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Re: Proposed Experiment: More Meeting Time on Friday for IETF 73

2008-07-17 18:49:30
Dear Russ;

After our discussions on this in San Jose, I spent a little time thinking of options for extra meeting time. Here are some more considered thoughts, focusing mostly on costs and meeting logistics, and intended to engender further discussion. I will be ruthless in doing back of the envelope cost estimates in the absence of actual ones. A detailed financial statement for IETF-70 (Vancouver) is available at

http://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/Vancouver_Financial_Statement_Preliminary.pdf

and I use that for price estimates.

It seems to me that the IETF is bursting at the seams. Certainly both the number of interim meetings seems to be increasing (are statistics on the number and attendance of interim meetings available anywhere?), so it is reasonable to try and find means that will provide more meeting slots.

Possible solutions include

1 - Add meetings to Friday (the proposed experiment). We could add 3, but the experiment is for 2. If we kept the rest of the meeting the same, then the 2 session option would add 16 sessions per meeting, or 48 per year. If we add 3 sessions, there would be 24 per meeting, or 72 per year. There would definitely be extra expenses for these options :

- Currently, the IETF is torn down starting at 1130 AM on Friday. This obviously would not be possible with this option, and there would almost certainly be an extra Verilan (Connectivity and NOC) and maybe a AMS (Secretariat) expense, which presumably Ray could estimate or get quotes for. For Vancouver, Verilan was $ 115,000, so an extra half day would be about $ 25,000.

- There would be an extra hotel charge, particularly if the Hotel is unable to use our space for Friday evening parties. This might show up (especially in the US) and an increased food and beverage cost even if we don't provide refreshments, and Ray should see if that is the case for Minneapolis. Likewise, there might be $ 5000 in Audio Visual costs.

- Since there are existing Hotel contracts for a number of future meetings, these would have to be renegotiated, and it is likely that some of these hotels will now be booked for Friday afternoon (or will have Friday evening parties that will need the setup time), so this option may not be possible for all of our future meetings.

- If the Friday meeting goes late enough that people have to get a Friday night hotel room, then both participants and the IETF will have a fairly considerable extra expense.

If we just assume that charges are linear with meeting time, this option would entail something between $ 35,000 and $ 48,000 (based on Vancouver), or $ 105,000 to $ 140,000 / year or about $ 40 added to the meeting fee.

I would urge Ray to prepare a proper budget with actual quotes for this option.

2 - Add evening sessions to the existing meetings, presumably after a dinner break. This would add 8 x 4 = 36 slots per meeting, or 108 per year. It would probably not cost the IETF much (it is not clear to me if Verilan would charge more for the longer hours; the total charge for this in Vancouver was $ 115,000; the extra cost would ~ $ 30,000 ($90,000 / year) per meeting assuming a linear charge for the extra time. I would expect the actual extra charge to be less; this could be determined by Ray while he was doing the estimates for # 1. I know that people did not like the meetings after dinner, so this would probably be resisted, but it would add more slots and probably at a lower price. I don't know if there would be extra hotel charges, but I suspect not.

3 - Go from 8 simultaneous sessions to 9. This would add 16 sessions per meeting, or 48 per year with the Dublin scheduling. This option would of course make collisions worse, and might be limited by AD availability. It would also require more hotel rooms, and some upcoming hotels might not be able to support it. Basically all of the costs (hotel, Verilan, etc.) would increase. Again assuming a linear model for costs, the extra cost would be about $ 48,000 per meeting, or $ 144,000 per year, or an extra $ 50 or so to the registration fee.

4 - Add a fourth meeting. This would provide ~ 117 slots per year. This would actually considerably increase the IETF's revenue _if the attendance stays more or less the same_. As you know, the IETF meeting income is used to pay for the other IETF activities. IETF-70 provided a profit of $769,534, so this solution would probably increase the IETF's yearly net income by $ 500,000 or more. I have a feeling that many people would resist this, and of course it would probably not be possible to schedule a fourth meeting before 2010, if then.

5 - Having some sort of structured interim meeting or meetings during the year. With 8 Areas, there could be 3 or 4 mini IETF's during the year. If these area-interims lasted 2.5 days each, with no simultaneous sessions, each might add 8 slots, or say 24 to 32 per year. I would assume that these meetings would be run to at least recoup costs if not provide additional income for the IETF. These meetings, being small, would be fairly easy to book, and probably could start more or less immediately.

Note that, while no one might feel that they had to attend every area- interim, many might feel that had to attend more than one, so in some ways this would cause more travel for attendees than option 4, for many fewer additional slots. This option has, however, the great advantage that WG could get a lot more focused time to work on issues.

So, here is a table on the options

Option   Slots / year    Rough Cost / Year     Biggest Drawback IMHO

1         48-72          $ 100,000 to 140,000  Staying Friday night
2         108            $  90,000             Staying late at night
3 48 $ 140,000 AD availability, collisions 4 117 highly profitable Extra travel, would have to wait till at least 2010 5 24-32 neutral or profit Extra travel, inefficient for attendees

One danger for some of these options is that there would probably be more pressure to structure the meetings so that not everyone has to come to every day of the meeting, which could have unpredictable results.

So, in conclusion, I would

- support the experiment
- request better cost estimates for the experiment
- suggest that in the actual operations the experiment would need to be expanded to give most WG even one extra meeting per year - suggest that combinations of options 1,2,3 and 5 will need to be explored unless we are willing to move to option 4.

I hope you find this reasoning useful.

Regards
Marshall


On Jul 17, 2008, at 5:33 PM, IETF Chair wrote:

The IESG is considering an experiment for IETF 73 in Minneapolis, and
we would like community comments before we proceed.  Face-to-face
meeting time is very precious, especially with about 120 IETF WGs
competing for meeting slots.  Several WGs are not able to get as much
meeting time as they need to progress their work.  As an experiment,
we are considering adding two Friday afternoon one-hour meeting slots.
The proposed Friday schedule would be:

  0900-1130 Morning Session I
  1130-1300 Break
  1300-1400 Afternoon Session I
  1415-1515 Afternoon Session II

Please share your thoughts about this proposed experiment.  The
proposed experiment will be discussed on the IETF Didcussion mail
list (ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org).


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