Registration and annual dues, in the same order
When congress registration and annual dues live in separate systems, someone has to check who is up to date before granting the member rate. At ALAP, both ran on the same platform. That is what Prof. Gilbert Brenes Camacho, of the Universidad de Costa Rica, president of the ALAP Board of Directors for 2025-2026, talks about: the system let him “handle conference registration payments and annual membership dues at the same time” (translated from Spanish).
- Member rate. At the ALAP congress, more than half of the registrations were in categories with membership validation enabled.
- Annual dues paid with the registration. Members who were behind on their dues could pay them in the same order as their registration. That was 22% of registrations.
Nearly 700 submissions across 19 thematic tracks
Gilbert also talks about the complexity of the thematic tracks. The XII Congress call for papers had 19 tracks and nearly 40 sub-tracks, and all 19 tracks received submissions.
There were nearly 700 submissions, mostly in Spanish, in a call set up for double-blind review. More than 250 reviewers completed nearly 800 reviews. The congress book of abstracts is published on proceedings.science, with more than 450 abstracts by more than 800 authors.
25 countries, payments in US dollars and Brazilian reais
Collecting payments from many countries is the hard part. Prof. Thais Tartalha, of UFABC, ALAP’s Finance Secretary for 2025-2026, puts it this way (translated from Portuguese):
“As a Latin American association, you can imagine the challenges we face in receiving payments from many countries across Latin America.”
Registrations for the XII Congress came from 25 countries. By registered address, the largest groups came from Mexico and Brazil, followed by Argentina, Costa Rica and Uruguay. More than 90% of registrations came from outside the host country.
Registration accepted payments in US dollars and Brazilian reais. In reais, attendees paid by card, Pix and boleto (Brazilian bank slip). The congress website ran in Portuguese and Spanish, and Thais sums up the result (translated from Portuguese):
“We also managed to have a website that worked in Portuguese and in Spanish, so language was not a problem for us. Having people from different countries accessing the website was not a problem either, even though the company is Brazilian.”
Three congresses, three countries
ALAP, the Asociación Latinoamericana de Población (Latin American Population Association), brings together population researchers from across Latin America. The association’s last three congresses took place in three countries: Valparaíso, Chile, in 2022; Bogotá, Colombia, in 2024; and San José, Costa Rica, from August 26 to 28, 2026, for the XII Congress.
ALAP ran all three on the Galoá platform, and registrations grew at each one: from about 300 in 2022 to nearly 400 in 2026. ALAP’s member database is on the platform too, with annual dues records going back to 2004.
Beyond the congress
ALAP also runs its association website on Galoá, with the member history and institutional information. For Thais, who led the association’s finances over the two-year term, the result holds for both sides of the association (translated from Portuguese):
“So I highly recommend this partnership for your association, for your event. I think it can be very fruitful for you.”
