Adrian Farrel writes:
Well, the fee charged would appear to be directly correlated to the
number of people attending. That is, because the IETF must cover its
costs not just for the meetings but also for the rest of the year, a
good proportion of the cost is independent of the meetings and so
must increase per capita as the number of attendees decreases.
But wait! There is also a direct correlation between the number of
people attending and the cost. That is, the cost is a direct
deterrent.
But the two costs aren't the same...
The deterrent is the sum of the IETF charge, the hotel charge, the cost
of food, liquid refreshment and so on, travel, getting a visa, and
finally the cost of being away from one's desk.
Economists out there will recognise this problem, and will understand
where the spiral is headed.
The choice and cost of location can compound the problem, and it seems
to me that one of the main objectives of setting meeting venues (both
geography and hotel) must be to increase attendance and so to
increase revenue.
Decreasing the IETF meeting attendees' other costs ought to help:
a) make it easier to attend by partially freezing the agenda early. If
the secretariat could say "from now on only times can change, not days"
early, that would help. (The WG meetings I care about are in a two-day
block almost every time. Just coincidence or good work on part of the
secretariat?)
b) avoid meeting locations with obnoxious travel or visa issues, or very
high costs otherwise.
c) try to keep travel short for as many attendees as possible.
How sad that there's a conflict between b) and c).
Arnt
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