Subject: Re: IETF Meetings - High Registration Fees

From: Bonney Kooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 14:04:07 -0800 (PST)

I think every one missed the point due to my not being
a bit more precise, and using a very strong word. I
drafted that mail on my very small screen mail device
which made clear thinking a bit harder :-(.

I agree that the word the "öutrageous" was too strong
a word and clearly doesn't apply to the registration
fee alone as it is only a small portion of overall
cost to attend IETF meetings. But when you take the
cost of attending three IETF meetings (about $2500 *
3= $7500 per annum), the cost is quite high for an
individual. So any reduction or rebate will be welcome
for those who are not funded from big corporate
accounts. 

So now let us focus on the core issues of how to raise
more money for IETF meetings so individual fees don't
have to be raised in the future:

1. I agree that IETF needs money to function, and
operate as a free and effective society. I fully
support that. I suggest let IETF institute a tiered
corporate membership program like all other standards
forums (organizations do pay huge fees for WAP forums
and MPLS forums etc.). Let us have $20 K per year for
organization with 200 plus employees, $10 K for 100 to
200 employees and $5000 for every body else (or
whatver numbers you choose), but unaffliated
individuals may still remain free or pay only a
nominal fee. Let the big corporations who benefit most
from the IETF derived standards bear their
proprtionate share of the cost for running the show. I
hope somebody can do a rough estimate how much money
can be raised per year for this. 

2. Yes, the registration fee is definitely cheap for a
five day conference when compared to IETF/ACM
conferences.  But IETF/ACM conferences are attended
mostly by academcians who don't make big money based
on the outcome of those conferences. But corporations
who send tens of employees to IETF meetings do make
tons of money based on IETF standards, or acceptance
of their version of stnadrds (case in point BGP/MPLS
VPNs a  VPN implementation proposal. Who benefitted
most from this proposal being accepted by IETF? ). As
far as I know, only a few people from small
organizations attend all five days. It is only the big
corporations who send hundreds of people in all
sessions who are there all five days, and attend every
session. Let the registration fee be designed for them
to pay for their proportionate share. Either set a
realistic cost of $1000 per person and use decreasing
discount for each additional member or keep the fee
same at $575 but use the incremantal addional for
every additional member. Both schemes will generate
additional revenue, and will ensure the coprporations
that benefit most will pay their proportional cost for
IETF meetings.

I am for IETF to continue to be financial secure but
still remain as an open society. I am only asking
people to think how to best combine these two goals.

Just think without being emotive.

==Bonney 

--- Marshall Rose <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Joe - since you replied to my note rather than
> bonney's, i am obliged 
> to reply. 
> 
> Unlike both of you, i am not expressing an opinion
> on the fees. What i 
> am saying is that neither of you have any data.
> Let's look at some 
> actual numbers, and  we can then have a reasoned
> discussion...
> 
> /mtr
> 
> 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage
http://sports.yahoo.com/

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 18:16:33 -0800

Marshall Rose wrote:
> Joe - since you replied to my note rather than bonney's, i am obliged 
> to reply. 
> 
> Unlike both of you, i am not expressing an opinion on the fees. What i 

I had data - from other conferences. Granted, I'm asserting there isn't 
a reason the IETFs costs are different.

My point is that a comparison with other conferences is sufficient, 
rather than a full disclosure of itemized costs from the IETF's.

(thus the reply to Marshall's followup :-)

Joe

---

From: Paul Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 11:44:50 +0000

On Mar 17, Bonney Kooper <[email-masked]> wrote:

> a bit more precise, and using a very strong word.

I understood your point fine - what I had problems understanding were the 
responses. For people to come back with arguments like 'Do you know how much 
the coffee costs?' raised the question 'Do you think the coffee is critical 
to have at those meetings?'. 

I do appreciate how much it costs to put on a meeting or conference,
especially when it comes to getting reasonable bandwidth into the building
for a short period of time. However, I remember occasions when reading a
draft and thinking to myself 'this is a *really* bad idea to implement' and
realising that the only way I was going to get heard was to get to the next
meetings. Then I realised that (at the time) I was a student, and couldn't
afford to even pay the door fee, never mind the flights.

These days I'm a bit more flush with the old moolah, and the primary problem 
I have in attending is time not money. However, the costs are MASSIVELY 
prohibitive for individuals. In a time when OSes and user experience are 
becoming increasingly controlled by the individual's involvement in open 
source software, I find it strange that the IETF is effectively actively 
discouraging individual participation, and concerns itself mostly with 
staying good chums with the larger corporate entities.

Membership of the IETF is set to the correct price - free - and nobody 
expects conferences to also be run for free. However, the tiering system 
Bonney is talking about is likely to have two positive effects for the IETF 
process:

1. More money will be raised - Cisco et al are going to send their people 
regardless, and the point where they do not see it as being economically 
viable to do so is going to be quite high

2. Individual participation will increase, and therefore the quality of the 
protocols, rafts and RFCs will increase. Would the IETF rather be pushing 
through some standard that one manufacturer really wants for their new 
router line-up, or input on a broad range of protocols from the people who 
maintain the network protocol stacks in Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/etc. 
with the emphasis being on open, secure, reliable systems?

