@ open access: In my specific subfield of academic CS, a huge success story was ECOOP (one of the biggest conferences in the field) going open access last year. I'm hoping that there'll be other conferences following suit. My money is on open access being commonplace in 10-15 years.
You had me confused for a second, I didn't realise I was talking to jpolitz :) Thanks for bringing that up. AFAICT, he (advisor) has done a lot to make that happen, indeed.