[Chapter-delegates] Proposal for IETF Registration fee support for Chapters

[John Levine]

In article <38f34147-ccb6-316d-28d5-c6be8d09cca7 at gih.com> you write:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>in today's Chapter Advisory Council (ChAC) call, I presented a proposal
>relating to an IETF Registration fee support for Chapters.

I'm all in favor of getting interested people to IETF meetings but
this appears to be redundant with the existing IETF Fellow program.

I've gone to the fellows' dinners at recent IETFs and met some very
interesting people.  One youngish man, for example, worked for the
government of his Caribbean microstate, and was its de-facto telecom
regulator by virtue of being the only one who knew anything about
communication technology.

Having been to a lot of IETF meetings, I can also say that unless you
happen to live within commuting distance of the venue, the travel,
lodging, and meal expenses are way more than the registration fee.
Just waiving the fee would be unlikely to get significantly more
people to go.

More details here:
https://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/education-and-leadership-programmes/ietf-and-ois-programmes/internet-society-fellowship

As an alternative, you might consider ways to arrange remote
participation sites.  The IETF has pretty good remote access with
audio streaming and interactive jabber (XMPP) service, and many
sessions also have two way Meetecho video.  If there are several
people in a city they could connect from one place so they could share
the sometimes baffling experience of working group sessions.  It might
also be useful to have pre-meeting webinars to explain how the IETF
works, what to expect, and how make best use of the experience.

R's,
John