OK, I'm biased, I'm with the OSS guys, but surely somebody can see my point. 
It's not about trying to push away the corporates, it's about trying to 
create a level playing field. I, for one, completely agree with adopting a 
tiering system.

-- 
Paul Robinson

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:33:15 +0100

Paul Robinson wrote:
...
> viable to do so is going to be quite high

That's an interesting assertion, but it isn't true. The decline in IETF attendance
since the economic downturn started is across the board - large companies are
just as sensitive to meeting costs as small companies or individuals. The whole
idea of tiered prices is based on a massive misunderstanding of the way companies
manage expenses.

   Brian

---

From: Paul Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:59:28 +0000

> idea of tiered prices is based on a massive misunderstanding of the way companies

I can assure you it isn't. Have you noticed that nobody from any company has
piped up in this thread to say "oooh, no, that would be a bad idea!". I can
assure you that for large multi-nationals the difference between paying $500
for a delegate and $5000 is a drop in the proverbial ocean, especially when
it comes to standards tracking. Those companies who are whining about
economic downturn are unlikely to send anybody even at $500/head. Those that
value the IETF meetings will see a raised price as being an investment
regardless of price.

In addition, I still find it amazing that people are justifying costs due to 
the number of breakfasts and cookies being served. The word 'ludicrous' is 
overused on this list, but I think I've found a situation it applies to - 
please, ask yourself whether the cookies are really needed. :-)

There seems to be a circular argument occuring here to justify why companies
should be able to send hundreds of employees along at the cost of active
participation from individuals who may very well have valid points - I'm
sure the IETF are interested in hearing from the OSS community as well,
aren't they? Put it this way - let's suppose an organisation wishes to send
more than one rep to a meeting. They pay $250 more per head - if there are
five reps then thats an extra $1250. You then have a choice of either
letting two individuals in for free, or giving a discount of $250 to 5
individuals, or whatever. The company doesn't mind, you probably increase
attendance, and you're STILL not loosing money. Which bit of "you're not
going to see cash disappear if you do this" are people having problems
understanding?

Actually, like I suggested in my previous mail, I suspect that certain
individuals involved with the IETF are quite happy with hob-nobbing with the
big multi-nationals and don't give a damn what lone consulants and
developers who actually have to deploy the technologies think, and I'm
beginning to strongly suspect that if all individual participants crawled
under a rock and never showed any further interest in the IETF, many people
would break open the champagne. Shame really. Ho-hum.

-- 
Paul Robinson

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 11:23:18 -0500

I'm an individual with a modest income who generally pays his own way
to attend IETF meetings.  I agree that the costs are too high.  However, 
I'd be opposed to a scheme that charged corporations more, because then 
they'd expect their word to carry more weight.  IMHO the only way to 
make sure that individuals continue to be able to contribute usefully 
to IETF is to treat all participants of IETF the same - regardless of 
who pays for the attendance.

And as much as the meeting costs annoy me, I haven't thought of a better 
way to fund IETF.   But I'd be curious to know whether holding meetings 
in other venues (say university campuses during break periods) might 
allow us to lower meeting fees.

Keith

p.s. I also think that periodic, timely disclosure of IETF finances via 
the web site would be entirely appropriate.

---

From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:43:31 -0800

--On Monday, March 18, 2002 15:59 +0000 Paul Robinson 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> In addition, I still find it amazing that people are justifying costs due
> to  the number of breakfasts and cookies being served. The word
> 'ludicrous' is  overused on this list, but I think I've found a situation
> it applies to -  please, ask yourself whether the cookies are really
> needed. :-)

Yes, they are - serious brain food is necessary.  Breakfast on-site makes 
it possible for folks to meet and talk before the meeting starts; afternoon 
coffee and cookies help keep you awake because you were meeting late into 
the night the night before, and also provide another venue where you can 
meet and talk about things.

For those on a limited budget, it's also just about possible to survive on 
"pre-paid" food and dinner, cutting out the costs associated with lunch. 
(Thanks again to those folks that bought me lunches in SLC.)

> individuals involved with the IETF are quite happy with hob-nobbing with
> the big multi-nationals and don't give a damn what lone consulants and
> developers who actually have to deploy the technologies think,

I'll admit that it does sometimes feel that way and that as an individual 
it becomes very hard to be involved (I'd echo some of Graham Klyne's 
comments here).

> and I'm
> under a rock and never showed any further interest in the IETF, many
> people would break open the champagne. Shame really. Ho-hum.

I don't quite get that feeling, but I think it's something that needs to be 
considered.

---

From: Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:46:19 -0800

g'day,

Paul Robinson wrote:
> it comes to standards tracking. 

Well, since you asked, "oooh, no, that would be a bad idea".

