Subject: Financial state of the IETF - to be presented Wednesday

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:10:30 +0100

On Wednesday at the IESG plenary, I'm doing a presentation about IETF 
financials.

The short and sweet of it is: Unless we change something, our current 
funding methods won't pay for our current work.
At the presentation, I'll ask the floor what they think about various ideas 
for improving the situation.

But since you all will be better able to give me your thoughtful opinions 
after having thought about it for a while, it only makes sense to send out 
the presentation first.

I put up the presentation at http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/march2002/ - in 
Powerpoint and PDF formats. It's still going to change before I give the 
presentation, but the high points are definitely there.

Your comments are welcome!

                     Harald

---

From: "Ole J. Jacobsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 20:08:35 -0800 (PST)

Jeg tror du mener:

http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/march2003/

Ole

PS. Start learning Norwegian today, everyone :-)

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   GSM: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:12:46 -0800 (PST)

Hi, Harald,

It's good to have this presentation in advance of the meeting.

A couple of questions follow:

- Without asking for details - was Yokohama unusually expensive
 for reasons that are likely to recur? I'm curious whether this 
was just because the meeting was in Japan, for instance, or 
whether we usually expect higher costs outside of North 
America...

- I'm not the brightest candle in the menorah, but - I would 
have guessed that we would see the number of attendees 
decreasing, due to (1) general industry business conditions, (2)

the telecom nuclear winter, strongly affecting SubIP attendance,

and (3) our reluctance to take on new APPS work, so it goes 
elsewhere. Your presentation projected a slight increase - does 
a decrease make things better, or worse?

- Does going to two, or four, meetings per year help or hurt?

- Of course we can raise meeting fees, but we're decrying the 
influx of professional standards weenies now. Is the expectation

that people really just come to IETF when they want to 
standardize something, and then go away?

And I'm sure these won't be the last questions that people
ask...

Spencer

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online
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---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 11:46:12 -0800

> whether we usually expect higher costs outside of North

We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was even more 
expensive than Yokohama.
With the lack of sponsoring of terminal rooms, the difference is much less, 
but still significant. The reason for the varying prediction of 
per-attendee cost for 2004-2005 is that we are considering 2 non-US 
meetings in 2004 - but if they are definitely more expensive than US 
meetings even when we get sponsors outside the US and no sponsors inside 
the US, we may have to reevaluate.
> a decrease make things better, or worse?

Definitely worse.

> - Does going to two, or four, meetings per year help or hurt?

My guess is that going to two would hurt income, unless we raise fees by 
50% - the same people would come, I think.
Going to four would be damaging to my sanity, at least - don't know about 
others'.... we whould expect slightly lower per-meeting attendance, but 
many would indeed feel obligated to go to all four, so would pay more, I 
think. Whether they would get more things done is an open question.
> standardize something, and then go away?

I'm more worried about the differential impact raising fees would have - it 
would mean very little for the "professional standardizers" from the 
vendors, but would have a negative effect on the self-funded, the academics 
and other groups that help us preserve a multifaceted perspective on what 
the Internet is and should be.
> And I'm sure these won't be the last questions that people

Assuredly not!

---

From: Rick Wesson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 12:08:01 -0800 (PST)

Harald,

> for improving the situation.

At one point some of us tried to use the .org redelegation to help fund
the IETF. [1] We didn't win but the ISOC's bid did win. Did the ISOC make
the same commitment, could they divert some funding from .org domain
registrations to support the IETF?

It only seems like the right thing to do, at least it did to those of us
who worked on the bid [2]

So, couldn't the ISOC make the same commitment fund the IETF and IAB?

-rick

[1] http://trusted.resource.org/Support/ISOC/intent_to_donate.pdf
[2] http://trusted.resource.org/

---

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:13:52 -0500

that would have to be a decision of PIR and its board - ISOC does not,
at least as I understand it, have any direct access to the .org
revenues. ISOC does select the PIR board but otherwise there is no
financial connection. 

Vint

>[2] http://trusted.resource.org/

Vint Cerf
SVP Architecture & Technology
WorldCom
22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
Ashburn, VA 20147
703 886 1690 (v806 1690)
703 886 0047 fax

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:20:16 -0500

> think. Whether they would get more things done is an open question.

I hate the idea of more travel, plus I suspect 4 may be
harder to justify to management.  However, try as we may to
do things "right," the IETF is increasingly doing its work
at meetings instead of mailing lists.  If we can't fix it we
should probably accept it.  Also, more regular meetings
might tend to discourage interim meetings, which would be
excellent.

Melinda

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 16:59:47 -0500

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was even 
> more expensive than Yokohama.
> With the lack of sponsoring of terminal rooms, the difference is much 
> less, but still significant. The reason for the varying prediction of 
> meetings even when we get sponsors outside the US and no sponsors 
> inside the US, we may have to reevaluate.

Having access to wireless networks and the Internet throughout the 
meetings are certainly a desireable feature.  However, they are hardly a 
deciding factor on whether or not I attend an IETF meeting.  In many 
ways, if there was no network we might actually get more done.  What 
percentage of the costs of a meeting are due to the terminal room and 
related expenses?

> My guess is that going to two would hurt income, unless we raise fees 
> by 50% - the same people would come, I think.
> Going to four would be damaging to my sanity, at least - don't know 
> about others'.... we whould expect slightly lower per-meeting 
> attendance, but many would indeed feel obligated to go to all four, so 
> would pay more, I think. Whether they would get more things done is an 
> open question.
>
The real question is "to what extent is it reasonable for the costs of 
running the IETF be funded by relying on attendance fees?"  It has 
always struck me as odd that the people who volunteer to do the work of 
the IETF pay for the privilege. 

