography, smart homes, and visual search.
• I’ll have the chance to understand the latest trends from industry leaders and guest speakers in each conference topic.
• Approximately 5 hours of high-level networking not counting breakfasts and breaks. Throughout the course of the five days there’s time dedicated to networking, plus special events, so I’ll have a chance to raise our profile and develop our relationships and contacts.
• Access to key sponsors.  I’ll have access to product demos and get 1-to-1 face time with sponsors.

Costs:

The approximate investment for my attendance is as follows (complete the information as appropriate):

Travel costs (placeholder value, replace with actual)	$1000
Accommodation (5 nights at $199/night*)	$1000*
Meals (5 days, estimated $40/day)	$200
Full Conference Pass (at the member rate)	~$775†
Total cost to attend:	$2975

 *The Conference has specially negotiated hotel rates for attendees ranging from $199/night at the event hotel. 
 †This registration rate is discounted providing I register (at the member rate) before January 1st, 2017.

When I return from EI 2017, I will compile a presentation covering speakers’ presentation notes, useful product information, opportunities discovered, new contacts made, and a proposal for implementing new ideas that will benefit our team. The EI 2017 proceedings (more than 500 technical papers) are available via digital library. As a result of my attendance I will be well-positioned to point out the outstanding selections to share with the team.

To benefit from the current discount I need to register before January 1st, 2017, so I appreciate a quick response. Thank you for your consideration.