I've run my own company, I've been an independent consultant and I was
an Engineering Director at Cisco for a couple of years. At Cisco I
managed a team of about 80 people, and I got to decide how many of them
would go to the IETF each meeting. Yup, at Cisco we didn't ask John
Chambers how many people to send to the IETF, each Business Unit made
these decisions independently based upon the needs of their markets. We
managed our own budgets and schedules, and had to hit both revenue and
spending milestones along the way. The IETF was just one small part of
what we did and that's true for all the other Business Units at Cisco
who independently decide who to send to each meeting.

In a world of market downturns the difference between $500 a person and
$5,000 is not a "drop in the proverbial ocean". Adding an extra $15,000
annual cost, times the several people I sent each trip would definitely
have led to me looking for cutbacks. Yes, even large companies need to
watch their spending. In at least one case where I allowed folks to go
to a set of meetings, I can assure you I would *not* have authorized it
if the costs had increased by an order of magnitude.

I fully endorse keeping my people in the industry loop, I endorse open
standards and I endorse career development for my staff but given what
the markets have done over the past two years, you shouldn't assume
people like me would just roll over and pay whatever was charged. Not on
*this* reality plane.

And even if we did, I agree with the previous posters who question the
effect this would have on the organization. The more dependent you are
on a smaller group of decision-makers who hold the purse strings, the
more beholden to them you become.  Yes, $450 is a lot of money to small
companies, and when I was an independent consultant on more than one
occasion I elected not to go to a meeting because of the cost, but
having sat on both sides of the fence, asking one group to subsidize
another doesn't seem to ever be a healthy long term strategy for any
group.

So, that leaves cost containment. Does the IETF spend too much on
cookies? I suspect not, but as Harald has pointed out the figures are
out there. Go have a look and let us know where you think the cuts
should should be made. Blindly assuming that "large corporations" will
willingly pay an order of magnitude more for the privilege of
subsidizing individual contributors doesn't seem viable to me...

					- peterd

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   Peter Deutsch                   [email-masked]
   Gydig Software

      "This, my friend, is a pint."
      "It comes in pints?!? I'm getting one!!"

                         - Lord of the Rings

----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Tobin Coziahr <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:55:17 -0800

> it comes to standards tracking. 

I work for a large company who is accounting with a much tighter belt
than we were a few years ago, and I can assure you that jacking up
corporate prices would directly affect our attendance, just like it
would many other big companies.  Despite what you think, most big
corporations don't have bags of money in the budget to throw around at
will.

However, that's not why I object to your idea.  I object to any "tax the
hell out of the rich for our benefit" plan in any system.  Your
underlying message is that a) corporations "owe" these organizations, so
they should be willing to foot the bill for them, and b) you really
would like it just fine if people from these corporations didn't show
their faces at the meetings at all.  Would you prefer it if corporations
felt unwanted and started working either independently or in groups to
create standards outside of the IETF, and completely ignored the
opinions of everyone in it?

Why not require income reports from all attendees, and start charging
people proportionally to their yearly income?  Would that be fair?  The
wealthier attendees should be willing to foot more of the bill because
they can afford it?

One of the nice things about the IETF is that it's theoretically based
on the contributions of individuals, and designed so that individuals
have the power to stop suggestions that are being "railroaded" through
the process.  If you feel that corporations are having undue or unfair
influence over the workings of the IETF, then a discussion should be
started about changing the procedures and protocols regulating the
operating of the IETF to correct the balance.  If you feel that you are
owed free meeting attendence by a person or corporation who simply has a
larger net worth than you, then we disagree on basic principles.

-- 
Tobin Coziahr			650-786-7118 (x87118)
Solaris Networking		[email-masked]
Sun Microsystems

---

From: Marshall Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 18:31 -0000

Unlike both of you, i am not expressing an opinion on the fees. What i
am saying is that neither of you have any data. Let's look at some
actual numbers, and  we can then have a reasoned discussion...

/mtr

---

From: Dennis Fazio <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 20:42:26 -0600

> and MPLS forums etc.). Let us have $20 K per year for

The difference is that the IETF is not an organization-membership-based
entity but rather an individual-member-based organization. Your proposal
would alter the basis of membership for the IETF and would encourage the
very behaviour you claim is happening now and wish to prevent:  the
excessive influence of large corporations on Internet Standards.

Once you turn IETF into a corporate-membership-based organization (whether
explicitly by membership dues or implicitly by an official sliding scale
paid by the corporation), the bias of attention and service shifts from the
individual to the corporation.

I decided to sit in on the Newcomers Orientation today where one could
learn:
1. that we don't use voting to determine standards to avoid the effect of
anyone packing working group meetings with voters,
2. how all the different documents fit together as part of the process, how
they are produced and reviewed primarily outside of meetings, and
3. the lengthy and tortuous path a proposal must take to become a standard,
of which the working group meetings are only a small part.

The system has been rigged to avoid excessive influence from any one
organization. Maybe it's not always perfect, but you can be assured that
trying to fix or avoid it by tinkering with registration fees will be
futile. The registration fee is a small minority of total attendance cost.
If your real issue is with corporate influence, they should be addressed by
organizational and operational changes, not fee structures.

