Subject: RE: IETF Meetings - High Registration Fees

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 22:21:43 -0800

> Bonney Kooper wrote:
> The current registration fee of $575 is outrageously
> high. Even though IETF claims to be an open forum with
> no membership fee - you need $575*3=$1725 per year for
> registration fee alone for attending IETF sessions.

I paid out of my own pocket, and I do not think that the fee is outrageous. Accounting the amount of cookies and yogurts I eat, and the number of coffee cups I drink, and the price to rent the rooms and the nice video projectors, it does not seem extravagant to me. Do you think the the Hilton is a charity?

> This is effectively the membership fee for IETF.

I do not agree. Meetings are optional and membership is free.

> Sorry - not everyone can plan ten days in advance to
> get $125 reduction in fee.

if you can't plan it 10 days in advance, the IETF fee is a non-issue because you will spend $3,000 for last minute airline tickets and hotel.

> Marshall Rose wrote:
> setting aside, for now, the unstated assumption of your message that
> meetings are where the real work gets done,

Right on the money. Let's be real: meetings are a good excuse to have a few beers with your mailing list buddies.

Michel.

---

From: Dennis Fazio <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:33:07 -0600

--On Sunday, March 17, 2002 02:04 PM -0800 Bonney Kooper <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> 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

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 Sunday 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 no matter what structure you set.

As others have pointed out, the registration fee is a rather small minority 
of total direct and indirect attendance costs, so protesting it on economic 
grounds doesn't seem to be a very strong issue. If your real issue is with 
perceived large corporate influence, that should be addressed by 
organizational and operational changes, not fee structures.

--
Dennis Fazio
HeatSeeker Technology Partners

---

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 10:40:51 -0500

>I suggest let IETF institute a tiered
>and MPLS forums etc.)

Yes--and they get what they pay for: a consortium to rubber-stamp their 
proposals.

/=========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer      |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc. |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own. |
|=========================================================|
|Peace, justice, morality, culture, family, sport, and the|
|extinction of all other life forms!                      |
\=========================================================/

---

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 10:48:38 -0500

>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.

In fact, large corporations can be *more* sensitive to meeting costs, 
because they have better accounting processes in place.  In London, I 
heard that IBM had a travel freeze; only a very few people had been able 
to get approval to come.  My employer at the time, eCal, had sent me as a 
matter of course, just because it was what we always did.  One month 
later, eCal announced it was going out of business.

/========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer     |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc.|
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.|
|========================================================|
|Organ transplants are best left to the professionals.   |
\========================================================/

---

From: Dennis Fazio <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:40:27 -0600

I decided to sit in on the Newcomers Orientation today where one could
learn:

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 direct and
indirect attendance cost. If your real issue is with corporate influence,
they should be addressed by organizational and operational changes, not fee
structures.

--
Dennis Fazio
The Ephemeral Network

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 20:12:21 -0600

In message <[email-masked]>, Brian E Carpenter writes:

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

Ditto.  I was initially denied travel funding to attend Salt Lake City 
IETF, despite my initial arguments that I was an IAB member, the IAB 
liason to the IESG, an IRSG member, and the chair or co-chair of two 
working groups, one of significant importance to my employer since it 
involves the interaction of the Internet and the phone network.

The issue isn't the the fraction of the total expense budget of the 
giant multinational that IETF attendance represents.  Giant 
multinationals have a hierarchical structure; the issue in very many 
cases is the budget of the individual organization, where travel might 
be noticeable.  That was certainly the case for me -- and a month after 
that IETF, management announced that they were laying off a very 
significant portion of the organization.  I wonder how many people's 
jobs were saved by the organization-wide travel freeze.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
		Full text of "Firewalls" book now at http://www.wilyhacker.com

---

From: "Peter Ford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:00:55 -0800

A starting point: http://www.ietf.org/meetings/multicast_53.html

As important is participation in the mailing lists, docs, etc.

Cheers, peterf

-----Original Message-----
From: Thor Harald Johansen [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:45 PM
To: Peter Ford
Cc: Paul Robinson; Bonney Kooper; Marshall Rose; Joe Touch;
[email-masked]
Subject: RE: IETF Meetings - High Registration Fees

> There is merit is actively sponsoring student participation.  Perhaps
we
> should be thinking of awards for best contributions, honoraria for
> travel, expenses, etc.

How can I participate in an IETF meeting? I'm a student, so money is
short. ;) Is it possible to "be there" electronically?
-- 
Thor Harald Johansen

---

From: "Kevin C. Almeroth" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 06:56:23 -0800 (PST)

>>Well, you do have about 200Mbits/sec connected to the Hilton at the moment
>>which should support a substantial number of mostly audio content feeds,
>>but that's not likely to be available every meeting depending on sponsor.
>>Besides, I believe you just need to send out a few streams to distribution
>>reflectors elsewhere.

Excellent idea!  And since this part of the IETF is driven by volunteers,
I'm thinking you're willing to volunteer? ...organize the reflectors,
work with the terminal room to make sure there is bandwidth (what should we
do for other meetings when the bandwidth isn't available), run the
local reflector (software and hardware), etc.  And if you'd like to do
a different encoding then make sure to bring your own encoder machine.

We can easily make both an audio and video feed from either (or both)
rooms available to you.  Real and NCast have done this in the past, but
we tend not to advertise these additional services as widely since they
are not services that will consistently be offered at each meeting...
and if the service isn't offered every time then it becomes hard for
attendees to plan on NOT attending because they aren't sure whether they
can really listen.

-Kevin

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From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 10:41:52 -0500

>And many hotels *don't* include a free breakfast,

In fact, out of all the business trips I've ever made, I can remember only 
one hotel (in London) that included breakfast (not counting "continental 
breakfast", which is generally inedible).  Getting breakfast in a hotel 
restaurant usually takes more time than it's worth, too.  When I'm 
jet-lagged, and trying to get to the first meeting of the morning, that 
time can make a big difference.

/==========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer       |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc.  |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.  |
|==========================================================|
|Please do not adjust your mind--reality is malfunctioning.|
\==========================================================/

---

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 10:50:30 -0500

>If there is a need to sponsor
>individual sessions so be it as long as that
[...]
>doesn't affect
>independance of technical discussions.

Howls Of Derisive Laughter, Bruce.

The one who pays the piper calls the tune.  It might start out subtly, but 
it would eventually degenerate into a pay-for-all like, say, Congress.

/==============================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer           |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc.      |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.      |
|==============================================================|
|"But she calls her ship _Mercy of the Goddess_!" "Kali." "Oh."|
\==============================================================/