Re: Charging remote participants

On 08/16/2013 11:36 AM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:
> On Aug 16, 2013, at 10:56 AM, Keith Moore 
> <moore(_at_)network-heretics(_dot_)com> wrote:
>
> > As someone who just spent $3.5K out of pocket to show up in Berlin, I have a 
> > hard time being sympathetic to someone who won't participate because he has to 
> > spend $100 out of pocket.
> This isn't about "fairness" or equal-pain-for-all.  It's about getting work 
> done and producing good output.  Whether someone remote has to pay $0 or $1000 won't 
> change your $3.5k out-of-pocket expense.  If you don't feel the $3.5k was worth it for 
> you to go physically, don't go.
I'm all about having IETF get work done and produce good output. May I 
suggest that we start by trying to reduce IETF's longstanding bias in 
favor of large companies with large travel budgets that pay 
disproportionate attention to narrow and/or short-term interests, and 
against academics and others who take a wider and/or longer view?   The 
Internet has suffered tremendously due to a lack of a long-term view in 
IETF.
To that end, I'd like to see IETF do what it can to reduce meeting costs 
for those who attend face-to-face, rather than increase those costs even 
more in order to subsidize remote participation.
I have reached the difficult (i.e. expensive) conclusion that the only 
way to participate effectively in IETF (except perhaps in a narrow focus 
area) is to regularly attend face-to-face meetings. There are several 
reasons for this, just a few of which (off the top of my head) are:
(1)  It's really hard to understand where people are coming from 
unless/until you've met them in person.  I had been participating in 
IETF for about a year before I showed up at my first meeting, and I 
still remember how
(2) It's much easier to get a sense of how a group of people react to a 
proposal in person, than over email.
(3) For several reasons, people seem to react to ideas more favorably 
when discussed face-to-face.
(4) It's easier to get along well with people whom you see face-to-face 
on at least an occasional basis, so people whom you've met face-to-face 
are more likely to appreciate constructive suggestions and to interpret 
technical criticism as helpful input rather than personal attacks.
(5) Among the many things that hallway conversations are good for are 
quickly settling misunderstandings and resolving disputes.
I realize that a better remote participation experience might help with 
some or all of these, but I think we're decades away from being able to 
realize that quality of experience via remote participation, at least 
without developing new technology and spending a lot more money on 
equipment.   If someone wants to fund development of that technology and 
purchase of that equipment separately from the normal IETF revenue 
stream, more power to them.   But I do suspect that at some point it 
will cost money to maintain that technology and equipment, and again, I 
suspect it shouldn't primarily come from people who are paying to be 
there in person.
Or if we're really about trying to make IETF as open as possible, then 
we should be willing to publicly declare that people can participate in 
face-to-face meetings without paying the registration fee.  [*]  But I 
don't think that IETF's current funding model can support that.   So 
maybe IAOC should give serious thought to changing the model, but 
offhand I don't know what a better model would be.   Should IETF become 
a membership organization, and let some of the administrative costs be 
borne by membership fees, so that meeting costs can more accurately 
reflect the cost of hosting meetings?   How would the organization 
provide benefits to paying members without excluding participation from 
others?   I don't expect that there are any obviously right answers to 
questions like those - everything involves compromise - but it might be 
that there are far better answers to those questions than those that 
have been assumed for the past 20 years or so.
[*] I do realize that some people have, on occasion, shown up as 
"tourists" for the benefit of hallway and bar conversations, and avoided 
paying the meeting fee.