--
Dennis Fazio
HeatSeeker Technology Partners

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 14:26:11 -0500

>who pays for the attendance.

I'm another who pays his own way. I don't make it to all meetings, 
partially because of expense, partially because of time/availability 
constraints. I have no issue with the meeting expense part of things. I 
spend much more on airfare, hotel and meals than on the meeting fee. It's 
those other expenses that'll keep me from Yokohama.

I am active on mailing lists, contributing to or commenting on drafts, and 
so forth. It's entirely possible to be an active participant in the IETF 
without attending meetings.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Senie                                        [email-masked]
Amaranth Networks Inc.                    http://www.amaranth.com

---

From: Paul Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 19:27:54 +0000

On Mar 18, Scott Lawrence <[email-masked]> wrote:

<snip all your arguments that I now accept as being reasonable now I've had
a reasonable intake of Dr. Pepper and cigarettes :-) >

> I think you make some good points regarding the ability of independent
> developers to find funding.  So good that I'm going to make a point to
> watch for cases in which it might be in my companies interest to
> sponsor such people, and suggest that others might do likewise (this
> may already be happening - I don't know).

Perhaps this is adressing the same problem but in a more constructive
manner. The vast majority of web servers out there are going to be Linux or
FreeBSD running Apache. It might be nice if the guys looking after the
stacks in Linux, FreeBSD and the HTTP guys at Apache actually got to come
along without forking out a fortune. I'm not sure what they do now, but I
know that I've seen dicussions on freebsd lists and others where people are
discussing how to implement certain features into some somewhere, where the
conclusion is whoever wrote the RFC should be shot. Obviously, the point of 
implementation is the wrong time to start complaining.

I also think that this open-arms attitude to the OSS community might mean a
few more protocols get implemented outside of an individual company's
product range. That has to be a good thing. Well, it is if the protocol or
standard has any value outside of the vanity of a company's R&D department.

The main problem right now though may be one of perception - I've been to 
BSD conferences that have cost not dissimilar amounts to IETF confs, but 
with more of a social slant. I'm sure that some of the implementors in OSS 
world would pull together the money *somehow* to get to IETF if there was a 
perceived value. At the moment, the perception seems to be that Cisco and 
co. will rubber-stamp things within IETF and the OSS will "just cope with 
it" once the RFC appears. 

I suppose what I'm saying is, perhaps it's time for the IETF to question how
it should operate in a world where OSS is dominant in the server market
place, and where it is increasingly common for stacks to be implemented by
people who are not paid to do so. It's rather strange really - both Mac OS X
and recent-ish versions of Windows apper to have FreeBSD code in their
stacks. I'll put money on it that few people at FreeBSD have managed to make
it to an IETF meeting.

-- 
Paul Robinson

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 20:42:37 +0100

Paul Robinson wrote:
> piped up in this thread to say "oooh, no, that would be a bad idea!". 

Have another look at my email address.

> I can

I can assure you that you are as wrong as it's possible to be about this.

   Brian

---

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 14:44:08 -0500

> with the emphasis being on open, secure, reliable systems?

1) Individual participation can always take place on mailing lists.  I
will note that a lot of the development work for Linux, FreeBSD,
NetBSD, GNOME, etc., happens on mailing lists, and in fact the Open
Source people are probably *more* used to collaborating electronically
than many people in the commercial/propietary industry space.  And as
always, while the face to face contact is important, on the IETF, the
primary place place where things get done is the mailing list --- not
in the face-to-face meetings.

2) Given that the overall cost of a meeting is at around $2000 (and
this doesn't even include the cost of the time of the person who is
attending the meeting), once you include airfare, hotel, and meals,
and the registration fee, would you really increase individual
participation by decreasing the registration fee from $425 to say
$150?  I very much doubt it.  Someone who can't afford $2000, probably
also won't be able to afford $1500.  If you include the
salary+overhead cost of the engineer attending the meeting, the cost
of the registration really disappears into the noise.

> create a level playing field. I, for one, completely agree with adopting a 

A level playing field is one where everyone pays the same amount of
money for the value of services received.  Also, I'll note that given
that individuals who don't attend the meetings, but who still
participate electronically, are basically getting the IETF Secretariat
services "for free", companies who send lots of people are in effect
already subsidizing the smaller companies who don't send as many
people.

						- Ted

P.S.  I am a Linux kernel developer, and very much in the Open Source
Software development space, and you'll notice that I'm not pushing for
an organizational subsidy....

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:56:08 -0600

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Moore <[email-masked]> writes:
    Keith> And as much as the meeting costs annoy me, I haven't thought of a better 
    Keith> way to fund IETF.   But I'd be curious to know whether holding meetings 
    Keith> in other venues (say university campuses during break periods) might 
    Keith> allow us to lower meeting fees.