The IETF does not really function as a "standards body" in the 
traditional sense as it is not funded either by government grants nor by 
a consortium of industry.  The IETF does not develop mandatory standards 
which must be adhered to in order to have certified products.  Instead 
everything we do is voluntary.  Not only is the work voluntary but so is 
the output.

In many ways the IETF is the ultimate open source project.  As with many 
open source projects, the survival of the project is dependent upon 
those that do the work having alternative sources of income to support 
the efforts.  I have never felt that was an appropriate funding model 
for any work that I have done.  [If only I could be ensured of a 
comfortable lifestyle for myself and my family I would glady spend all 
of my efforts volunteering and give away everything I do for free.] On 
the other hand, the work of the IETF

It would seem that we would want those that benefit from the results of 
the IETF to pay.  The problem is that the benefits the IETF provides to 
the Internet community are so hard to quantify and put a monetary price 
on.  Nor is it easy to determine who the beneficiaries are?  Is it the 
end-user behind a cable modem?  Or the ISP?  Or the operating systems, 
hardware, and application vendors? 

Should fees be taxes on the use of RFCs?  Or perhaps a tax on IP 
addresses?  Or domain names? 

Who would care the most if the IETF were to disappear? 

Would it make sense to form sub-areas of the IETF that are funded as 
Industry Consortiums with membership fees and contributions so that the 
rest of the working groups could be open?

It seems to me that those groups that come to the IETF seeking the 
expertise of the IETF participants, the IESG review, and the IETF RFC 
publication status would be more than willing to pay for the privilege 
of bringing their nearly completed work into the body.  (Assuming of 
course that the IETF thought the work was worthwhile.)

I realize that this e-mail is mostly just rambling thoughts but there 
are no obvious answers jumping out to solve the funding problems of the 
IETF.

- Jeffrey Altman

---

From: Marshall Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 14:59:48 -0800

> ...

harald - many thanks for making this material available. would it be possible
for you to provide just a slight amount of additional material in your
presentation, specifically, could we get a breakdown of the following
meeting costs:

	- food
	- connectivity/terminal room/etc.
	- other major items

it's hard to figure out what to optimize unless we understand the
relative sizes of these things.
    
for example, my gut reaction is to say "just cancel the food" on the
theory that people can pay for this themselves, with a very small
efficiency hit. in contrast, having everyone arrange their own
connectivity would be amusing, but highly inefficient.
    
/mtr

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:00:18 -0500

--On Saturday, 15 March, 2003 16:59 -0500 Jeffrey Altman 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London
>> was even  more expensive than Yokohama.
>> With the lack of sponsoring of terminal rooms, the difference
>> is much  less, but still significant. The reason for the
>> varying prediction of  per-attendee cost for 2004-2005 is
>> that we are considering 2 non-US  meetings in 2004 - but if
>> they are definitely more expensive than US  meetings even
>> when we get sponsors outside the US and no sponsors  inside
> Having access to wireless networks and the Internet throughout
> the meetings are certainly a desirable feature.  However,
> they are hardly a deciding factor on whether or not I attend
> an IETF meeting.  In many ways, if there was no network we
> might actually get more done.  What percentage of the costs of
> a meeting are due to the terminal room and related expenses?

To the extent to which this question is worth looking at, I 
suggest that it would be useful to further dissect it.  For 
example, terminal or computer rentals are, in my experience, 
quite expensive.  If we get rid of them, shifting the burden of 
bringing (or renting) computers to those who want to use them, 
we not only reduce that expense, but probably reduce the amount 
of floor space we need for terminal rooms (relevant when we need 
to pay for that space).  I don't know what the combination 
costs, or how many people who are really active participants are 
dependent on the terminals/computers, as distinct from Ethernet 
or Wireless drops, but it seems to me to be a question worth 
asking.

> The real question is "to what extent is it reasonable for the
> costs of running the IETF be funded by relying on attendance
> fees?"  It has always struck me as odd that the people who
> volunteer to do the work of the IETF pay for the privilege.
> traditional sense as it is not funded either by government
> grants nor by a consortium of industry.  The IETF does not
> develop mandatory standards which must be adhered to in order
> to have certified products.  Instead everything we do is
> voluntary.  Not only is the work voluntary but so is the
> output.

There may be some misconceptions or misunderstanding here, 
although the attendance fees for a body that claims one can 
fully participate without ever attending a meeting are, indeed, 
a bit strange.  But there are few mandatory standards in the 
information technology area.  Everything ISO and ANSI do is 
voluntary (both the work and adoption of the output).  And the 
(rather high) fees are paid for, by and large, by the 
organizations whose members/ employees are doing the work.  Yes, 
some few of those standards are then legislated into required 
practices, but that could happen with ours as well.  And I most 
other national standards bodies, at least those of which I'm 
aware, work more or the same way although the level of 
government involvement and subsidy is higher in many cases. 
The "you expect us to contribute our time and talent and then 
pay you for the privilege and sign over all copyright rights 
(including republication within our own organizations to you so 
you can charge us for the documents we wrote" policies are 
widely resented, but still generally practiced.

regards,
   john

---

From: Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 17:21:22 -0800

Another random thought: Could any money be saved by not meeting on 
Friday?  For IETF meetings (such as the upcoming meeting in SF) without a 
social event, the Tuesday evening slot is empty.  Couldn't the Friday slots 
have been moved to Tuesday evening instead?

