--On 15. mars 2003 10:12 -0800 Spencer Dawkins <spencer_dawkins@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi, Harald,
It's good to have this presentation in advance of the meeting.
A couple of questions follow:
- Without asking for details - was Yokohama unusually expensive for reasons that are likely to recur? I'm curious whether this was just because the meeting was in Japan, for instance, or whether we usually expect higher costs outside of North America...
We usually expect higher costs outside North America - London was even more expensive than Yokohama.
With the lack of sponsoring of terminal rooms, the difference is much less, but still significant. The reason for the varying prediction of per-attendee cost for 2004-2005 is that we are considering 2 non-US meetings in 2004 - but if they are definitely more expensive than US meetings even when we get sponsors outside the US and no sponsors inside the US, we may have to reevaluate.
- I'm not the brightest candle in the menorah, but - I would have guessed that we would see the number of attendees decreasing, due to (1) general industry business conditions, (2)
the telecom nuclear winter, strongly affecting SubIP attendance,
and (3) our reluctance to take on new APPS work, so it goes elsewhere. Your presentation projected a slight increase - does a decrease make things better, or worse?
Definitely worse.
- Does going to two, or four, meetings per year help or hurt?
My guess is that going to two would hurt income, unless we raise fees by 50% - the same people would come, I think.
Going to four would be damaging to my sanity, at least - don't know about others'.... we whould expect slightly lower per-meeting attendance, but many would indeed feel obligated to go to all four, so would pay more, I think. Whether they would get more things done is an open question.
- Of course we can raise meeting fees, but we're decrying the influx of professional standards weenies now. Is the expectation that people really just come to IETF when they want to standardize something, and then go away?
I'm more worried about the differential impact raising fees would have - it would mean very little for the "professional standardizers" from the vendors, but would have a negative effect on the self-funded, the academics and other groups that help us preserve a multifaceted perspective on what the Internet is and should be.
And I'm sure these won't be the last questions that people ask...
Assuredly not!