| And frankly I would be ready to forego the dinners or to tone them down for more participation. In Bangkok in particular our dinner was multi-times the average monthly salary of the people who served us. I had a presentation to the research group of Kanchana Kanchanasut the woman who brought the Internet to Thailand and Southeast Asia and was an organizer of the IETF meeting. I would have loved to have her students in the meeting.
mjm
Marie-Jose Montpetit, Ph.D. +1-781-526-2661 @SocialTVMIT
On 2019-01-07 06:51, Lars Eggert wrote: Hi,
thank you for the explanation!
On 2019-1-4, at 22:31, Portia Wenze-Danley <pwdanley@xxxxxxxx <mailto:pwdanley@xxxxxxxx>> wrote:
During the budgeting process, and with input from the IRTF Chair, we determined that the IRTF discretionary budget line was used for the IRTF dinners only at meetings and it made sense to include them in the meeting expenses section to provide the true cost of meetings.
I feel pretty strongly that converting the IRTF Chair's discretionary budget to purely an F&B line item is something that should be reverted.
I agree. In fact, suggesting that the IRTF Chair's discretionary spending is limited to "many fine lunches and dinners" seems to be 180 degrees off course to me; while working meals are a valid expenditure, the purpose of such a budget is the working, not the meals. (I can see that there might be some interest in reporting total meeting expenses, but there's also some interest in reporting total IRTF expenses. I guess that's why multi-field budget codes were invented.) Brian When I was serving in that role, I attempted to use the budget for comp'ed registrations for researchers (beyond what the Day Pass program provided at the time), to cover unexpected costs related to the ANRW, etc. In each case that I remember, Ray ended up covering those expenses via ISOC, which muddled the distinction between ISOC and the IRTF and was part of the reason why I think the IASA 2.0 effort was long overdue.
Also, we are looking for a new IRTF Chair at the moment, and several candidates have university affiliations. While many seem to regularly be able to fund their IETF meeting attendance, the effectiveness of the role is increased if additional travel is possible, not all of which might be coverable in the same way as IETF meeting attendance (e.g., invitations to consult and influence EU, NSF, DOE and other funding organization agendas, or the IAB retreat.) I believe that it should be possible for the IRTF Chair to fund their attendance to such meetings out of the discretionary budget, if no alternative funding is available and the person decides that it is necessary.
Converting the line item to an F&B expense eliminates such freedoms and reduces the effectiveness of the IRTF Chair.
Lars
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