	Ross.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:31:17 -0800

--On 15. mars 2003 14:59 -0800 Marshall Rose 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> harald - many thanks for making this material available. would it be
> possible for you to provide just a slight amount of additional material
> in your presentation, specifically, could we get a breakdown of the
> following meeting costs:
>
> 	- food

The 2001 figures are available on the IETF Chair's pages - the 2002 figures 
aren't that much different. They will be published at the same level of 
details as soon as the auditors are done with them; I summed these together 
until they were reasonably legible when printed on a slide....

> connectivity would be amusing, but highly inefficient.

check the notes on the 2001 page - it seems that hotels in the US want to 
take just about the same amount off us for meeting rooms + food as they 
would otherwise take for the meeting rooms alone. Bizarre, but that seems 
to be the case.

Outside the US, the story is different - there we pay for the rooms no 
matter what, but I think the "total package cost" is a matter of 
negotiation in that case too.

In the case of a 30-minute break, I think it actually pays for itself in 
terms of manpower time - the time spent snarfing cookie + coffee and 
continuing conversation is a lot more productive than the time spent in the 
queue at Starbuck's, bolting the coffee and then jumping back into the next 
meeting. OTOH, perhaps people could live from lunch to dinner without 
cookies???

---

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 17:53:12 -0800 (PST)

After the last IETF meeting that was held in San Jose, a decree was
issued that no future meetings be held in Silicon Valley because of
unmanageably large attendance.

Harald's slides say that part of the problem we now face is reduced
revenue due to reduced attendance.

The answer seems obvious to me.

[Um, yes, I do live in Silicon Valley.]

On a more serious note, IETF used to function with the same attendance
numbers as now.  Are the costs now out of line with what they were
then?

                                                        -- Steve

---

From: Tom Lord <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:12:58 -0800 (PST)

(from the peanut gallery:)

       OTOH, perhaps people could live from lunch to dinner without
       cookies???

Would better integration with local economies around meetings help?
Would people volunteer to scout out alternatives?  Aren't hotel and
starbucks cookies much more expensive than small-business cookies?
(Sure, the hotels will "tax" the "imports" in the "total package
cost".)

Hotel-residing meeting attendants:  spend more of your per-diem on
tips at the hotel to (sorta) compensate.   In the long term, that'll
bring down "total package cost", too.)

-t

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 04:14:39 +0200 (EET)

> numbers as now.  Are the costs now out of line with what they were

Good idea!  Let's raise the registration fee by 500$ for US based IETF 
attenders as they have the capability to pay more due to lower travel 
costs :-).

The closer the more it should cost!

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: Marshall Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:20:11 -0800

> until they were reasonably legible when printed on a slide....
    
thanks!

to quote from http://www.ietf.org/u/chair/financials.html :
    
>>> - Food & Beverage             $862,500
>>> - Audio/Visual                $127,337
>>> - Room Rental                 $190,265
>>> - Other Meeting Exp             $1,925
>>> Total IETF Meeting Expenses $1,182,027
>>> ...    
>>> The cost for "food and beverage" covers participants' breakfasts, coffe
>>> and break food at IETF events. In the US, this is one way in which
>>> hotels recover the cost of meeting rooms; in one recent query, the
>>> secretariat got a quote on meeting rooms without food for USD 238.000
>>> (at 50% off list price). At a similar meeting where we got the meeting
>>> rooms for free, our food and beverages bill was approximately USD
>>> 250.000. Outside the US, we are usually charged separately for the
>>> meeting rooms and the food. 

> would otherwise take for the meeting rooms alone. Bizarre, but that seems 

maybe i'm not following, but it looks like
    
    (food + meeting room) / 3 = $350,921

which is still $113K more than getting the meeting rooms only.

> meeting. OTOH, perhaps people could live from lunch to dinner without 

harald, please, banks takes cash, not goodwill. if we want to say it
pays for itself, then someone better start collecting money for the food.
    
i suppose we could say that the meeting rooms are subsidizing the food,
but frankly, i'd prefer that we didn't spend the additional $340K/year,
and folks who want food can have breakfast at the hotel restaurant and
snacks at whatever's available at the lobby level.
    
now maybe we can't get a better deal 'cause the hotels know they have
a racket. fine. however, we still fill-up whatever hotel we end
up. perhaps we ought to pick one or two hotels to have meetings at and
do a multi-year contract. given the sorry state of the economy, seems to
me that we ought to be able to find a hotel willing to do a deal.  we
can even follow casner's lead and book a hotel in silicon valley.

the one thing that the 2001 numbers don't tell us is what we're spending
on the terminal rooms (since in 2001 they were donated, hoorah!). seems
to me that the only thing we should be providing is wifi/10bT and maybe
a printer or two. anyone who can't bring a laptop to an ietf meeting is
probably doesn't need connectivity anyway...

i'm sure wednesday night there will be a spirited discussion...
    
/mtr

---

From: Jan Meijer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 03:47:32 +0100 (CET)

> We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was even more

Aren't London and Yokohama quite expensive relative to other possible
alternatives in the area?  I don't know about Asia but there must be
well-connected (flightwise) places in Europe that cost less then London to
host a meeting.

