On 8 feb 2008, at 9:29, Bob Hinden wrote: > The budget information can be found > at: http://iaoc.ietf.org/. In round numbers total expenses are about > $4M, revenue is about $2.5M, and the ISOC contributes about $1.5M. > If it wasn't for the ISOC we would have a big problem. So that means every meeting has to bring in $800k, which is a bit more than the current number of attendees x the current registration fee. The number of attendees is slowly but steadily going down. I don't think this translates in substantial net cost savings for the meetings (many costs are fixed; smaller attendee population will draw fewer hosts; hosts will pay in some relationship to meeting costs) so this means either the fees will have to go up even further, which won't help attendance, or the non-meeting costs the IETF incurs will have to go down. (I'm assuming non meeting fee fund raising is already maxed out.) I suggest we start thinking about this now rather than at the point where the IETF can't pay its bills anymore. Where do we draw the line on meeting fee increases? Is there any way to save costs? What was the cost structure 10 or 15 years ago when meeting attendance was much smaller? _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf