Dear John;
On Aug 19, 2009, at 4:29 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Wednesday, August 19, 2009 14:12 -0400 Marshall Eubanks
<tme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
Just my opinion, but I think we need to allow for unrestricted
changes of the date of the daily pass, up until the date it is
actually used. Any advanced selection of a day should be for
planning purposes only (such as catering). If you pick up a
pass for Tuesday on Sunday, even as late as Tuesday AM you
should be able to change it to Wednesday if you need to.
Likewise, if you picked Monday and you don't show up until
Friday, your pass should still be good.
...
Along those lines, I strongly think that any day pass payments
should be fully applicable to a
full registration, if people decide they want to stay for the
whole meeting. We want to encourage that.
Marshall, I generally agree, but your suggestions raise other
issues that need sorting out. I would have hoped that they
would have been sorted out before the original announcement...
perhaps they have been and the announcement is just incomplete.
First, this is an experiment. Suggestions are certainly welcomed.
For example, we have a rather steep late registration fee and a
nasty policy if one cancels less than a week before the meeting.
I presume there are good reasons for both (other than inflicting
pain on registrants) or we wouldn't be doing it, but I don't
think either the reasoning nor the amount have been explained to
the community since the registration process became automated.
I do note that the early registration cutoff is now only a bit
over a week before the meeting starts, which is clearly an
improvement.
With the automating of the system, it might be reasonable to change or
even remove the cancelation policy (as is
done already for people with visa issues) but I think that this needs
a little thought and
should be considered separately.
However, suppose a "day pass" costs only $200. I presume, but
Alexa's note didn't say, that number is independent of whether I
register for one a few weeks in advance or at the meeting.
The current planning is that the day pass fee will be fixed, with no
early bird benefit and no late fees.
If I
won't know if I can attend the meeting, what are the tradeoffs
between my buying a day pass and then upgrading on site if
needed and registering and paying early and risking incurring
the late cancellation penalty?
I am not quite sure I understand why you think there is a difference
here. If I get you, either way, you would wind up paying the full walk
up fee, just once in a lump sum and the other way in two stages. It's
not like you have to reserve early to be sure we don't run out of
tickets - we can always print more !
Either way, the revenue to the IETF would be the same, so I don't see
a risk (to the IETF) here. Of course, if the Secretariat is
overwhelmed with additional work, that would have to be reconsidered.
On the other hand, if the same
late registration fee is to be imposed on "day passes", they
become a lot less useful and we are back to encouraging people
who want to attend only one or two WG sessions to just sneak in.
I assume that the IAOC has signed off on the day pass plan and
that all of these sorts of issues have been thought out.
In large part, this is a response to the tough economic times we find
ourselves in. There have
been complaints about the overall cost of attending the meetings, and
some particular circumstances pertaining to
Japan, so an experiment seemed in order. I hope that we find it
increases the total attendance and also income; we shall see.
As this is an experiment, comments and suggestions are especially
welcomed.
Ole's recent comments are germane here and I fully agree with them.
All of the above is just my opinion. I am specifically not speaking
for the IAOC or other members.
Regards
Marshall
Care
to share the details and reasoning? I note without comment that
I can find no evidence of a discussion on this subject in any
recent posted IAOC minutes.
john
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