Subject: [vmeet] Registration requirements

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:38:50 -0800

Greetings again. The -01 draft had a bunch of changes and additions to the requirements for registration that I thought would cause more discussion than they have. If the requirements are correct and complete, that's great, but maybe people have other ideas.

--Paul Hoffman

4.1.  Registration for Remote Participation

   There has been periodic discussion of whether remote attendees are or
   are not bound by the "note well" text that local attendees are bound
   to.  By requiring registration before participating, remote attendees
   can be better bound to that text.

   The cost for remote attendees to register, if any, is not covered in
   this document but will instead be determined by the IETF at a later
   time.  There are many ideas on the subject (tiered costs for
   different services, no cost at all for the first year, and others),
   but the effects of different cost structures is beyond the scope of
   this document.

   **Requirement 01-05**: All remote attendees MUST register with the
   IETF Secretariat before using any of the RPS tools described here.

   **Requirement 01-06**: The RPS MUST have a system where a remote
   attendee can register their name and have that name be used in the
   instant messaging and video systems.  Registration must only need to
   be done once for an entire regular IETF meeting.

   **Requirement 01-07**: A remote attendee who doesn't want to
   identified MUST be able to use an anonymized name when appearing in
   video and instant messaging.  [[[TODO: Is the anonymity appropriate
   in light of the "note well" and floor control requirements? ]]]

   **Requirement 01-08**: The RPS MUST gracefully handle multiple
   attendees who have the same name.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:10:10 -0900

>     IETF Secretariat before using any of the RPS tools described here.

To be honest this is a little outside my comfort level, at least
for things like Jabber and possibly for streaming audio (which
does not even provide a mechanism for "participation," really).

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]
Software longa, hardware brevis

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:13:50 -0800

> does not even provide a mechanism for "participation," really).

Assume that Rachel does not register for the meeting, listens to the real-time audio for the FooWG meeting, is in the Jabber room, and posts a "mic: Pete is wrong on slide 5, it's four bytes long" message that gets relayed to the room, thus participating. Would you have wanted her to register in that case? That is, is your comfort level based on participation through the tools, or registering at all?

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:23:10 -0900

> Assume that Rachel does not register for the meeting, listens to the real-time audio for the FooWG meeting, is in the Jabber room, and posts a "mic: Pete is wrong on slide 5, it's four bytes long"…

I'm not really sure.  Let's say that post-meeting she sees the
same thing in the slides and posts to the mailing list, where
arguably she'd have more influence.

I guess I tend to see the fee question as related to resource
consumption.  Nothing's free, but the marginal costs for remote
participation (i.e. the additional cost for the 30th participant,
rather than the cost for the stuff in the first place [first
participant, sort of]) are far lower than the marginal cost
for an in-person attendee.  In the jabber case it's basically
free, since on-site participants are using it anyway and it's
not resource-intensive.

Melinda

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:20:15 -0800

> free, since on-site participants are using it anyway and it's

Some of the people here have said they want registration to help move towards "blue sheets" that include remote participants as well. Given that, and your ambivalence above, would you be OK with a registration requirement for remote attendees that is for a "trivial" amount like US$25? Or, if the enhanced RPS has somewhat higher costs than the current RPS, a much-smaller-than-f2f amount like US$100? 

--Paul Hoffman

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:37:27 -0900

> Some of the people here have said they want registration to help move towards "blue sheets" that include remote participants as well. Given that, and your ambivalence above, would you be OK with a…

To be honest I'm not really sure.  I do think that registration fees,
if there are any, should be coupled to actual costs.  I do think that
the focus has to remain on the goal of allowing people to *participate*
remotely - that is to say, while we're probably interested in allowing
people to be something analogous to the bodies-in-chairs
non-participants, that's not the focus.  If it costs something to make
it possible for document editors or frequent kvetchers to provide
input from several timezones away that should be passed along.  It
may be worth finding out from past remote participants why they weren't
able to attend in person, why they were participating remotely, and
whether or not there's a cost threshold.

Melinda

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:43:48 -0500

Why were fees and costs and cost structures out of scope when I brought
them up? :-)

I am still not sure if Melinda's objection is due to a cost concern,
or a *registration* concern.   NANOG makes me register for remote
participation, but the fee is zero.

