On Aug 16, 2013, at 1:53 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > (1) As Dave points out, this activity has never been free. The > question is only about "who pays". If any participants have to > pay > (or convince their companies to pay) and others, as a matter of > categories, do not, that ultimately weakens the process even if, > most of the time, those who pay don't expect or get favored > treatment. Having some participants get a "free ride" that > really comes at the expense of other participants (and > potentially competing organizations) is just not a healthy idea. Baloney. People physically present still have an advantage over those remote, no matter how much technology we throw at this. That's why corporations are willing to pay their employees to travel to these meetings. And it's why people are willing to pay out-of-pocket for it too, ultimately. It's why people want a day-pass type thing for only attending one meeting, instead of sitting at home attending remote. Being there is important, and corporations and people know it. An audio input model (ie, conference call model) still provides plenty of advantage to physical attendees, while also providing remote participants a chance to have their say in a more emphatic and real-time format. We're not talking about building a telepresence system for all remote participants, or using robots as avatars. > > (2) Trying to figure out exactly what remote participation > (equipment, staffing, etc.) will cost the IETF and then trying > to assess those costs to the remote participants would be > madness for multiple reasons. [...snip...] Yet you're proposing charging remote participants to bear the costs. I'm confused. > (3) Trying to establish a more or less elaborate system of > categories of participants with category-specific fees or to > scale the current system of subsidies and waivers to accommodate > the full range of potential in-person and remote participants is > almost equally insane. While we might make such arrangements > work and keeping categories and status off badges helps, it gets > us entangled with requiring that the Secretariat and/or IAD > and/or some IAOC or other "leadership" members be privy to > information that is at least private and that might be formally > confidential. We don't want to go there if we can help it. I'm not talking about posting this info on web, nor a "full range of potential". We already have multiple reg-fee categories; I'm talking about adding *one* more. I don't know who in the "leadership" can see a list of what rates people paid - if we need to constrain that, that's a solvable problem. It's not the sky falling. Regardless, the same argument can be made for charging remote participants to "donate" 0-100% or whatever. -hadriel