This isn't an unreasonable assessment but I think it's somewhat misguided in suggesting the challenge is only for women when people have young kids (also some kids have male parents). So, I would suggest that paragraph is more accurately stated as:
This can be a major challenge, particularly for *individuals* with young children. For many younger workers, this period of life tends to fall around the time many are *raising* children. This makes getting away to conferences challenging for *people* with young children said Faust, who also has two young children.
I started traveling regularly when my youngest was 3. The big challenge is when you have an infant that's breastfeeding because it's not practical to leave them for a full week. But, women have managed that one by bringing grandparents, nannies, etc. And, IETF is now offering childcare which is great. My family often traveled to the same locations before or after IETF and we had nice vacations in nice places. So, for me and my family, we had great benefits from the travel. And, personally, I got a week's vacation from parenting. It's the at home job that's harder. I was at a 10 day conference/tradeshow one time and the guys at dinner were complaining because they had called home and their wives were complaining because they were gone so long. The guys didn't appreciate my response that the job the moms were doing at home was a lot harder than what we were doing on a daily basis. It was a long tough show - on the floor for 10-12 hours daily. But, it was still easier than the work and demands at home.
So, please don't perpetuate this myth that the burden of raising children is primarily a woman's issue and that our challenges in the workplace are because of children.
Regards,
Mary.
On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 8:56 PM Michael Douglass <mikeadouglass@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I suspect focusing on details such as attendance fees etc is missing the point.
This article provides an interesting viewpoint and appears well researched.
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-virtual-conferences-environment-inclusive.html
For some - the cost of attendance (fees, lodging, travel, time away from family) is worth what they get out of it. For many any or all of those prevents attendance. It's not the attendance fees that are exclusionary - it's the whole deal.
Even if the entire cost was covered there are still cases as mentioned in that paper:
In addition to cost, in-person events also require tremendous investments in time. These events require travel, often last multiple days, and take up all of attendees' time while they are there.
This can be a major challenge, particularly for women. For many younger workers, this period of life tends to fall around the time many are having children. This makes getting away to conferences challenging for women, said Faust, who also has two young children.So I think there's no doubt about the exclusionary nature of in-person meetings. The question is what if anything is to be done?I'm not trying to offer solutions here - nor even point any fingers. I suspect there's no one answer and there probably has to be compromise.
On 5/13/22 07:41, Jay Daley wrote:
[Switching to admin-discuss]Hi Anupam
On 13 May 2022, at 04:25, Anupam Agrawal <anupamagrawal.in@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At one point in time, meeting fees possibly was the only way to cover the costs of IETF and USD 600 was justified.
How far back are you referring to? ISOC has been contributing financially every year to the IETF since 1995 [1] so the last year I am aware of this being possibly correct was 1994.
Even more was justified even though at the risk of being exclusionary. Survival is important than optics.
But now, As on Dec-20, IETF LLC had 19M USD (19,301,645 $) in stock investments yielding 2M USD in Investment income. Any stock market invest has a risk attached to it. Interestingly, the auditor points out that IETF bank deposits of 477K USD is beyond the insurable limit and thus has a risk.
I don’t understand what relevance our current investment risk profile has to this issue?
Possibly an opportunity to correct the exclusionary trend.Do you have any data on this exclusionary trend?
It’s not clear to me what possibility you see here, but I think you are suggesting a reduction in the meeting fee rather than say travel grants. When this has been discussed previously, multiple community members have noted that the fee is a relatively small part of the total cost of meeting participation in comparison to travel and accommodation. It is therefore questionable as to what benefit would be achieved by always running our meetings at a loss if the effect on participation was marginal.
--Anupam
On 10-May-2022, at 9:10 AM, George Michaelson <ggm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I used a US inflation calculator. in 2007 IETF registration cost $600.
2022 would be $830 if it simply kept pace with the CPI adjustment to
the dollar.
So the "$700 is reasonable" has a basis in 15 years practie. When did
we become so exclusionary? at least 15 years ago.
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/JUByvYCkSb2WDSt9h4lDkaoe9gc/
-G
On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 1:17 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/9/22 23:07, John Levine wrote:
Could you give us a specific dollar limit for a reasonable price?
This is going to vary a lot from one person to another, but offhand I'd
say that $1000/meeting for hotel and entry fee combined (not including
travel) is a good goal for meetings in North America.
The early bird fee is $700. $300 for a week's hotel?
Why is $700 reasonable either? How have we let IETF become so exclusionary? Is that really consistent with IETF's mission?
Even if we tried to go the cheap route and find a college campus
that would host us for free, when I look for places near our
local campus they're a lot more than $75/night.
I don't know where you're from. But I know many places where decent, safe, clean rooms can be had for around $75/night. Granted, they're less likely to be in large cities, but sometimes they're within reasonable commuting distance of city centers.
Keith
