Subject: Re: ietf meeting fees

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 10:14:16 +0200

On 5/28/2019 6:49 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> > On 5/28/19 4:35 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> >
> >> PS - like it or not, meeting fees provide a substantial amount of the
> >> money for the general IETF budget specifically including standards
> >> publication.
>

Yes substantial, but that money should not always to be to general IETF. To
manage budget we should focus and be more effective and efficient. We have
many WGs/Areas, but they have very huge different
room-sizes/attendees/agendas/progress or different
importance/priority/directions. So why IETF should only charge
meeting-volunteers per day or week? It is better to make it per WG meeting,
so if the expected number of attendees of a WG meeting is less than 10,
then no need for spending meeting time and money, they should discuss
remotely on the list very easily and conclude.

>
> > It's a given that there has to be some way to pay the bills.  But if
> > we have so much inertia around this way of raising revenue that it
> > makes IETF less and less relevant over time, maybe IETF should address
> > this problem sooner rather than later.   No organization can hope to
> > remain viable if it refuses to even consider adapting to changing
> > conditions.
>
> IMO - it's not inertia as much as reality.  In the current "we don't
> have members" and "we don't charge for standards" model, we have three
> funding sources: meeting fees, sponsor contributions (both meeting and
> sustaining), and checks from the parents ... I mean ISOC
> contributions.
>

We don't charge for standards that is excellent, but we need to focus
meeting time to important Agendas that has high interest or values, also we
can limit time of input per participant per WG, as in face to face
discussions inputs should be less than 5 minutes managed by WG chair.
However, I think we can get interested rich volunteers to pay IETF costs
for the benefit of the Internet and/or IETF, it depends on IETF marketing
values and management.

>   We could become more like other standards
> organizations by charging for either or both of membership (student,
> researcher, personal, corporate etc) and copies of the standards, but I
> grok that either of those changes could change the fundamentals of the
> IETF in a way that could make us *less* viable or relevant.
>

Yes your right, but IMO because the current fundamentals we may raise money,

>   We could
> add another funding path - endowments - but that requires someone(s)
> with a particular skillset and a really big rolodex and usually some
> quid pro quo's in the toolbox to get money put into the endowment - and
> I don't see the IETF naming buildings for contributors anytime soon.
>
> I'm sure there are other vaguely related ways we could make money, but
> they all will require a startup investment of time and money, and an
> ongoing investment in interest from the IETF community.  I'm having
> problems figuring what those might be.
>

IMHO, usually in ietf community it is not one community, but
different engineers from different experiences and different cultures and
different countries, also there are number of different IETF WGs or
author-teams, those should work-together/be-directed to raise/pay money for
their participation/interest in IETF/WG. Therefore, IMHO the IETF General
Area Should create a WG (can name it raising money WG) that has one/some
participant(s) per IETF WG. This way we focus this WG on where the
community is interested more and where the money should priorities in size
and direction, so it when contacting volunteers it can get money either per
IETF WG or in general for IETF. For example, if I am asked to volunteer in
IETF I will not volunteer in general, but I will volunteer in IETF WG that
I participate, or will volunteer for the best of poor communities that need
good quality Internet Service, so may be will decide put some money to
HomeNet WG, or Security WG, or etc.

>
> So in the current model we can a) charge higher meeting fees, b) get
> more sponsorship, and c) ask ISOC for a bigger check.  None of these
> wells are bottomless.  We could reduce expenditures - but what would you
> cut?  Meeting related munchies and internet? Remote access bandwidth?
> Staff costs? Tools support? Standards production?
>

 The solution is by having two strategies/policies, one strategy of getting
more rich volunteers that can help the Internet Future and that can believe
in IETF/ISOC fundamentals. This needs to be with options where the money is
to be spent if paid. Then the meeting fees can be discounted either per
WG meeting or per week-meeting or per etc.

  The second strategy is using discounts of the meeting fees, so we
continue with fixed fees as current policy but we add discounts for
marketing IETF WG/Area/meeting (the current policy does only discounts for
students but what about different communities). We may have a change in
number of days of meeting so it depends on the interest, why do we always
fix it to a weak? It depends on knowing the interest/time in meeting. I
never heard or seen on WG list a forecast of meeting size, usually IETF WG
chair must find the efficient way to save IETF money/costs, so that will
help in the discount strategy. Both strategies need discussions and new
ideas.

