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

John Levine isocmember at johnlevine.com
Wed Mar 8 14:05:51 PST 2017


>I don't know about the US, but in Europe, using low cost airlines and
>online apartment exchange, which is what many people are using these
>days, plus only staying 3 days, this would amount to a few hundred Euros
>- less than the fee itself.

Having done a lot of IETFs, I'm pretty sure my US prices are typical
even for a cheapskate like me.

It occurs to me that there is a more basic reason why I'm sceptical of
this proposal: sending one-time tourists to IETF meetings is likely to
be counterproductive.  There's one rather rudimentary intro session on
Sunday, and the rest of the week consists of nothing but highly
specialized working group sessions that are boring and
incomprehensible unless you are familiar with the technical topic and
have read the drafts they're working on.  Even for us regulars,
sessions in areas far from our technical competence are hard to
follow.  

There is one evening plenary which sometimes has one survey talk, but
is otherwise dominated by administrative stuff.  Working groups
typically last for several years, so going to a single session at a
single meeting is sort of like watching the 50th through 57th minutes
of a two hour movie.

If anyone were assuming that IETF meetings are sort of like ICANN
meetings, they're utterly different.  There's nothing like ICANN's
multi-day intro sessions, and little or no non-technical policy stuff.

This is why I was hoping that people would think harder about
approaches that are more likely to connect interested people with
IETF work in which they can be productive over months or years.

The IETF is meeting later this month in Chicago, with good remote
participation options.  Every session has a live audio feed and two
way Jabber (XMPP) chat with a scribe to read out comments that want
general responses.  Most sessions also have two-way Meetecho video
which is starting to work pretty well.

I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to listen or watch
some of the Chicago sessions so you can get a better idea of how
totally tech weenie they are, and see why casual one time visitors
aren't likely to get much out of it.

R's,
John



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