Jan

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 21:23:22 -0800

>might tend to discourage interim meetings, which would be

I agree.  Given that the work of the IETF is centered on the
publication of documents, and given that most I-Ds are published
near the I-D cutoff deadlines, it stands to reason that IETF
productivity will increase by 33% if the number of publication 
cycles per year is increased from 3 to 4.

>Melinda

Andy

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 21:48:36 -0800

> numbers as now.  Are the costs now out of line with what they were

Perhaps this was due to a hefty government subsidy that is no longer there?

Eliot

---

From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 01:58:01 -0500

> We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was even more 

Speaking from a purely extremely selfish point of view, as a North
American, how much would it help if we were to cut back to one meeting
outside North America every 5-6 IETF's, instead of once a year, which
seems to be the current rate?

I was not able to get travel funding to go to Yokohama, and I will
almost certainly not be able to attend the summer IETF in Austria.

At one point, I was told that Europeans were paying roughly the same
for intra-European travel as they were to travel to North America, but
North Americans were paying more to travel to Europe.  Is this still
disparity (seemingly caused by inefficiencies and the lack of
competition in the European travel market, coupled with the high
expenses and low profit margins of the various national carriers)
still true?

Times are incredibly tough right now, from all over....

						- Ted

---

From: "Tomson Eric \(Yahoo.fr\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 11:57:52 +0100

Brussels is the less expensive "major" (capital of the E.U., NATO's HQ)
city in Europe. Far less expensive than London, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt,
Geneva,...

And since recently, Eastern Europe can also offer good commodities now,
at quite low rates...

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Meijer
Sent: dimanche 16 mars 2003 3:48
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Financial state of the IETF - to be presented Wednesday

Aren't London and Yokohama quite expensive relative to other possible
alternatives in the area?  I don't know about Asia but there must be
well-connected (flightwise) places in Europe that cost less then London
to host a meeting.

Jan

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:28:34 +0200 (EET)

> which is still $113K more than getting the meeting rooms only.

So, with the estimate of 1500 people per session, that makes 76$/IETF for 
food and stuff.

15$/day, not too bad, IMO.

Of course, if that'd help, we could just split off "food + beveradge 
fees" from the attendance, e.g. extra 10 or 15 dollars per day or 50-75$ 
for the whole thing.  Paying could be voluntary, even -- but it'd be on 
your conscience if you ate without paying.

I certainly would be willing (to have my company :-) pay that; all in all, 
it's *much* more convenient than to go eat breakfast, go elsewhere looking 
for cookies, soda and stuff.

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 07:56:27 -0500

What about South America and India.  I've heard that both are
substantially less expensive than the US/Europe/Japan for
vacation accomodations.  Does the same hold for convention costs?

Margaret

---

From: Mark Prior <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:52:23 +1030

>vacation accomodations.  Does the same hold for convention costs?
Out of curiosity I would like to know how the Adelaide meeting 
compared since I never bothered to ask when I hosted.

Mark.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 06:36:09 -0800

> registrations to support the IETF?

how would they justify this?  i.e. s/org/net/ or s/org/uk/ and how
does it work out?

randy

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 06:50:21 -0800

> which is still $113K more than getting the meeting rooms only.

I don't have the numbers that break these down per meeting, but if I 
remember rightly, the proper breakdown is APPROXIMATELY:

London: 190K meeting rooms + 300K food cost
US meetings: No room cost,   280K food cost

All aspects of London were expensive, but I don't know how expensive.

> probably doesn't need connectivity anyway...

San Francisco will be the first time in a long while we actually have those 
numbers, paid out of our own budget.
The BIG number in these discussions is the cost of the access line to the 
hotel - the discussions on price of this single item for San Francisco 
apparently ranged all the way from 10 KUSD to 80 KUSD, depending (among 
other things) on the shortest period of time the local-access company was 
willing to sell this service for.

This time, the SunRays in the terminal room were donated; if they hadn't 
been, there wouldn't have been any. The laptop drops are pretty cheap to 
provide.

> i'm sure wednesday night there will be a spirited discussion...

Oh yes! And I *do* hope there will be some enlightenment, and not just 
heat..... it's easy to spend all the time nitpicking over some 
10.000-dollar line item, when the smallest change needed to get the 
situation fixed runs into the hundreds of thousands.....

                          Harald

---

From: "Marshall T. Rose" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 09:51:05 -0800

> situation fixed runs into the hundreds of thousands.....

and i agree. which is why i'd like to see some apples-to-apples comparisons
to answer questions like this:

how much is the food subsidy really costing us? could we simply cover the
gap by bumping the registration cost by another $100/meeting?  (which is the
conclusion i come to after reading pekka's email)

what kind of a deal can we get if we do a multi-year contract with a hotel
in the "off" season? i.e., minneapolis in january, dallas in july.

does the cost of having meetings outside the continental us mean that we
should be charging a significantly higher attendence fee when we have
meetings there? or, should we simply have fewer of them outside the
continental us?

i think that each of these three things have implications in the six
figures...

/mtr

ps: and i still favor cutting back access to basic connectivity and nothing
more.

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:16:49 -0500

> 15$/day, not too bad, IMO.

That's about what most people would spend on breakfast themselves, so
having people pay for their own food wouldn't save them any money.

> your conscience if you ate without paying.

What would this level of detail cost in extra secretariat overhead?

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:24:17 +0200 (EET)

> having people pay for their own food wouldn't save them any money.

snacks on breaks, drinks etc. are valuable to me at least.
 
