On 07/11/2013 11:17 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Thursday, July 11, 2013 10:34 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<hallam(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
Using paid conferences as a profit center is a risky long term
prospect at best. Refusing to adapt the format of the
conferences to protect the profit center worse.
Or adapting the format to attract more paying attendees, such a
what we have sometimes called "tourists", with no real
expectation that they will do work, because it increases the
income.
Still better than building a funding structure based on sale of
publications, however :-(
The best idea that I've come up with would be for IETF to offer
tutorials (not at IETF meetings, but at other times and places) to teach
people about current and emerging Internet technology, and use the
proceeds from those to pay for its standards-making and -maintenance
efforts. Part of the function of the tutorials could be to serve as a
means of getting user feedback for just how well IETF standards were or
were not meeting their needs.
Of course, there are hazards associated with any approach. One could
imagine, for instance, that the IETF tutorial division could end up
being much larger than the IETF standards division, and that IETF
standards making would suffer from the desire to optimize performance of
the cash cow. Or that there would be conflicts between what the
teachers taught as best practices, and the practices recommended by IETF
standards.
At any rate, it certainly would be a significant change from the current
way we operate.
Keith