On Jul 11, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Douglas, > ... >>> Those traveling thousands of miles already confront many uncertainties. Those that elect to participate remotely should be afforded greater certainty of being able to participate when problems occur at local venues or with transportation. Increasing participation without the expense of the brick and mortar and travel should offer long term benefits and increased fairness. > > How much would you be willing to pay for remote participation > (assuming it was of high quality)? > > $600 for the week (cookies and taxes not included)? Dear Brian, A $600 price would represent a significant savings for most participants traveling large distances and using hotels. If remote participants were given a first class status, such that even when physical venues lost Internet access, meetings continued. The number of overall participants should increase and have the effect of demanding much lower meeting fees. I suspect this will require abandoning the use of unmoderated inbound access to audio channels. This has not worked very well. Echo cancelation, noise, and disruption is likely too problematic as well as resource intensive. Whatever is used must be rock solid. The IETF already supports a hallway channel. When the goal is to sell products or services, face-to-face becomes far more important. There are many other organizations better at playing that role. I have also experienced these face-to-face meetings many times being used to subvert ongoing efforts. Strictly moderated and fully recorded meetings hold a greater promise of providing fairness. Imagine XMPP as a control channel for moderators in conjunction with meeting channels that automatically recognize requests to speak. The meeting agenda should already indicate who is to speak, with their presentations available before the beginning of the meetings. Nothing could be done without everything being recorded and available remotely. Regards, Douglas Otis