Subject: Re: Financial State of the IETF - to be presented Wednesday

From: Michael Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:06:55 -0800

All,

So just a couple of thoughts that might make things financially better 
for IETF and these
are tough choices:

1. Pick a place and have the meetings there 3 times a year banking that 
one could get
    volume discounts and pricing for usage of the hotel.  Other 
standards bodies have done
    this and seems to have helped them to survive.

2. Eliminate all food in the hall (breakfast and afternoon snack) -- 
this will certainly cut
    on expenses.  Maybe allow water, coffee, and tea.

When faced with tough times, tough choices need to be made.  These are 
probably not
popular suggestions, but may go a long way towards helping the situation.

Michael

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 17:07:28 +0000

>    this and seems to have helped them to survive.

i think on the contrary have 3 meetings but in north america, europe
and asia each year to maximise audience.   there are cheap places in
europe, like madrid...

tim

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 17:13:49 +0000

>    on expenses.  Maybe allow water, coffee, and tea.

clearly most people in the plenary would pay $70 more, for me the difference
in $2500 or $2570 to make the trip here is not important, the free time is.

in that light paying a few $$$ for snacks is not a problem, esp. when there
is little time to go anywhere else between sessions.

tim

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From: Markku Savela <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:31:02 +0200

ICANN is getting millions, and not giving back much. Dismantle ICANN,
redirect money to IETF. Running few root servers should not cost
millions...

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From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 12:29:21 -0500

> and asia each year to maximise audience.   there are cheap places in

It depends on the relationship between attendee numbers and hotel costs.
You want to attract more attendees until you reach a level just before a
jump to another level of required logistics.

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 12:53:26 -0500

--On Thursday, 20 March, 2003 19:31 +0200 Markku Savela
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> ICANN is getting millions, and not giving back much.
> Dismantle ICANN, redirect money to IETF. Running few root
> servers should not cost millions...

<sarcasm> The US Dept of Defense is getting billions, and
using them to kill people.  Or, if you prefer, the Iraqi
military is getting at least millions, and using them to kill
people.  Dismantle either or both and redirect the money to
IETF.  </sarcasm>

However desirable any of the three solutions above might
appeal to you, they are almost equally useless: we have no
mechanism for causing any of those changes by direction of the
IETF, and suggesting them is on a par with asking the tooth
fairy for major ongoing support.  Waste of the time of all of
us.

    john

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From: Michael Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 09:50:48 -0800

Tim,

Ah, I think you missed my point about this.  If you can gaurantee a 
hotel or a set of hotels
in a given location somekind of volume the pricing for the event goes 
 down.   It allows
for pricing based on average attendance of all three meetings.

Michael

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From: "Ole J. Jacobsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 11:18:17 -0800 (PST)

...which is why we've been meeting several times at a cetain Hilton in the
state of Minnesota.

I am sure the professional meeting planners who have been doing this job
for many, many years, are more than capable of negotiating discounts with
major hotel chains all over the world.

There are still cities in the world, for example Kuala Lumpur, that are
relatively "easy" to get to and offer very good value for money in terms
of hotel prices, food and so on. Additionally, some of us have experiences
running Internet conferences in these places.

But Foretec is more than capable of finding such locations, that's why
we hired them :-)

Ole

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

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Michael Speer wrote:

> hotel or a set of hotels in a given location somekind of volume the
> pricing for the event goes down.  It allows for pricing based on average
> attendance of all three meetings.
>
> Michael
>

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 21:25:59 +0000

ok so it's the location thing i "dislike", so maybe we can agree to
use (say) the Hilton chain in NA, Europe and Asia...