  It certainly would eliminate some of the terminal room costs. 
  The problem that I understand it from trying to organize other conferences
at Carleton University in Ottawa is that there are really only two breaks at
most universities: reading-week/march break, and summer. At schools with
extensive co-op programs many have a normal 4 month summer term
(e.g. Waterloo University), so no time is available, period.

  For many academic conferences, the availability of residences during the
summer or between sessions is what makes them possible.
  (Phil Karn would be pleased to stay in residence at Carleton despite the
weather as one needn't never go outside for an entire term...)
  Residence is usually not available during march break. The alternative is
nearby hotels, if any, which may involve moving a lot of people distances
that are not walkable. As anyone who has had to stay in third hotel has
learnt, even a short distance reduces the amount of chance meetings in the
hall that make the meetings so effective.

  I think that all of these issues are resolvable for quite a number of
campuses, for a summer IETF.

  The idea of coming back to the same places regularly appeals to me on many
fronts. Knowing what to expect is valuable to me.

  I was involved in the terminal room setup this time. The fiber from the
basement to the third floor (where the hotel has a telco closet) was left
from last year, but we had to have fiber pulled to the second floor. The
cabling on the tables themselves is the same cables as last year. That
represents quite a savings in man-power and logistics.  

  I note that we still do not know anything about fall or 2003 meetings. 
I would also like to know if anyone has any estimates about hotel and food
costs in Yokohama. I know that Japan is seldom cheap, but I do not know if I
should plan on $150US/night, $300US/night or simply bring the deed to my
house. 

  As another independant consultant, I am actually far more price sensitive
on the hotel and food costs than I am on anything. (And the ritzier the
hotel, the higher the cost of the food, and the availability of a peanut
butter sandwidth goes way down).

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [

---

From: Scott Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Mar 2002 14:08:55 -0500

Paul Robinson <[email-masked]> writes:

> ... Have you noticed that nobody from any company has

I wouldn't have used just those words, perhaps, but just so there is
no misunderstanding:

Oooh, no, that would be a bad idea!

I have done quite a bit of standards work both in the IETF and in some
of the kinds of membership-based consortia that you cite, and the IETF
funding and operational models are much better, specifically because
they avoid people spending time on non-technical "we paid xxx to be
here and you paid xxx/5, so you don't count" and similar nonsense.
That does happen, and in the context of memberships costing 10s of
thousands of dollars or more there is every reason why it _should_
happen.

> value the IETF meetings will see a raised price as being an investment

I work for a medium sized multi-national, and got here because my tiny
startup was absorbed into it, and your assertion is just plain wrong.
While it may seem to be true that in the grand scheme of things there
is little difference between $500 and $5000, it all comes down to some
individual manager having to pay for it out of some specific budget
(as it should).

> please, ask yourself whether the cookies are really needed. :-)

Actually, I think the cookies and coffee are probably a major net
productivity gain for the group, because they make it possible for
people to congregate locally between meetings rather than scatter to
find their fixes.

-- 
Scott Lawrence        GlobespanVirata Embedded UPnP & Web Technology
[email-masked]                  http://www.emweb.com/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:07:55 -0800 (PST)

> value the IETF meetings will see a raised price as being an investment

Well, all I can say is that my corner of the world at Sun Microsystems
corresponds with Brian's assessement of the situation, not yours.

I started working with the IETF back in 1990. At the time I worked for a
college, and funding issues were handled quite simply: I paid for everything
personally.

Eventually I started working for Innosoft, a small company. Innosoft paid my
expenses for attending the IETF and those of several other people as well.
AFAIK everyone who wanted to attend an IETF meeting was able to.

I started working for Sun about two years ago. Sun manages this a lot more
carefully than Innosoft ever did. And as a result not all the people I work
with at Sun who have wanted to attend the IETF have been able to. If the fees
were raised it would be even harder to get funding.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. It is just how it is. In the case of Sun at
least, the way expenses are managed isn't compatible with tiered pricing, just
as Brian said.

				Ned

---

From: Bonney Kooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:51:36 -0800 (PST)

> already subsidizing the smaller companies who don't

my friend, I think you missed the key arguments.

If the cost of running A PARTICULAR IETF meeting is
concerned then it is true (this is what one would call
the element view of the problem). But if you take the
system view and consider the big picture, and try to
see who is benefitting most in increased revenues as a
result of pushing their proprietary standards as IETF
standards, then like many you would think that
companies that send lots of delegates are being
subsidized by single and independant developers in
more than one way. First, the corporations benefit by
getting their standards approved by show of mite and
then shipping those equipment/standards for billions
dollar of profit. Without IETF's approval they won't
be able to ship those equipment as "open systems". But
the problem is many times these so called systems are
only opened once these corporations are ready to
ship!. People can tell you who shipped which standards
when - bgp2547 vpns were ready to ship on a particular
vendor's machines before the draft was even written
and scheme described to public (ietf). without ietf's
approval for the design as rfc, they had no chance to
sell this solution. 

