> This drives home, in quantitative terms, a message that others
have been trying to deliver: If we have people from developing
countries who have been participating remotely for some time,
the effect of these registration fees (at least without the
waiver lottery) is to exclude their participation and reduce the
IETF's diversity -- and likely the quality of the standards
process and the international credibility of our work -- from
both demographic and perspective standpoints.
I believe this is one of the reasons that the waiver program was created and encourage anyone in this situation or the others articulated in the past few days to apply for a waiver.
FWIW, there is an IETF LLC board meeting later this week (feel free to attend). I have asked for an update at that time during the public part on the number of IETF-108 registrations as well as the number of waiver applications.
Jason (with my LLC hat on, but not an official board statement)
