| Hi Mary,
Please see Jay’s mail which began this thread and included the following text:
If the fee presents a barrier to your participation you can apply for a fee waiver for IETF 108 by filling out this https://www.ietf.org/how/meetings/108/108-registration-fee-waiver/ before 23:59 UTC on 2020-06-18. Fee waivers are limited to 100 and if the number of requests exceeds the number we can offer, waiver recipients will be chosen at random using a process similar to the one specified in RFC 3797. Fee waivers will be issued around 2020-06-23 in the form of vouchers to use in the registration system and those who do not receive a waiver will be informed on that date. Thanks to Google and Futurewei for sponsoring these fee waivers.
Alissa
Is there a deadline for registering and applying for a waiver of the fee? I didn't see one. I would assume it's early bird deadline, but again I don't see that stated anywhere.
Regards, Mary. (Sorry, responding to myself.)
The other thing I should have said is that we don’t have any good guess on the size of the participant population that is price-sensitive at the $230 reg fee level, since most in-person participants have to pay 2x or 4x the registration fee to travel to a meeting, and remote participation at in-person meetings is free. Therefore, aside from the survey data, we don’t have a great way to estimate the demand for fee waivers, and it may be the case that the pool of 100 will be enough to meet the demand, in which case we won’t need any selection process.
Alissa
For IETF 108 we didn’t have a lot of time to sort this out. Our thinking was that any approach aside from random selection needs substantial community consultation even if it will only apply to one meeting because it implies subjective judgment about whose attendance ought to be subsidized. We did not have time to do that before registration details needed to be shared with the community.
There have been many ideas thrown out around this — needs-based assessment, priority for retirees or those who are out of work or those from developing economies or students or new attendees or WG chairs or operators or some other category. Some people like some of these ideas, others don’t.. If the fee waiver program is something to be repeated at a future meeting we’ll need to have a community conversation about all the ideas people come up with.
Alissa
And, one other thought on the waiver would be that rather than taking the random pool approach would be to have a registration option, for those that don't have a sponsor or for whom the fee is a financial challenge, and allow folks to make a donation when they register. Some of us have said in the past that we'd be willing to pay something and in the end, you might get folks donating more than you'd get from one day passes, for example.
Regards, Mary.
> 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.
[MB] So, the waiver is a good thing. But, there is a limit on the number and names are chosen randomly as I understand it. I would think a better approach would be to ensure that those that are in countries where this is a month's wage not be in a random pool. There are a number of folks that are self-sponsored so the fee is totally out of pocket and not covered by their company, in which case it's the tedious aspect of filling out an expense report versus funds that could be otherwise used by the individual for other business expenses. I'm in that latter pool and will not apply for a waiver so that folks that come from countries like that are more likely to get the waiver. So, I really think it should be truly need based (or at least half the pool in that category). It is worded somewhat that way on the registration form, but the email announcement wasn't as specific. I know you have some demographics from surveys but I'm guessing probably not enough to really know how many remote attendees might end up in that pool. [/MB]
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)
-- Ietf108planning mailing list Ietf108planning@xxxxxxxxhttps://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf108planning
-- Ietf108planning mailing list Ietf108planning@xxxxxxxxhttps://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf108planning
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