Also, as big companies send more people, they increase
the cost of the conference for the organisers, and
hence the cost for every one, so they should bear more
cost. If you are going to have a meeting of just 25
people costs, i believe but could be wrong, don't
increase linearly if you organise a meeting for 500
people. You now need many more halls and cost baloons
up. So they are not exactly paying there fair share,
are they really?

== bonney

---

From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 08:44:20 +1100

Paul Robinson wrote:
	[..]
> For people to come back with arguments like 'Do you know how much

At the IETF meetings you've participated in, are you saying the morning
and afternoon stimulants failed to help you stay awake during your various
WGs, BOFs, and hallway discussions?

	[..]
> However, I remember occasions when reading a
> meetings.

You might want to look into WG mailing lists for this purpose.

cheers,
gja (who prefers tea over coffee anyway....)

---

From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 08:47:01 +1100

Paul Robinson wrote:
	[..]
> please, ask yourself whether the cookies are really needed. :-)

Enabling cookies improves information exchange between participants.

cheers,
gja

---

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 09:08:33 +1000

I'm intrigued that the reggo figures say attendance is shrinking. Amazed
but also delighted in a way, because there is no question smaller is
more functional. Obviously sad for those who can't attend, I'm not
saying this is unequivocally wonderful or anything. 

The thing is, it doesn't *feel* smaller.

So is this a significant trend, and is it proving to continue?

-George
--
George Michaelson       |  APNIC
Email: [email-masked]    |  PO Box 2131 Milton QLD 4064
Phone: +61 7 3858 3100  |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3858 3199  |  http://www.apnic.net

---

From: Lyndon Nerenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:30:38 -0700

> I'm not sure what they do now, but I
> conclusion is whoever wrote the RFC should be shot.

> perceived value.

But in the scenarios you allude to, pretty much *all* of the work to
address those problems should have been handled on the WG mailing
list.  Also, standards do not get approved at IETF meetings (referring
to your "rubber stamped by Cisco" comments), so there's no need to
show up to "vote" for your favourite protocol.

Being practical, you only *need* to attend a meeting if there is an
intractable problem in front of a WG you're actively participating in,
and solving that problem requires a face-to-face session.  Some people
claim you have to attend to keep up with what the other groups are
doing.  I think this is an artifact of the use of mailing lists for WG
traffic: it's just not practical to follow all the mailing lists.  (I
sure don't.)  A possible solution would be to feed all of the WG lists
into a read-only IMAP (and NNTP) server, making it easier to browse a
wider cross section of lists without completely obliterating your
inbox (and before you say it, MUA filtering doesn't properly address
the problem).

Don't forget, there are active IETF participants who have never felt
it necessary to attend a meeting.  And frankly, if people would stop
showing up when they don't have to the cost of the meetings (and the
registration fees) would be a lot lower. (Thus repeating the
cycle....)

--lyndon

---

From: Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 17:26:24 -0800

g'day,

Scott Lawrence wrote:
...

> people to congregate locally between meetings rather than scatter to

It's a very common perk here in Silicon Valley to provide employees with
free coffee/tea/soft drinks. The cost of this can run to several
dollars/day per person. For a company as large as Cisco (40,000 at its
peak, in the 2x,000 range now) this works out to millions of
dollars/year. Now, you might think that cutting out the free drinks
would be a slam-dunk no-brainer for the accountants but people still
give free drinks to their staff. Now, this is *not* just because people
would be unhappy. Unhappy was when we had to lay off thousands of
employees a year ago. People are less insistent on their perks this
year, so why do companies still think it worth paying for "free" drinks?
Let's consider another set of numbers.

The averaged loaded cost of an engineer in Silicon Valley is something
on the order of $200,000/year (that's salary, plus all costs to put that
employee to work, pay for the health insurance, laptop, travel, etc).
The senior folks who go to the the IETF probably average out to a bit
more than that. *That* number works out to something very close to
$120/hour, assuming 210 work days/year, and an 8 hour day (yeah, I know,
you work more than 8 hours a day - humour me here).

Now, if each time I give you a 35 cent soda, I can get another 15
minutes of work out of you, then the net profit on that soda to me as an
employer is something like $30-0.35 = $29.65. In effect, my employees
are paying *me* for the soft drinks. Thanks, folks.

And *that's* why it pays to issue cookies and drinks at the IETF. Each
time you *don't* have to go stand in line at the coffee shop to spend $2
for a soft drink, or gosh forbid $6.00 for a latte with extra foam and a
cookie, the collective wisdom of the IETF benefits from another 15
minutes of your time and you metaphorically pocket $30. Do that three
times a day for a week and you've paid for your IETF meeting fee...

When I was attending the IETF meetings, some of the best work was
definitely done while scarfing down a coffee and pastry (Hi Steve!). Do
the math on how many collective hours of work this works out to in a
year:

        O(1000 people/meeting) x O(3 break/day) O(15 minute/break)
                   x 5 days x 3 meetings/year 

Yup, that's over 10,000 hours/year of work done in exchange for those
cookies. Now, there's some "bio-overhead" in that number, but the
benefits are real enough that I'd vote to keep paying for the cookies...

				- peterd

                         - Lord of the Rings

---

From: Einar Stefferud <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 18:43:39 -0800

This is a very old problem in many situations.

I remember well dealing with it in the LA ACM back in the 1960's...
People were objecting to paying $5.00 for dinner;-)...

One answer is to set up some kind of "Hardship Case" program to which 
hardship cases may submit an application for a special discounted 
registration fee, citing their hardship situation.

I should be funded out of the registration fees paid by all the 
non-hardhsip attendees.

I expect that very few people will admit that they are genuine 
hardship, so the distributed burden on those who pay the full fee 
will be negligible.

And, yes, it would help if the hardship cases were somehow identified 
by badge insignia.

One proper exception might should be for students, for whom I believe 
that some kind of "educational support" would be very good for both 
the students and the IETF.  Well worth the subsidy cost.

One of the reasons this sort of thing works, is that any attendee 
wanting to obtain the hardship fee has to think hard about her/his 
justification for claiming hardship.

A limit can be set at some nominally small percentage of the 
registrations being allowed for hardship cases.

Enjoy;-)...  I will not be applying;-)...\Stef

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 20:28:32 -0600

--On 18. mars 2002 13:56 -0600 Michael Richardson 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>   As another independant consultant, I am actually far more price
> sensitive on the hotel and food costs than I am on anything. (And the
> ritzier the hotel, the higher the cost of the food, and the availability
> of a peanut butter sandwidth goes way down).

FYI.....We have checked that there is a shopping mall with a food court 
next to the meeting venue for the Yokohama IETF.
You can even get Japanized McDonalds.

We try to make good....

                      Harald

---

From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 19:04:00 +1100

Bonney "Robin Hood" Kooper wrote:
	[..]
> But if you take the
> standards, [..]

If you are not seeing any personal or business benefit
from attending the IETF, why are you thinking of going?
(Have you ever gone to an IETF meeting?)

gja

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 10:52:26 +0000

At 11:44 AM 3/18/02 +0000, Paul Robinson wrote:
>meetings. ...

I must challenge this assertion -- if you have a cogent argument why 
something is a bad idea, and present it to the working group and/or as a 
last-call comment, I believe it really does get heard.

Of course, not everyone will agree on what constitutes a cogent argument, 
because different folks have different goals -- that's when it becomes 
important to _listen_ to the responses as well as present your argument.

I don't deny that it helps to attend meetings -- if mainly because it helps 
one to get a broader understanding of the issues -- but unlike just about 
any other technical design committee I've experience of it's really not 
essential to participate in person.  Indeed, in my experience, the IETF 
meetings are not really the place to get your argument *heard*.  I think 
they are most useful for testing new ideas.

If there's an important aspect of this cost-of-meetings debate, I think 
it's to keep us all mindful that meeting attendance should not be seen as 
necessary to get some work advanced or improved.

>please, ask yourself whether the cookies are really needed. :-)

I've wondered about this, and I think that they're probably fairly 
economical for the delegates:  at IETF meetings, I typically skip hotel 
breakfasts and use the breakfast buffet for my morning's fuel.  Then there 
are coffees that would otherwise be purchased - these things soon mount up 
at hotel prices.  And more importantly, it means that folks are not forced 
to choose between useful discussion and wandering off to find food and 
drink.  Finally, there's a matter of logistics -- IETF meetings typically 
overrun the available lunch facilities (lunches not being provided in the 
package);  I assert that laying out a buffet is a more efficient way of 
feeding and watering the numbers involved.

#g

-------------------
Graham Klyne
<[email-masked]>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 11:16:36 -0500

> and solving that problem requires a face-to-face session.

essentially all of the work done at meetings happens in the hallways,
restaurants, and bars - when small groups of people get together to 
work out mutual understandings and compromises which then emerge
as proposals to WGs.  sometimes this can be done in email or over 
the phone, but it's much easier in person.

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:15:25 +0000 (GMT)

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Keith Moore wrote:

> restaurants, and bars

or wherever else the 802.11-accessorised laptop-toting attendee can
get network access and a comfy seat to keep on top of the day job.

L.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: Frank Solensky <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Mar 2002 12:59:15 -0500

At the risk of prolonging this thread:

> hardship, so the distributed burden on those who pay the full fee 

Seems reasonable, but I'd argue that the air fare and hotel costs dwarf
the meeting fees.
> And, yes, it would help if the hardship cases were somehow identified 

No it would not.  You don't want to be marking people in this way if
their input is to be treated as equal to everyone else's.

				-- Frank

---

From: Matt Crawford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 13:43:06 -0600

> restaurants, and bars - when small groups of people get together ...

Yes, I see.  So much for the myth of an open process.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:06:01 -0500

> Yes, I see.  So much for the myth of an open process.

