Ross, It's an experiment, as Alexa stated. Experience from RIPE tend to suggest that the OVERALL attendance goes up as a result of the availability of day passes. We don't yet know if this applies to the IETF. Yes, we want to encourage people to stay for the whole week for all the reasons you cite, but the economic- and time-related reality tells us that this isn't always possible. As John Klensin pointed out, this leaves us with three options: * Make day-passes available * Let people "sneak in" * Accept that some people will not attend who would attend if we gave them the one-day option. It is quite possible that a one-day pass option would cause people to pay for one day and stay for the whole week, particularly since we're not known for having armed guards and badge checkers, but I don't get the sense that there are many people in this community who would want to cheat in that way. The cookies etc do have a cost associated with them after all, and I think this is generally understood. But the experiment will hopefully tell us this as well. So, we're aiming to find out if this is indeed a good idea. There are some "local reasons" to try this in Japan where bosses typically don't allow their staff to stay away from the office for more than a day for events like this (unless they are "fully onboard" with what the IETF is or does). You might consider such one-day visitors as "IETF tourists", but it might very well help us gain new attendees in the long run. Again, the experiment could tell us that too. Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 Mobile: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: ole@xxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Ross Finlayson wrote: > I'm not convinced that this new "One Day Guest Pass" is even a good idea at > all. Do we no longer want to encourage participants to be familiar with > activities beyond their primary working group? Do we not want to encourage > participants to attend the plenaries (to help familiarize them with the IETF > process), in addition to their primary working group meeting? > > If the Secretariat feels that attendance is suffering because of the price of > the full meeting registration fee, then perhaps a better solution is to drop > the price of that fee. > > Ross. > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf