Subject: Consultation on the financial aspects of COVID-Impacted meetings

From: IETF Executive Director <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2021 15:58:42 +1200

As a follow up to our recent consultation on the principle and plan for managing COVID-impacted meetings [1], the IETF Administration LLC is seeking further feedback on the financial aspsects of COVID-impact meetings.

# Background
We are defining COVID-impacted meetings as IETF meetings held under two conditions
- Special requirements exists for travel and use of the venue, covering vaccinations or test status, social distancing and personal protective equipment.  We recognise that this will vary from venue to venue, which the plan previously consulted on addresses through a set of conditions.
- There is a significantly lower level of onsite participation than pre-COVID.  We are budgeting at around 500 people onsite +/- 20% depending on region and venue.

Holding a COVID-impacted meeting means that our requirements for a venue have changed and we either adjust an existing booking, or we book a new venue more suitable.

When we look at the impact on income of a COVID-impacted meeting, there is a strong linear scaling effect:
* Registration fees.  For a pre-COVID meeting, only onsite participants pay registration fees.
* Sponsorships.  We have yet to test out with sponsor how they perceive the value of a COVID-impacted meeting and how they would affect their comfort with returning to pre-COVID sponsorship fees. A possibly bigger concern is if the host is able to sponsor an in-person meeting because company policy forbids travel.  
* Commissions/rebates/comps from the hotel(s).  These are paid as a percentage of room night purchased by meeting participants and so scale down as the number of onsite participants scales down, though not quite linearly as there is includes the rooms we pay for, for staff, contractors and volunteers who make the meeting possible. 
* Subvention funding (i.e. a payment from the local city/region to encourage large meetings to be held there).  These take a long time to negotiate and are for a minimum number of onsite participants, and so do not scale down without renegotiation.

Conversely,  when we look at costs there is much less elasticity:
* Venue costs, breaks down into three main parts:
  * Space. Venue meeting spaces are not as flexible as some might expect - most venues cannot scale down our contracted space to 50% and provide the same number of rooms just smaller. 
  * Food and Beverages. This scales but not linearly because a proportion of the cost here is for staff, contractors, leadership and volunteers.
  * A/V.  This does not scale as we have the same number of sessions and rooms in use.
* Travel and expenses.  The LLC covers travel, accommodation and expenses for the Secretariat, LLC Staff, the RPC, some of the Tools Team, NOC contractors, some NOC volunteers, and the RSE.  Some come because they are needed for the meeting to function and some come because they need to interact with the community in order to do their jobs.   
* Meeting support is the Secretariat costs plus some additional local charges.  This is contractually set and primarily people costs and so does not scale.  It may even rise if we need to hire local resources to supplement the Secretariat in the event that the normal number cannot travel.
* Network costs.  This doesn’t scale much as we have the same number of rooms to cover and the same set of services

For planning purposes, we are working on the assumption that IETF 113, 114 and 115 (all three 2022 meetings) will be COVID-impacted.

# Proposals
In order to hold COVID-impacted IETF meetings they must be financially viable, and for that we make the following proposals around the financial aspects of meetings. Most of these have previously been set out in the conditional plan, but some are new or have more detail around them.

## Part 1 - Income

1. Registrations fees
We propose
- the registration fee for onsite participation stays as it was pre-COVID, though we retain the option to pass on any specific COVID-related costs that should not be absorbed into the fee.  
- to introduce a registration fee for remote participants at the same rates as currently charged for fully online meetings as this is necessary to ensure that we can go ahead.

2. Sponsorshop fees
We propose that our sponsorship fees revert to the pre-COVID level as we believe an onsite meeting with our enhanced remote participation provides similar value to sponsors as it did pre-COVID.

## Part 2 - Costs

3. Venues and local contracts
We propose to aim to renegotiate venues and local contracts to meet the new requirements, including smaller numbers, and if that is not possible then look at switching venues.

4. Travel and expenses
We propose to make no changes to who is funded by the LLC to attend an onsite IETF meeting, though we expect some natural attrition is likely given that not everyone wishes to risk travel.  This is because some are essential to the functioning of the meetings (e.g. Secretariat, NOC) and some are a valuable part of the meeting experience (e.g. RPC, Tools Team).

5. Additonal sessions/facilities
We propose to
- defer the childcare until a later date
- review the Codesprint and Hackathon space and expense requirements with the organisers
- review the newcomers events with the organisers
- not provide a terminal room
- continue with all other additonal sessions
(It is out of scope for the LLC to consider changing the number of WG/BoF sessions as that is a decision for the IESG)

The IETF LLC now seeks feedback on these proposals.  Please send any feedback to [email-masked] by Sunday 26 September or direct to me at [email-masked].

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/O7fmfHzSfR-b-QlpBhCitD45iO4/

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked]