On Aug 16, 2013, at 1:53 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
wrote:
(1) As Dave points out, this activity has never been free. The
question is only about "who pays". If any participants have to
pay
(or convince their companies to pay) and others, as a matter of
categories, do not, that ultimately weakens the process even if,
most of the time, those who pay don't expect or get favored
treatment. Having some participants get a "free ride" that
really comes at the expense of other participants (and
potentially competing organizations) is just not a healthy idea.
Baloney. People physically present still have an advantage over those remote,
no matter how much technology we throw at this. That's why corporations are
willing to pay their employees to travel to these meetings. And it's why
people are willing to pay out-of-pocket for it too, ultimately. It's why
people want a day-pass type thing for only attending one meeting, instead of
sitting at home attending remote.
Being there is important, and corporations and people know it.
An audio input model (ie, conference call model) still provides plenty of
advantage to physical attendees, while also providing remote participants a
chance to have their say in a more emphatic and real-time format. We're not
talking about building a telepresence system for all remote participants, or
using robots as avatars.
(2) Trying to figure out exactly what remote participation
(equipment, staffing, etc.) will cost the IETF and then trying
to assess those costs to the remote participants would be
madness for multiple reasons. [...snip...]
Yet you're proposing charging remote participants to bear the costs. I'm
confused.
(3) Trying to establish a more or less elaborate system of
categories of participants with category-specific fees or to
scale the current system of subsidies and waivers to accommodate
the full range of potential in-person and remote participants is
almost equally insane. While we might make such arrangements
work and keeping categories and status off badges helps, it gets
us entangled with requiring that the Secretariat and/or IAD
and/or some IAOC or other "leadership" members be privy to
information that is at least private and that might be formally
confidential. We don't want to go there if we can help it.
I'm not talking about posting this info on web, nor a "full range of
potential". We already have multiple reg-fee categories; I'm talking about
adding *one* more. I don't know who in the "leadership" can see a list of what
rates people paid - if we need to constrain that, that's a solvable problem.
It's not the sky falling.
Regardless, the same argument can be made for charging remote participants to
"donate" 0-100% or whatever.
-hadriel