To be clear here, I do not think the IETF conference fee to be at all unreasonable. I have paid it out of my own pocket on occasion.
My concern here is that arguments of the form 'we can't change the conference model because IETF needs the money' will lead to disaster. The Internet is changing a lot of business models at the moment and there is a lot more destruction going on than creation. It is quite likely that at some points over the next 10-20 years the conferences will lose money. We might even be at that point already since the profitability is largely dependent on getting sponsors and the sponsors are paying to support the IETF not the meetings.
The world looks very different today than 30 years ago and not just because there is no Soviet Union. Most of the changes of the last 20 years are actually the consequences of container freight rather than the Internet. The dotcom businesses were all about moving atoms, not bits.
The Internet effects are only just starting to be felt. The Internet is movement of information and we have yet to see the type of major industrial restructuring in the knowledge industries. Container freight and barcodes are the reasons that all those mom and pop stationary suppliers were replaced by Staples and Office Max. We haven't yet seen all those hundreds of tier 3 universities replaced by franchises affiliated with the big name universities like MIT, Stanford and the rest. But that is going to happen.
The IETF actually has a perfectly logical business model. ISOC collects a rent off .org which provides several million a year in income which has to be spent somehow and the IETF is an activity of ISOC.
Now that is not an argument for 'problem solved' but it is an argument that the IETF is not forced to keep the conference funding model untouched for fear of breaking the business model.
On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Abdussalam Baryun <abdussalambaryun@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Paul,
I agree with you if someone attends without presenting work, but I
think the fees is reasonable if we compare with other conferences fees
per day (don't forget your free to presentations of your docs and get
feedback from many sessions, this may change in future if higher
load). If the IETF considers your request, I think it will increase
participation maybe about 5% globaly and 20% locally, so mostly
encourages regional participations. I will also add that if the IETF
can consider newcomers to get discount for one day, because newcomers
may want to get a feeling of the meeting.
AB
On 7/10/13, Paul Aitken <paitken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Can you help me understand why the One Day Pass rate ($350) is so high
> compared with the full week rate ($650 / $800)?
>
> Registering for two days could cost more than a week!
>
> Surely the day rate should be a little more than (week/5), eg about $175
> - $200, to encourage those who only want/need to contribute on
> particular days?
>
> Thanks,
> P.
>
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