> What would this level of detail cost in extra secretariat overhead?

day-based: probably lot; yes/no, I will want to eat/drink, probably 
little.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 10:44:19 -0800

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

>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
    Harald> We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was
    Harald> even more expensive than Yokohama.  With the lack of sponsoring
    Harald> of terminal rooms, the difference is much less, but still
    Harald> significant. The reason for the varying prediction of
    Harald> per-attendee cost for 2004-2005 is that we are considering 2
    Harald> non-US meetings in 2004 - but if they are definitely more

  I think that this is a good idea. Do you mean outside US, or outside North
America? Is it the continent, or the country?
  As has been said many times in the past, returning to the same venue over
and over again really isn't a problem to me. How a about Minneapolis,
Montreal, and... well... I can't think of another "M"-city that we've been to
already. 

    Harald> would be damaging to my sanity, at least - don't know about
    Harald> others'.... we whould expect slightly lower per-meeting
    Harald> attendance, but many would indeed feel obligated to go to all
    Harald> four, so would pay more, I think. Whether they would get more
    Harald> things done is an open question.

  If going to four meetings provided more time for actual workshops, like
was just had at ISC for DNSSEC - three days of intensive working together
in a small group, then we'd get more done. 
  I am of the opinion that the IETF needs far more organized time for
"running code" before "rough consensus" is tested for.

]       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 Debian GNU/Linux using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:00:29 +0100

> almost certainly not be able to attend the summer IETF in Austria.

Oh, you mean we would have NAIETF, APIETF and EMEAIETF?

I personally pay a lot less for travel inside the Nordics so perhaps we 
could have the meeting rotating between Finland, Sweden, Norway and 
Denmark?

Maybe not.

- kurtis -

---

From: jamal <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 14:08:06 -0500 (EST)

Didnt see any mention of Canada as a venue: Ottawa,Toronto,Montreal
are all very accessible, more affordable and i think would be
considered outside the US.

cheers,
jamal

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 04:39:20 -0500

--On Sunday, 16 March, 2003 01:58 -0500 Theodore Ts'o
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> We usually expect higher costs outside North America -
>> London was even more  expensive than Yokohama.
> 
> Speaking from a purely extremely selfish point of view, as a
> North American, how much would it help if we were to cut
> back to one meeting outside North America every 5-6 IETF's,
> instead of once a year, which seems to be the current rate?
> 
> I was not able to get travel funding to go to Yokohama, and
> I will almost certainly not be able to attend the summer
> IETF in Austria.
> 
> At one point, I was told that Europeans were paying roughly
> the same for intra-European travel as they were to travel to
> North America, but North Americans were paying more to
> travel to Europe.  Is this still disparity (seemingly caused
> by inefficiencies and the lack of competition in the
> European travel market, coupled with the high expenses and
> low profit margins of the various national carriers) still
> true?

Ted,

I'll let someone else answer most of these questions, but I've
noticed that, some months, I would cost me less to get from
Boston to London than from Boston to San Francisco (yes, there
are some trick flights and calculations involved there).
But, a question: Relative to whatever issues you have with
European or Asia-Pacific meetings, would you have similar ones
in non-US North American locations, or are those more like the
US?  

The question isn't motivated by finances but by worrying about
a problem that interacts with suggestions about more US
meetings: several of our participants have had serious visa
problems in the last year or so --much more serious than in
the past-- and I see no reason to believe that those problems
are going to get better any time soon.  To the extent to which
we want to keep our process international and open, the visa
situation makes an argument for increasing, rather than
decreasing, the ratio of outside-USA to inside-USA meetings. 

regards,
    john

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:28:01 -0800

>>>>> "jamal" == jamal  <[email-masked]> writes:
    jamal> Didnt see any mention of Canada as a venue: Ottawa,Toronto,Montreal

  For Ottawa... Unless the IETF returns to a consistent 700 person size,
there just isn't a hotel with enough convention space in one building. 

  Mind you, there are some empty Nortel buildings that seat 1500!

---

From: Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:32:09 -0800

g'day Randy,

> how would they justify this?  i.e. s/org/net/ or s/org/uk/ and how

I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe you're just waxing
rhetorical?

If the question is should PIR help support the IETF, it would seem to
fall within their mission, if they chose to do so. After all, their home
page states:

     "PIR looks forward to serving the .ORG community by
      providing superior technology; new services designed
      for noncommercial registrants; and responsive,
      responsible stewardship."

Note the line about "providing superior technology", which could be
interpreted as supporting improvements to DNS technologies, at the
least. Wouldn't be much of a stretch to say it could also cover
supporting developments at the transport layer. Given the relationship
between ISOC and the IETF you could make a similar argument about this
being within *their* mandate, as well.

Still, AFAIK PIR haven't actually made any specific commitments to
helping out the IETF, so it wouldn't be appropriate to try to strong-arm
them into offering to do so now, but I see no reason why we shouldn't
push for revenues from a specific TLD to support the overall mission of
the IETF in the future. Folks who support the IETF's goals and mission
could use their patronage of the "IETF TLD" to show their support and
provide specific finiancial aid. It would act as sort of an "affinity
TLD service", just like those affinity credit cards, where a portion of
the money spent goes as a subsidy to your favorite worthy cause. 

