On 8/16/2013 6:10 AM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:
Since the topic keeps getting raised... I think that charging remote
participants any fee is a really terrible idea. One of the really
great things about the IETF is its open and free (as in beer)
participation policy. The real work is supposed to be done on
mailing lists, and there's no charge or restriction on who can send
emails. That policy is actually quite rare for standards bodies, and
makes our output better not worse.
The IETF has never been free. Actually, it's quite expensive.
We've maintained the myth that it's free because we've had long-term
funding support from the outside, originally dubbed "daddy pays". First
it was ARPA, then CNRI and now ISOC (and wealthy corporations).
Having a wealthy benefactor is definitely pleasant, but it is also
fragile. It does not take much for funding or political problems to
develop.
Currently, primary IETF funding comes from 3 sources:
1. ISOC
2. Face-to-face meeting attendees
3. Face-to-face sponsors
Each of these represents a sizable pool, although the sponsors require
significant, on-going effort to recruit (the formal term is cost of sales).
ISOC is the main 'daddy' in the equation because it graciously and
reliably gives the IETF whatever money is asked for. There's a large
annual budget that gets approved, but ISOC readily adds to that when
asked. And one certainly cannot fault ISOC for this, of course.
Nevermind that supporting the IETF is one of ISOC's main reasons for
existence; it's still darn nice of them, and darn lucky that they have
such a reliable and large base of their own funding.
Sponsors and the bulk of meeting attendee fees constitute another daddy,
in this case an aggregate corporate daddy. Wealthy organizations.
But the resulting financial model for the IETF isn't very business-like.
We regularly make expenditure choices on a well-intentioned whim. We
do it because, contrary to the real world, we don't suffer meaningful
financial downsides for poor choices. Daddy will keep paying.
Robust organizations make sure they have diverse revenue sources. In
the case of the IETF, we need to balance between easy, inclusive access
by the widest possible range of possible participants, versus diverse
funding to ensure both financial and political robustness.
But charging remote
participants for better tools/experience isn't the answer. At least
for me, whenever I'm discussing a draft mechanism I actually *want*
input from remote participants. I don't want it to be only from
folks who can afford to provide input. I want it from people who
can't get approval for even a $100 expense, from people who are
between jobs, people from academia, and even from just plain ordinary
users rather than just vendors or big corps. At one time we worried
that free remote participation would lead to too many random
participants to get work done, but that hasn't become a problem
afaict. Please don't whittle it down further to only those who can
afford it.
The diversity of participation /is/ a problem and always has been.
However it also is a benefit, and always has been. So, yes, we want to
continue to make highly diverse participation easy.
But we still have bills to pay. So it's not reasonable to argue against
one source of revenue in the absence of a compensating argument in favor
of another.
As remote participation tools get better, it is likely that we will have
more remote attendees and fewer face-to-face ones. This likely means
significant reduction in attendee fees but also could challenge sponsor
fees, since the marketing benefit of sponsorship for the f2f will likely
go down.
The IETF already has a modest program for free or subsidized
participation in the face-to-face meeting. Attention to the diverse
access you cite would recommend extending it to remote participation,
should fees be imposed.
I would do anything whatsoever to avoid charging remote participants,
even if it means raising the fee for f2f attendees to subsidize
remote-participant tooling costs.
So, you want to make the f2f meetings even more exclusionary than they
already are? The meetings are already dominated by well-funded
corporate attendees. Higher fees will screen out some additional
percentage of the others who currently find a way to pay for attendance.
In that vein, I think a lot of the f2f attendees get our reg-fee paid
by our employer and another $50 or even $100 isn't going to make a
bit of difference for us
For you. For other well-funded corporate attendees. But each increment
makes a difference for anyone on a tight budget.
So yes:
- for those whom it would make a difference,
I'd create another category of f2f registration fee like 'Self-paying
Attendee' or some such. Selecting the new category would drop your
fee by the $50 or $100, but wouldn't change what gets displayed on
your badge or anything. It would be purely optional, with no guilt
attached for not paying it and no visible difference to anyone else.
Why cannot a model like this also apply to fees for remote participation?
p.s. Even from a purely practical standpoint, charging remote
participants raises a lot of issues - we debate incessantly just
about the f2f day-pass, and that's nothing compared to this. For
example: if things break during the meeting session, do we re-imburse
them? Do we pro-rate the re-imbursement based on how many of their
meetings had technical issues with audio or video?
...
It's not worth it.
OK. Let's not put effort into thinking through a robust revenue model.
Let's stay with daddy pays.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net