On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Uhhm, who are that “gold bureaucracy" who stay at 5-star hotels at the IETF’s expense?
All participants, including area directors pay their own way (or their sponsor pays their way). But 3 star hotels don’t typically have good enough conference centers.
[MB] True. But, perhaps considering other sorts of conference facilities with nearby hotels could be an option. In particular, if we really do improve remote participation to the point that we reduce the number of onsite participants, the size requirement for the conference facilities goes down. [/MB]
Also, supporting remote participation in a better way than it works today costs more money than is being expended today. That money has to come from somewhere.
[MB] In one sense yes. But, given some of the work in RAI, this cost should be going down. The ability to participate in a meeting remotely with a very rich multimedia experience is something that we certainly ought to be able to do with the protocols we're developing. I have worked extensively in an environment where these technologies are essential to business (as I imagine many of us having) and you no longer need an expensive dedicated video unit to have a high quality experience. We are developing these technologies in IETF in the RTCWEB and CLUE WG. If we can't leverage those protocols for our own meetings, then we've not done something right in the IETF. And, actually this is already happening with Meetecho. Also, considering that much of what we need is built by vendors who have significant participation in the IETF, I would think that the net financial impact could be optimized.
I think the biggest problem that high quality remote participation will introduce is that companies will become even more reluctant to send people to the face to face meetings. I do still see value in people attending face to face IETF meetings with some regularity, I strongly believe that IETF moving to a model that doesn't require so many people to travel to get the work done is a good thing and ought to be a longterm objective. I'm not a financial expert so I can't posit that this will make sense from a business model, but IETF is a non-profit and in that respect doing the right thing for the community should be the overarching objective. [/MB]
Yoav
> On Feb 14, 2015, at 5:46 PM, info@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Savings are welcomed instead fees.
>
> What if you put all that gold bureaucracy in 3 stars hotels and not in 5?
> Fly economy, have offices in cheap places and countries..
>
> Being smart saves money and it's fun.. A lot more that looking at the users's pocket.. But off course it's not as easy
>
> Carlos
> Internet Society Ecuador
> www.isoc.org.ec
> Síguenos @isocec
>
>> El 13/2/2015, a las 19:35, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> escribió:
>>
>> Carlos,
>>
>> That isn't the point. Somebody has to pay for the things paid for
>> by the existing meeting fees. Suppose that we improve the remote
>> participation technology such that, say, 500 people who would normally
>> attend a meeting stay at home. That's a direct reduction of income by
>> say $350000, three times a year. So the IETF is out of pocket by $1M/year.
>> The actual reduction in meeting costs would be very slight. The money has
>> to come from somewhere.
>>
>> Does this bother me? Yes, a lot. But it's reality.
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
>>> On 14/02/2015 13:13, Carlos Vera Quintana wrote:
>>> Oh I see. Free is not serious enough..
>>>
>>> Carlos Vera Quintana
>>> 0988141143
>>> Sígueme @cveraq
>>>
>>>>>> El 13/2/2015, a las 19:03, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> escribió:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 14/02/2015 12:52, info@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>>>> I guess I miss something. Some "smart" initiative to get
>> money from participants?
>>>>
>>>> No. A discussion how to make remote participation a serious alternative
>>>> to travelling to meetings, without breaking the budget.
>>>>
>>>> Brian
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Internet Society Ecuador
>>>>> www.isoc.org.ec
>>>>> Síguenos @isocec
>>>>>
>>>>>>> El 13/2/2015, a las 17:47, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> escribió:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 14/02/2015 10:50, Brian Trammell wrote:
>>>>>>> hi Mary, all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 13 Feb 2015, at 22:30, Mary Barnes <mary.h.barnes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Ted Lemon <Ted.Lemon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Feb 12, 2015, at 3:27 PM, Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> In the past I've been nervous about giving remote participation too much
>>>>>>>>> power in part because I'm worried about how that impacts meeting fees
>>>>>>>>> and in part because I value cross-area involvement.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It's possible that we could collect meeting fees from remote attendees, offering a hardship exemption for those who can't afford it. That would depend on remote attendance working better than it does now, I think, but it would be unfortunate if the main impediment to making remote attendance work well were that we didn't want to lose meeting revenue.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [MB] I totally agree on this latter point. I'm very conflicted about charging for remote participation, but perhaps something nominal. It's also quite possible that if we improve the quality, we will get more remote participants.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A requirement (at least at first) to allocate n% of remote participation fees directly to expenses related to the improvement of remote participation would make this a lot more feasible.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But it begins to smell like a poll tax. Some people participate remotely
>>>>>> because they simply can't justify the travel expenditure; if it costs (say)
>>>>>> $200 to participate remotely, that would be enough to keep some people out.
>>>>>> How the Secretariat could possibly validate hardship cases remotely
>>>>>> is beyond me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, does particpate mean "watch and listen" or "watch, listen and speak"?
>>>>>> I find it hard to imagine paying $200 just to watch and listen.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (Of course, I made up "$200" but it does need to be an amount of money
>>>>>> that's worth collecting, and in that case it will be a significant issue
>>>>>> for, say, a student in a developing country.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Brian C
>>
>>
>