In fact, I'm surprised that this isn't being done already, since it
seems such an obvious step. It would certainly be appropriate to set up
an "IETF domain" to pay for the secretariat, mailing list hosting, a
full-blown set of archives, etc. Meeting fees could then be used to fund
only the incremental cost of a participant's physical presence (such as,
of course, the cookies...)

Let's look at the numbers for a minute. The IETF's non-meeting costs are
somewhere on the order of $1.3 million, and the meetings are something
on the order of $1.2 million (from slide 3 of Harald's presentation).
This means that the meeting's direct costs are only about $250 per
attendee per year (assuming three meetings per year and about 1.6k
attendees per meeting).

So, if the new TLD fees could raise something like $1.3 million clear
(after the expenses of actually providing the TLD servers, which of
course are ripe for donations, subsidies, etc) then you would only need
to charge something like $250 per person per year for the actual
meetings, which is obviously less than is charged now.

So let's set the target at $2 million to cover the cost of a small TLD
service, plus a little extra to build up the rainy day fund.

How realistic is it to consider raising $2 million per year in domain
registrations?

Here's where I need to wave my hands a little and you need to use your
imagination, but if you charge, say, $50 per reg, this is 40,000
entries. Make it something like $200/year each and you need only 10,000
to hit your target. Are there 20,000 people out there who'd pay $100 per
year to have a cool "[email-masked]" email address? I suspect so.

And of course, you can reduce this number further if you still allow
some cross-subsidy from the meeting fees, you can still push for
corporate donations (say for servers or hosting services to reduce the
service costs), etc. Here's where a full time DNS business manager could
probably pay for him or herself in no time at all by drumming up
equipment donations and hosting subsidies.

In any event, there are today something like 2,000 people who already
pay something like $500 per visit to the IETF over the course of a year
for their meeting fees. Assuming you've reduced the meeting fees, or
simply rolled the TLD sub into the existing fee, you'd find this part of
the equation could remain revenue neutral with few complaints. Thus, the
question boils down to whether you could raise any *additional* revenues
from subs coming in from folks not physically present, companies,
Intellectual Property lawyers and so on. At first glance this certainly
seems feasible to me...

And if you do better than cover the current revenue shortfall, you would
actually be lowering the cost of IETF participation for those who
physically show up to meetings. As Martha Stewart would say "And This is
Good...(tm)"

I for one maintain a few TLDs and wouldn't mind at all taking out at
least one more to support the IETF, assuming it's a "reasonable" fee
(anything under $100 per year would probably be lost in the noise). It
would be a legitimate business expense for me, and I'd know the money is
going to support something I approve of. You'd need to do some real
market research to determine if this is all viable or if I'm really as
special as my mom always thought, but my guess is you could find a whole
passle of intellectual property types who'd sign up for their favorite
strings on principle (after fighting you tooth and nail through the
"twisty little passages of ICANN, all the same" until the TLD went
live).

My guess is that there's an inbuilt free rent in *any* TLD (why do you
think they're so popular??) but even if there isn't, all you're really
trying to do is generate supplemental revenues equal to the delta
between current revenues and expenses, so this looks like a *very*
promising line to take. 

The only other alternative for an organization who sees its membership
falling is to cut costs or increase fees. The former reduces performance
and the later could lead to a death spiral as rising costs chase more
and more people away. Finding an alternative revenue stream seems the
only *healthy* long term alternative.

Oh wait - there is a hitch. Of course, if we try to do this, the IETF
would then be finally forced to visit the ICANN Alternate Reality Plane
that the rest of the world has struggled with for so long. Whether this
is considered a "good thing" or a "bad thing" is left as an exercise for
the reader but if any organization has a claim to a TLD, it would seem
to be the group that defines and maintains the very technologies and
procedures used to make the service work. This approach requires no
revenue-sharing agreements with the other TLD operators, no changes in
technologies or procedures and shouldn't "destabilize the root" since
it's a single additional TLD with minimal impact on traffic patterns.
Putting aside any moral claims, the IETF should be able to quickly reach
consensus upon an RFC stating that this specific TLD wouldn't hurt the
current DNS... ;-)

Okay, that's more than my 2 cents on this subject. Do with it as you
will...

And finally, a couple of specific comments on the posted financials
before I close.

Any business plan predicated upon the assumption that attendance will
maintain or return to the higher levels of previous years seems fatally
flawed, to say the least. The hi tech train wreck has now lasted three
years and shows no signs of being cleared from the tracks any time soon,
so we shouldn't allow ourselves too much "irrational optimism" on this
front. A more likely scenario is falling attendance for at least another
year, if not more, and this should be in the budget.

Also, to respond to Steve Casner's comment about comparisons with past
costs, given the inertia in starting and perpetrating working groups I
would guess that a 20 percent reduction in attendees doesn't
automatically translate to a 20 percent reduction in demand for the
number of meeting rooms, just more space available in each room, so
there seems to have been a ratchet effect here on the cost base. And if
the IETF's cost base is now permanently higher than it was a few years
ago, you will either need to take steps to fix the revenue side, or
you'll need to fix the demand side.

Thus, it looks like one of the steps needed in these harder times is a
cost-cutting exercise to reduce the number or working groups, and thus
the number of rooms needed. The demands upon space likely wont drop back
down again on their own, so some hard calls might be needed to balance
the books here.

In summary, I would suggest that if decisions are made based upon
built-in assumptions such as "attendance is going back up" or "falling
attendance automatically lowers costs", we'll all be revisiting this
whole debate again a year from now, but with the numbers in worse shape
than they are today...