I'm willing to place bets that a *very* large chunk of things accomplished
in the hallways of *THIS* IETF will be a BOF at the *next* one, and a working
group at the one after that.  Also, a quick sanity check of an idea that takes
10 minutes in the hallway ("Hey Fred - does this sound reasonable, or am I
smoking crack again?") could take anywhere from 45 minutes to forever in the
context of a working group session (remember, it usually takes less time to
bring ONE person up to speed than to bring a whole room up to speed on your
new idea...)
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

---

From: Matt Crawford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:45:02 -0600

> I'm willing to place bets that a *very* large chunk of things
> accomplished in the hallways of *THIS* IETF will be a BOF at the
> *next* one, and a working group at the one after that.

You've said that you don't go to meetings, so I won't fault your
naivete, but the bulk of the hallway and bar work consists of
squashing, not originating, WG items.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 16:21:02 -0500

> Yes, I see.  So much for the myth of an open process.

you cleverly left off the rest of my statement where I said
the ideas are reviewed by WGs.

nor did I say that the small groups of people included specific people.

the process is still open.  any group of people can get together to
brainstorm.  but good ideas rarely come from large groups - they
come from individuals or small groups.  small groups are better
at coming up with proposals; large groups are better at doing
review and coming up with usage scenarios.

Ketih

---

From: Paul Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 21:21:18 +0000

> WGs, BOFs, and hallway discussions?

Stimulants? Who needs stimulants when you've got unfinished code from that
project you meant to finish 3 months ago? It's all you need, I can assure
you... next you'll be suggesting that sleep is a good idea. Pah!
 
> You might want to look into WG mailing lists for this purpose.

Did so. Ran into the same problems Bernstein is having now with IDNA. 
Hmmmm... :-)

-- 
Paul Robinson

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 16:51:19 -0500

> squashing, not originating, WG items.

since more bad/naive ideas are generated than good ones, this seems
entirely appropriate.

---

From: "RL 'Bob' Morgan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 16:29:20 -0700 (MST)

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:

> I think this is an artifact of the use of mailing lists for WG traffic:
> it's just not practical to follow all the mailing lists.  (I sure
> don't.)  A possible solution would be to feed all of the WG lists into a
> read-only IMAP (and NNTP) server, making it easier to browse a wider
> cross section of lists without completely obliterating your inbox

I've been doing this (via IMAP) for years and it works well for me.  Now
if the IETF (and the rest of the world) would make list archives available
via anonymous IMAP, then we all wouldn't have to do this ourselves.  And
if IMAP clients would properly support anonymous IMAP, then it might be
generally useful.  (Sorry, this seems to be All Rants All The Time Week on
the IETF list, so I had to add one of mine. 8^)

 - RL "Bob"

---

From: Bonney Kooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:58:32 -0800 (PST)

> 
> To believe this, you must believe that large vendors
> are unable to ship a
> product until it has some sort of IETF rubber stamp.

Stephen,

It does increase the acceptance of a solution
specially when customers are concerned about
inter-operatability issues. It is more so in carrier
networks.  

>  You must also believe
> that this IETF rubber stamp is only available to
> large vendors, and only
> large vendors will benefit from it.

I didn't say that. I said RELATIVE benefit derived
(actual in terms of increased sales, or perceived in
terms of prestige and goodwill). We don't have  fix
tax per person for all rich and poor even though
everyone uses the same federal/state services?. The
question is what are the alternatives way to better
fund IETF activities and control (controllable portion
of) rising costs?

> Given that the IETF does not recognize organizations
> at all, it is hard to
> agree with this model.  The process is specifically
> designed to prevent this
> from happening, and I think the current IDNA
> argument shows that it's
> difficult to railroad a WG with a bad idea.

Agreed - i didn't say that it is easy to push bad idea
through any working group. But it is easier to build a
momentum around for an idea if you have many people
coming from the same organisation simply because you
know them, and you work closely with them (though many
people will say the design of IPv6, and a lot of MPLS
work isn't a shining example of good work, but it is
not because of bad ideas, but rather too many good
ideas :-))

==bonney

---

From: "Meritt James" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 09:14:13 -0500

Ah, the WG items have low survivability.  And what does THAT tell you?

-- 
James W. Meritt CISSP, CISA
Booz | Allen | Hamilton
phone: (410) 684-6566

---

From: "Stephen Sprunk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:26:09 -0600

Thus spake "Bonney Kooper" <[email-masked]>
> more than one way.

> First, the corporations benefit by
> ship!.

To believe this, you must believe that large vendors are unable to ship a
product until it has some sort of IETF rubber stamp.  You must also believe
that this IETF rubber stamp is only available to large vendors, and only
large vendors will benefit from it.

Given that the IETF does not recognize organizations at all, it is hard to
agree with this model.  The process is specifically designed to prevent this
from happening, and I think the current IDNA argument shows that it's
difficult to railroad a WG with a bad idea.

> up. So they are not exactly paying there fair share,

You have a tacit assumption here that when a large vendor, which makes
hundreds of products across dozens of market sectors, happens to send 20
people, those people have less valuable input than if 20 small vendors each
sent one person to the same meetings.  Please prove this is true.

S