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Re: Charging remote participants

2013-08-16 14:31:42

I may be misunderstanding you, but I'm proposing we charge "large corporations 
with large travel budgets" slightly *more* than others.[1]  I'm not suggesting 
an overhaul of the system.  I'm not proposing they get more attention, or more 
weight, or any such thing.

Of course they *do* have more impact in subtle ways, because they can afford to 
send people and hire IETF "insiders" and pay salaries for people to be ADs and 
WG chairs and so on.  That's a separate issue, which we've long fretted about 
but can't truly address, nor am I proposing to fix it nor make it worse.

I'm just trying to fix the problem at hand. (well... it would only be a problem 
if people think we need better remote participation tools)

-hadriel
[1] "Large corporations" don't actually equate to large travel budgets; big 
corps have travel freezes all the time.  But if you can get expense approval 
for $695 reg-fee, you can likely get approval for $795; and the reg-fee is only 
a portion of the overall travel expense.  If you *can't* get approval for the 
$100 difference, that's ok - just select the "Self-Paying Rate".  There's no 
stigma associated with doing that. (at least that's the goal anyway)


On Aug 16, 2013, at 3:10 PM, Keith Moore 
<moore(_at_)network-heretics(_dot_)com> wrote:

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.