On 14/02/2015 10:50, Brian Trammell wrote:
hi Mary, all,
On 13 Feb 2015, at 22:30, Mary Barnes
<mary(_dot_)h(_dot_)barnes(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Ted Lemon
<Ted(_dot_)Lemon(_at_)nominum(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Feb 12, 2015, at 3:27 PM, Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf(_at_)mit(_dot_)edu>
wrote:
In the past I've been nervous about giving remote participation too much
power in part because I'm worried about how that impacts meeting fees
and in part because I value cross-area involvement.
It's possible that we could collect meeting fees from remote attendees,
offering a hardship exemption for those who can't afford it. That would
depend on remote attendance working better than it does now, I think, but it
would be unfortunate if the main impediment to making remote attendance work
well were that we didn't want to lose meeting revenue.
[MB] I totally agree on this latter point. I'm very conflicted about
charging for remote participation, but perhaps something nominal. It's also
quite possible that if we improve the quality, we will get more remote
participants.
A requirement (at least at first) to allocate n% of remote participation fees
directly to expenses related to the improvement of remote participation would
make this a lot more feasible.
But it begins to smell like a poll tax. Some people participate remotely
because they simply can't justify the travel expenditure; if it costs (say)
$200 to participate remotely, that would be enough to keep some people out.
How the Secretariat could possibly validate hardship cases remotely
is beyond me.
Also, does particpate mean "watch and listen" or "watch, listen and speak"?
I find it hard to imagine paying $200 just to watch and listen.
(Of course, I made up "$200" but it does need to be an amount of money
that's worth collecting, and in that case it will be a significant issue
for, say, a student in a developing country.)
Brian C