I don't think that thoes Canada and US participants are paying for the attendance, but their organisations, therefore, are we reducing the cost of other organisations, or we are interested to bring more participants. IMHO, IF the reason of making the events in America because participation is mostly declining when events in Europe or other, THEN the action of IETF to make more events in America will be reasonable. We need facts not just expectations. The important question is how many users of the Internet now are spreed in the world, and should the IETF consider making attending easier to users than to old participants? Is n't three meeting events in America per two years enough as you mentioned 51% participants are from America, as IETF meet 4 times a year? Now 66% of meetings is done in America, which I think it should be less or equal to 50%. AB On 11/9/12, Yoav Nir <ynir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Nov 9, 2012, at 9:31 AM, Abdussalam Baryun wrote: > >>>> There is a direct contribution of US $2.2 million by the Internet >>>> Society next year. Is the plan to rely on Internet Society subsidies >>>> or to fix the deficit? One argument made was that the fees have not >>>> been increased over the last years. I'll point out that there hasn't >>>> been significant increase in paid attendance over the years. Either >>>> the IETF is only relevant to the usual folks or else the meetings are >>>> not made relevant enough for (new) people to attend. >> >> I am newcomer and not able to attend because most of meeting in >> America instead of Europe. > > Adding US and Canada attendees (I counted last week, might have changed > slightly) you get to about 51% of the attendees. > When meetings are held in other parts of the world (like Taipei, Paris or > Prague) Americans still make up over 40% of the attendees. > Much as I prefer 4-hour flights to 12-hour flights, it minimizes the general > pain to hold meetings in America. > There's also the issue that finding good venues is considerably easier in > America than in either Europe or Asia > >>> I am repeatedly struck by how many new people *do* attend. >>> >> >> I don't know how long do they remain, for me I am feeling disapointed. > > Some come back, and some don't. Could you expand on what you're disappointed > about? > >>> According to Russ's slides [1] 195/1098 are newcomers. And just to >>> labour >>> the >>> point, a newcomer is not a returnee after 10 years, but someone who has >>> never >>> attended before. >> >> hope treated equal with all participants, > > The new attendee, same as the old attendee gets to have everyone shut up > when they go to the mike. If you have a draft and a relevant presentation, > you can usually get time at a WG meeting regardless of how many meetings > you've attended. Knowing that you should do these things is the learning > curve that every one of us must go through. > >>> This number (around 10%) seems consistent over all meetings. So naively, >>> we >>> should be growing our attendance by around 300 per year. >>> >> >> agree > > But as both you and Adrian Farrel said, a lot of these don't come back. > Maybe a more relevant statistic for the churn would be to count the > third-time attendees. > > Millions of people go sailing for the first time each year. A huge > proportion of those get sea sick or bored, and never do it again. That's not > a useful metric to assess the size of the sailing community. > >>> That we are not reflects our inability to retain, not our inability to >>> attract >>> (assuming that we are not completely refreshing the IETF attendance >>> every >>> three >>> or four years). Should not be rocket science to follow up with some >>> newcomers to >>> find out why they only attend once and never come back. >>> >> >> For me I still did n't attend but understand that many old >> participants are biased and there seems no equal opportunity, people >> don't always follow the IETF mission and procedure, they just follow >> their ways as long there was no complain. >> >> I call all newcomers to open a new WG and start complaining because we >> have to discuss why we were disapointed of the IETF and IESG, and even >> the Internet Society. >> >> Please note that I will focus my volunteering work in complaining and >> fixing the discourage I found so far. > > OK, but if something or someone discouraged you, speak up. Existing members > can't help you if you don't tell us what's wrong. > > Yoav > > >