>
> >
> >> If you are arguing for actions that reduce or tend to reduce or have
> >> the potential to limit the intake of funds from that model, I suggest
> >> you also come up with a more than handwaving proposal for how to
> >> replace those funds or explain which functions supported by the IETF
> >> we're going to eliminate to cover such shortfall.
>

IETF managers or IETF general Area should solve this problem, we are not
handwaving but discussing.

> >
> > Perhaps we should also require more than handwaving reasons for
> > staying the same.  :-)
>

Staying the same is very bad because life is changing in many
directions and people/interests are changing, in future many may not be
interested in such organisation/company/Area/WG/team, that is the fear of
any organisation/WG. It was good that we had changes in IETF areas but had
no changes to costs per WG meetings. In WGs the number of participants are
different so why we pay the same per day, that is wrong in business. If you
changes the price of meeting per WG meeting then IMHO your meeting
number/size will increase per room and money will increase per day. One WG
in IETF General Area must look into this and discuss it at least.

>
> See above - it's really just a question of who we want to be and what
> we're willing to pay to become that.  If you can tell me who we want to
> be, I can help you with figuring out what it's going to cost in time,
> reputation, angst, etc.
>

We want to have more effective/productive participants in IETF, or more
Internet Community Interest in IETF, or  more work done with higher quality
and less errors. Any organisation wants that, and we already have many are
volunteering time so we need to organise that and create a WG in general
area to discuss and produce a road-map for money raising.

>
>
> >
> > (There's a familiar set of arguments for staying the same:  If you
> > don't provide a detailed proposal, it's labeled handwaving. If you do
> > provide a detailed proposal, it's easy to pick it apart as naive
> > because it hasn't yet benefited from broad exposure and feedback.   Or
> > is there no longer any place for brainstorming in IETF?)
>

We in IETF work by discussions in WGs so my proposal is clear above.

>
> Most of the money proposals have been "why can't we do X - it won't cost
> much" without "I think company C might be willing to fund X if we do Y
> as well" or "if we charge $10 more on the meeting fee, we can recoup the
> cost and there's enough interest to do that with minimal whining about
> expensive meeting fees" or similar thoughts.  I'm looking for at least
> some understanding that nothing is free and that (probably) someone
> isn't just going to write a check to cover costs.
>

work needs to be done by a WG to make a clear policy for volunteering, for
now there is no information if some one wants to pay one WG how it will be
spent. The only best way to pay volunteering to  IETF-WG/some-IETF-WG is by
paying day/week fees and face-to-face participate, but it is not optional
for me in Africa interested in one IETF-WG not able to face-to-face
participate but want to pay volunteering amount to that WG because of my
interest in its values and in my remote-participation. IMHO, that needs to
be discussed and make a good practice to make it free for volunteers to pay
per IETF-WG or meeting room or even meeting-time.

>
> In the instant case what I mean by enough detail is to do: 1) propose a
> functional change in enough detail that you can do (2), 2) analyze
> approximately how much it will cost us (additional expenditure and/or
> lost income), 3) figure out if it can be covered using current
> resources, 4) whether the change has priority over other calls on the
> funding, and 5) if 3 or 4 is "no" is there another source of funding
> available?  6) if (5) is "n", exit or revise (1) and repeat.
>
>
> >
> > I do suspect that there's likely a market for technical conferences
> > that serve as a more effective way for IT and operations people to
> > keep abreast of standards development and also to provide feed-forward
> > about the problems that they are having and which need to be
> > addressed.   And that such conferences might also attract more "doers"
> > to IETF.
>
> Even better - sell the rights to a technical conference company to show
> up and do their own dog and pony show - with... wait for it ...
> conference fees.  Why reinvent this or try and do it ourselves?  Of
> course there will be unintended consequences - we'll have to find venues
> that can handle larger crowds for example which will lock us out of some
> of our current locales and definitely limit us in seeking out new
> locations.   Then there's the "we want to make money" vs "we think this
> country you want to go to has some [human rights | LGBT | political |
> visa | pollution | etc] problems and the IETF standards folk don't want
> to go" dichotomy between a for-profit technical conference and .. us.
>

I am not in favour of conferences by IETF, because we are doing standards
and we work in groups some times for long time.

IMHO, IETF can get more volunteers and get more interest because of its
current fundamentals of ISOC, but ietf-management need to more encourage
volunteering participants/organisations (i.e. volunteer time, effort,
money), and need to market IETF in the direction of community interest and
best practice of Internet. Management need new strategies, I suggested two
above which can be discussed by one WG in general area to make the money
raising policy.

AB