I've been told, though obviously I don't know, that the costs are proportional.
I assume it's not literally a "if we get one additional person, it costs an
additional $500". But I assume SM wasn't proposing to get just one or a few
more "open source developer" attendees. If we're talking about just a few
people it's not worth arguing about... or doing anything about. It would only
be useful if we got a lot of such attendees.
-hadriel
On Aug 18, 2013, at 10:01 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
wrote:
--On Sunday, 18 August, 2013 08:33 -0400 Hadriel Kaplan
<hadriel(_dot_)kaplan(_at_)oracle(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
And it does cost the IETF lots of money to host the physical
meetings, and that cost is directly proportional to the number
of physical attendees. More attendees = more cost.
I had promised myself I was finished with this thread, but I
can't let this one pass.
(1) If IETF pays separately for the number of meeting rooms, the
cost is proportionate to the number of parallel sessions, not
the number of attendees.
(2) If IETF gets the meeting rooms (small and/or large) for
"free", the costs are borne by the room rates of those who stay
in the hotel and are not proportionate to much of anything
(other than favoring meetings that will draw the negotiated
minimum number of attendees who stay in that hotel).
(3) Equipment costs are also proportional to the number of
meetings we run in parallel. Since IASA owns some of the
relevant equipment and has to ship it to meetings, there are
some amortization issues with those costs and shipping costs are
dependent on distance and handling charges from wherever things
are stored between meetings (I assume somewhere around Fremont,
California, USA). If that location was correct and we wanted to
minimize those charges, we would hold all meetings in the San
Francisco area or at least in the western part of the USA. In
any event the costs are in no way proportionate to the number of
attendees.
(4) The costs of the Secretariat and RFC Editor contracts and
other associated contracts and staff are relatively fixed. A
smaller organization, with fewer working groups and less output,
might permit reducing the size of those contracts somewhat, but
that has only the most indirect and low-sensitively relationship
to the number of attendees, nothing near "proportional".
(5) If we have to pay people in addition to Secretariat staff
to, e.g., sit at registration desks, that bears some monotonic
relationship to the number of attendees. But the step
increments in that participate function are quite large, nothing
like "directly proportional".
(6) The cost of cookies and other refreshments may indeed be
proportional to the number of attendees but, in most facilities,
that proportionality will come in large step functions. In
addition, in some places, costs will rise with the number of
"unusual" dietary requirements. The number of those
requirements might increase with the number of attendees, but
nowhere near proportionately. "Unusual" is entirely in the
perception of the supplier/facility but, from a purely economic
and cost of meetings standpoint, the IETF might be better off if
people with those needs stayed home or kept their requirements
to themselves.
So, meeting "cost directly proportional to the number of
physical attendees"? Nope.
best,
john
p.s. You should be a little cautious about a "charge the big
companies more" policy. I've seen people who make the financial
decisions as to who comes say things like "we pay more by virtue
of sending more people, if they expect us to spend more per
person, we will make a point by cutting back on those we send
(or requiring much stronger justifications for each one who
wants to go)". I've also seen reactions that amount to "We are
already making a big voluntary donation that is much higher than
the aggregate of the registration fees we are paying, one that
small organizations don't make. If they want to charge us more
because we are big, we will reduce or eliminate the size of that
donation." Specific company examples on request (but not
on-list), but be careful what you wish for.