+1 to Harald's point.
I have been worrying that the conference fee model is a trap for quite a
while. It is very similar to the 'innovators dilemma' problem.
There is one other way round that could work and that is to adopt the Linux
foundation model of giving paid courses to non experts. Which would in
effect mean using the IETF brand to go into the training business.
But that isn't an entirely risk free proposition. The course material would
have to be designed not to compete with other courses that companies
participating in IETF provide, so no product training. And the other
problem is that the reason training has insane margins is that it hits a
wall and goes to $0 when a recession hits.
What is clear is that the current approach isn't sustainable. We are making
many modes of working obsolete including the way the IETF does business.
Ooops.
On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 4:07 PM, Harald Alvestrand
<harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no>
wrote:
One of the things I've learned in dealing with budgets is that the size
of your reserves significantly influences the size of the risk you can
take - with any steering group with financial responsibility, they will
not take risks where the potential downside is larger than the reserves
of the organization.
This means that an organziation without reserves is, by necessity, a
timid organization.
Some of that can be mitigated by depending on other organizations'
reserves (like IETF depends on ISOC), but it's not necessarily a good
thing for either organizations to be in such a relationshiop.
The IETF needs to be the very opposite of timid going forward.
Reserves will help that.
I see the IETF Endowment as a means of making sure the IETF has the
reserves to take the risks it needs to take without asking our leaders
to abandon financial responsibility.
I'm proud to have my name on the list of sponsors.
Harald