                 - peterd (who remembers this specific analysis on the
                            cost of cookies cycling round before...)

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

     As Oprah Winfrey likes to say, "There's only two ways
        to lose weight - eat less, or exercise more..."

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

---

From: Joe Baptista <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:53:48 -0500 (EST)

.IETF already exists - try not to duplicate namespace.

Joe Baptista - only at www.baptista.god

   PoserTutor - How to use Poser http://posertutor.nomad/
       registration facilities in the inclusive namespace

---

From: shogunx <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 10:30:03 -0500 (EST)

Harald,
I have a facility that will fit the purposes of the IETF in Daytona.  We
have an international airport, and we can probably get a tremendous deal
on the ballrooms if we can guarantee the occupancy of the hotel during a
slow season... november-february.  Local vendors can satisfy food needs
efficiently.  When you mentioned corporate sponsor the last time we spoke,
did you mean that we need someone to cover the costs described below?

Scott

> situation fixed runs into the hundreds of thousands.....

sleekfreak pirate broadcast
world tour 2002-3
live from san francisco
http://sleekfreak.ath.cx

---

From: Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 00:05:18 -0800

Judging by Sunday evening's reception, it seems that the cutbacks in food 
service at IETF meetings have already begun :-(

	Ross.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 04:22:53 -0800

> did you mean that we need someone to cover the costs described below?

Traditionally, the host has been covering the cost of the terminal room and 
the Tuesday night social event. This may change going forward - we'll talk 
about this on Wednesday. And of course, both US IETF meetings this year are 
going forward without the traditional sponsors.

If you have numbers, please send them to Marcia ([email-masked]), who 
does the meeting planning and negotiation with hotel sites.

                       Harald

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 07:22:27 -0800 (PST)

I don't want to debate with Ross on what is, after all, a matter
of tastes, but was pleasantly surprised to see that we didn't
run out of food (and that's NOT been my experience at previous
receptions). Not a HUGE selection (Aaron described the pasta to
me as "three different pasta dishes with the same sauce"), but
very serviceable.

Thanks for improving the quantity aspect of the reception!
(adding a "Q" to PACT?)

Spencer

--- Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> This message was passed through
> [email-masked], which is a sublist of
> [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed. Decisions on what
> to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 07:26:16 -0800

Folks,

HTA> I'm more worried about the differential impact raising fees would have - it
HTA> would mean very little for the "professional standardizers" from the
HTA> vendors, but would have a negative effect on the self-funded, the academics
HTA> and other groups that help us preserve a multifaceted perspective on what
HTA> the Internet is and should be.

Participants-on-a-budget have a number of notable challenges to
consider:

1.  Expense of getting to the meeting site
2.  Hotel expense
3.  IETF fees

The cheapest travel venues are international hubs... with many
airlines providing competing service. For example, San Francisco is
probably pretty good for this, especially since the region is serviced
by three airports. Having to travel an extra air leg from the hub,
only makes sense when the site costs are substantially lower, to
offset the extra travel.

On the other hand, the IETF hotel in S.F. is not all that cheap,
running perhaps USD 30 per day higher than we have usually been
seeing. IETF planning used to include secondary hotels for those with
limited budgets. That stopped some time ago. It would be nice to have
IETF meeting planning add this sort of information back in.

By paying attention to keeping the travel costs down, IETF planning
can make it much easier for attendees can be in a position to pay
higher meeting fees.

As noted, there also are both tactical (eg, streamlined food and
communication services) and strategic (eg, long-term contracts)
changes that well might bring meeting costs down.

Ted Ts'o highlighted the key requirement: Let's make our choices based
on serious cost consideration, with other concerns being secondary.

d/

ps.  it is worth noting that repeated use of a small set of venues
will make net access, as well as costs, better.
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:53:42 -0500

Theodore Ts'o wrote:

>for intra-European travel as they were to travel to North America,
>  
>
That seems odd, given the European rail network.  I don't know what it 
costs a la carte, but I know that, both times I've flown to Europe and 
gotten a Eurailpass (30 days one time, 15 days another time), the pass 
cost less than the flight.  It costs extra in travel time, of course.

-- 
/===============================================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]                        |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com                      |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.                     |
|===============================================================|
|If you're going to walk on thin ice, you might as well *dance*!|
\===============================================================/

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:56:24 -0500

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> OTOH, perhaps people could live from lunch to dinner without cookies???

Or perhaps they could buy snacks in a local store and bring them into 
the meeting? That way everybody gets their preferred food, too.

It'd be a little less social than everybody standing around breaking 
cookie together, though.

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:07:26 -0500

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> The BIG number in these discussions is the cost of the access line to 
> the hotel - the discussions on price of this single item for San 
> Francisco apparently ranged all the way from 10 KUSD to 80 KUSD, 
> depending (among other things) on the shortest period of time the 
> local-access company was willing to sell this service for.

It might be possible to find people to *partially* sponsor the terminal 
room, by letting us set up a fixed-wireless link to their nearest 
facility and route through their line.  Less cash outlay for them, plus 
it might let us sidestep the extra charges hotels usually (?) levy when 
you bring in a phone line.

The problem would be getting a sponsor who's got that much spare 
bandwidth in line-of-sight from the hotel; it'd probably mean the only 
choices would usually be telecom providers.  And any provider that close 
to the hotel would be on the short list of people from whom to buy 
access, so sponsoring us would be equivalent to giving away the line.

