--On Monday, March 18, 2002 12:25 -0800 Bonney Kooper <bk9001(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com>
wrote:
--- Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no>
wrote:
Bonney -
1) the meeting fee is USD 425. You pay an USD 150
penalty for forcing us to
staff the registration desk with people authorized
to handle credit card
transactions and so forth; I don't have numbers on
whether the penalty is
enough to pay for the overhead.
For a fee of $425, a late fee of $150 doesn't seem
reasonable to me at all in the percentage term. All
they do at the counter is charge to the credit card
and print the tag. No more than five minutes to
process.
And those people cost money. And so does the credit card machine. And so
do the desks they're working behind. And irrespective of
I suspect the hotels might even charge some premium for "extra heads" being
added to the catering requirements.
I can still do most this stuff on line a day
before - if you would let me do it with no or small
late fee.
But by then the badges have already been pre-printed and shipped to the
hotel I believe. So you'd still have to pay the premium for someone to
handle your badge and registration in a different way, most likely printing
the badge when you arrive.
Only argument may be that it lets you plan in advance
for sponsor hand bags - but I for one don't care if i
get those conference bags and tee shirts if the
counter runs out them. Big deal.
That's irrelevant since the sponsor bags/t-shirts (if any) are not included
in the registration cost (so far as I understood it).
The average fee paid in 2001 was USD 431 - most
people preregister.
2) Of the USD 2.7 million taken in on meeting fees
last year, USD 1.38
million shows up as direct meeting costs - the
largest single item is "food
and beverages" - breakfast and cookies.
I think that can be reduced substantially. As most
people stay in Hotels any way, and some of them
include breakfast as part of the room stay. It is
pretty much a duplication, and only beneficiaries are
near by Hotels!.
And many hotels *don't* include a free breakfast, especially not for
conference block bookings (in my experience of attending conference hotels).
Irrespective of that, I'd rather not have to get up even earlier in order
to stand in line in an overcroweded (read: full beyond capacity if this
were to happen) hotel restaurant before the 9am start. Informal nibbles
and coffee (or soda) makes it a *lot* easier to hold ad-hoc meetings before
the sessions start.
Funds can definitely be better used to fund
secretariat activities or building reserve funds for
the IETF. All we need is to offer plain english tea
and coffee during breaks,
And water, and soda of a variety of types...
and simple crackers and of
course, people are free to order any thing from coffee
shop if they are into eating sandwitches or gourmet
cakes and pastries etc. But then it is me - others may
feel the need of more sugar calories after each
sessions. I don't eat cookies so couldn't care.
And a couple of thousand of people searching for "empty" calories (or the
better sort in fruit or ice cream) in an area around the event hotel during
a half hour break ... is not going to work.
3) The rest of the meeting fee covers the cost of
keeping us with a
secretariat. We have people working full time on
running the IETF - a lot
of those people behind the desk are working for you
full time, all year.
Internet-drafts don't publish themselves.
I think it will be a good idea to have a fresh look at
how to fund IETF activities in a way that increase the
individual/ Graduate student/ University researchers
participation. I think corporations can bear more of
the cost after all they do make billions in profit
thanks to IETF standards, and can afford mega million
packages for CEOs. If there is a need to sponsor
individual sessions so be it as long as that only gets
them (sponsors) a mention, and perhaps a display board
(this sesion sponsored by....xyz.) and doesn't affect
independance of technical discussions.
Just Say No.