+1 to Harald's point.
+1 from me also and esp. to:
"The IETF needs to be the very opposite of timid going forward. Reserves will
help that."
What a great statement! Thank you for saying that, Harald.
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.
I don't agree about the conference fee for most people but I do think that more
(and other) people need to be subsidized. How exactly we decide who gets
subsidized is a different thread. I think the conference fee is actually
pretty cheap. It is travel that is much more expensive.
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.
I have some other suggestions to make somewhat in line with Philip's suggestion
for revenue generation. I do very much agree with revenue generation. I
don't agree with doing training classes. As someone who actually does
training classes for money, it is more work than you might imagine.
So, here are some ideas for revenue generation.
1. What if IETF did small videos (maybe 10 minutes) on various topics?
These would be videos that only IETF COULD make. Say for example:
- What was IETF 1 like?
- How did IPv6 actually come about? (Or DHCP, DNS, etc)
- Why is NAT a "four letter word" at the IETF?
- What does "strong cryptography" really imply?
- Where is the Internet going? (How did it get to where it is, etc)
You get the idea.
These videos could be just conversations with a few people involved. No need
to get caught up hugely with production quality. A few steps above the normal
cat video is probably fine. Then you charge $5 or so for each video. I
would pay to watch these. I am sure plenty of others would also.
So, OK, maybe 1,000 people watch each one. Who knows, maybe more. I can see
that a number of teachers might want to use these in their classes. So, IETF
endowment gets $5,000 here, $10,000 there. Why not? I don't think it would
take that much effort. Over time, if it gets popular, there could be quite a
bit of money earned.
BTW, I would be willing to help corral people to participate in such
conversations, if ISOC needs IETF volunteers to work on such a project. I
assume it would be ISOC doing this.
2. Maybe companies who send 10's or 100's of people to the IETF could
subsidize one person for each 10 they send. Even my little startup (when we
had some extra money!) paid the conference fee for someone else at the Dallas
IETF. The person was local, so travel was not a problem.
I know ISOC gets donations from companies but maybe this could become an
unstated moral obligation of sorts.
3. Often people leave charitable organizations money in their wills. So,
why not to the IETF endowment?
Thank you all who have donated to the endowment. Maybe someone could send
out the link again to where to donate. Was there one?
Nalini
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