---

From: [email-masked] (Claus Färber)
Date: 17 Mar 2003 00:00:00 +0000

> vacation accomodations.  Does the same hold for convention costs?

What about holiday resorts at the beginning and the end of the holiday  
season?

Claus
-- 
http://www.faerber.muc.de/

---

From: "David J. Aronson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:45:50 -0500

> What about holiday resorts at the beginning and the end of the holiday  

Or for that matter, entirely outside the holiday season?  Sure it might 
be too hot to go outside in, say, Cancun in August... but how many 
attendees really do go outside much?  (That's not just a rhetorical 
question; I've never been to an IETF, but I've been to plenty of 
conventions where practically NOBODY leaves the hotel for several days, 
and some where nobody STAYS there for any meals.)  There are even some 
places that might be BETTER outside "the season" -- at a ski resort, you 
wouldn't have to deal with the snow in summer.

-- 
David J. Aronson, Software Engineer for hire in Washington DC area.
See http://destined.to/program/ for online resume, references, etc.

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 10:45:10 -0500

> I'm more worried about the differential impact raising fees would
> have - it would mean very little for the "professional
> standardizers" from the vendors, but would have a negative effect
> on the self-funded, the academics and other groups that help us
> preserve a multifaceted perspective on what the Internet is and
> should be.

We already subsidize student fees (a Good Thing, I think).  Why not
make this a little more general...  

So, we raise the fees to cover our expenses, but continue to offer
the possibility of a break by applying for a reduced rate from some
"fee grant fund".  (And, there would be several well-known
categories of folk who would be helped: academics, students,
self-funded, folks from non-profits, whatever) This notion works for
student travel grants for some academic conferences.

The notion would be that we acknowledge that we need to raise more
money to cover costs -- but, that we do not want to preclude the
*very* valuable input of certain classes of participants in doing
so.

(And, this would be after a through scrubbing of the books to figure
out if we can live without terminals in the terminal room, or
cookies in the afternoon, or whatever.)

allman

--
Mark Allman -- NASA GRC/BBN -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:03:44 -0500

Mark Allman wrote:

>"fee grant fund".
Processing those applications would mean lots more work for the 
Secretariat.  And then there'd be the time spent on people complaining 
because they were turned down.

>(And, there would be several well-known
>self-funded, folks from non-profits, whatever)
>
"Self-funded" is problematic, though: how do you tell the difference 
between someone who really is paying his own way and someone who's going 
to expense it? And what about a consultant with his own small business; 
if he owns the business outright, and the business pays the way, is that 
self-funded or not?

I think other organizations make this kind of distinction work by giving 
more rights to people who pay more; that would be the opposite of what 
we want to do here.

-- 
/===================================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]            |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com          |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.         |
|===================================================|
|Don't anthropomorphize computers. We don't like it.|
\===================================================/

---

From: Rick Wesson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 14:01:20 -0800 (PST)

Vint,

Let me restate what I said at the open mike on Wednesday.

  I will reserve 8% or $1 USD, whichever is greater, per unit sold by my
  company for one year. At the end of that year I'll donate that money to
  the ISOC ear marked for the IETF.

Its almost the same deal IMS/ISC offered had they gotten the .org bid.

Be the change you wish to see.

-rick

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:11:09 -0500

John-

> Secretariat.  And then there'd be the time spent on people
> complaining because they were turned down.
> 
> "Self-funded" is problematic, though: how do you tell the
> difference between someone who really is paying his own way and
> someone who's going to expense it? And what about a consultant
> with his own small business; if he owns the business outright, and
> the business pays the way, is that self-funded or not?

Maybe a bit -- but, if you're self funded then you have no
affiliation on your badge.

It would be a bit of extra work, I agree.  How much, I have no
idea...

But, let's face it ... we're going to raise the meeting fee to get
our finances in order.  And, I was echoing Harald's point that this
could be a Big Deal to some folk.  A student I have worked with in
the past funded his way to SF last week and I know was very grateful
for the break in the meeting fee.  

I, for one, do not want to eliminate these sorts of people from
attending the meetings because I think they add a different and
useful perspective.  So, I would be in favor of having some amount
of wiggle room for folk who ask for it.  I will not ask for it (in
my current situation) and would be happy (for my funder) to
subsidize the registration fee for these folk (as I am currently
thrilled to do for students who attend IETF).

> I think other organizations make this kind of distinction work by
> giving more rights to people who pay more; that would be the
> opposite of what we want to do here.

I was specifically thinking of SIGCOMM's student travel grant
program -- in which the above is not the case.

allman

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 18:31:51 +0200 (EET)

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, John Stracke wrote:
> So I could pass for self-funded by not telling putting down a company 
> name on my registration?

Yes.
 
> But "student" is a well-defined class, with a moderately good means to 
> check.  "Self-funded" is neither.

Former might still apply, to some extent.  Of course "self-funded" price 
should probably be higher than "student" price, for obvious reasons.

Certainly, I'd have qualified for "student" myself, but have always made 
my company pay the full price: the IETF needs the money more than my 
company, I've gathered.

If the difference would be like 100-200 dollars, or whatnot, would people 
bother?  Without company in the nametag, it would be for all to see, too.

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:05:29 -0500

-- 
/============================================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]                     |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com                   |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.                  |
|============================================================|
|"God does not play games with His loyal servants." "Whoo-ee,|
|where have you *been*?" --_Good Omens_                      |
\============================================================/