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]> writes:
    Paul> Some of the people here have said they want registration to
    Paul> help move towards "blue sheets" that include remote
    Paul> participants as well. Given that, and your ambivalence above,
    Paul> would you be OK with a registration requirement for remote
    Paul> attendees that is for a "trivial" amount like US$25? Or, if
    Paul> the enhanced RPS has somewhat higher costs than the current
    Paul> RPS, a much-smaller-than-f2f amount like US$100?

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:57:33 -0800

> Why were fees and costs and cost structures out of scope when I brought

Because you were trying to mandate them, I am using them to generate discussion. I am asking questions of Melinda to clarify things because she said, twice, "I'm not really sure".

> participation, but the fee is zero.

And so I'll ask a similar question: for such a registration, would there be much difference to you between "zero" and "US$25"? Between "zero" and "US$100"?

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:00:42 +0200

> And so I'll ask a similar question: for such a registration, would there be much difference to you between "zero" and "US$25"? Between "zero" and "US$100"?

YMMV, but I think all these numbers are small compared to meeting fee + flight + hotel + missing a week of work

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:18:12 -0900

> participation, but the fee is zero.

I'm concerned about fees and I think they need to stay sufficiently
low that pretty much anybody would be able to afford remote
participation.  Registration is less of a concern, although I'd
raise two points:

1) when people have raised blue sheet privacy issues in the past
    the answer has pretty consistently been that names are collected
    to be able to get a handle on room size requirements for
    subsequent meetings - what's the interest in a blue sheet analog
    for, say, Jabber room participation?

2) Would registration be required for access to some remote services
    but not others?  Say, for video but not for Jabber?  Etc.

Melinda

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:14:45 -0800

On 2/12/12 09:18 , Melinda Shore wrote:
> participation.

as someone who contended with delivering several iteration of the
previous services. given the volume of remote participants overall I
would expect that fee would not likely contribute to the cost recovery
in a meaningful way and therefore I wonder what the point would be from
the outset.

>  Registration is less of a concern, although I'd
> raise two points:
> 

blue sheets have been subpenaed from the trust as part of lawsuit. if
you contribute remotely it's fair to assume that you need to to be
enumerated. if you're presenting from a remote location that's already
part of the records (albiet not on the blue sheet). if you say something
on jabber it's logged for posterity, the question of identity for jabber
participants however is non-trivial.

>    but not others?  Say, for video but not for Jabber?  Etc.

it's hard to contribute with a unidirectional feed.

> Melinda
> _______________________________________________
> NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
> http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:19:12 +0100

> YMMV, but I think all these numbers are small compared to meeting fee + flight + hotel + missing a week of work

Compared to, yes, but as a standalone item, remote participation fees
entice another ballgame including the ability to pay those fees using
some kind of payment method and this itself a barrier in the developing
world.
Anything other than zero would be a barrier.
Kind regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

---

From: Scott Schmit <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:21:08 -0500

> participants however is non-trivial.

But mailing lists are different?

-- 
Scott Schmit

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:22:22 -0800

> But mailing lists are different?

In the context if long-established participants yes, in to context of
mailing list trolls who appear when needed no.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:22:23 -0500

>> I am still not sure if Melinda's objection is due to a cost
    >> concern, or a *registration* concern.  NANOG makes me register
    >> for remote participation, but the fee is zero.

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]> writes:
    Paul> And so I'll ask a similar question: for such a registration,
    Paul> would there be much difference to you between "zero" and
    Paul> "US$25"? Between "zero" and "US$100"?

Any non-zero registration fee needs to be collected, and there are
expenses relating to doing that.  There are also hassles relating to the
individuals' need/desire to expense it.  

There likely isn't that much difference for some people between US$25
and US$100, for others (particularly students), this might matter.

-- 
]       He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life!           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
   Kyoto Plus: watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE>
	               then sign the petition.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:23:31 -0500

>>>>> "Yoav" == Yoav Nir <[email-masked]> writes:
    Yoav> On Feb 12, 2012, at 5:57 PM, Paul Hoffman wrote:

    >> And so I'll ask a similar question: for such a registration,
    >> would there be much difference to you between "zero" and "US$25"? 
    >> Between "zero" and "US$100"?

    Yoav> YMMV, but I think all these numbers are small compared to
    Yoav> meeting fee + flight + hotel + missing a week of work 

For the person who would otherwise attend, yes.
For the person who could not afford to attend, it's different.

This is part of the problem that we have with scoping this problem.

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:50:37 -0800

> This is part of the problem that we have with scoping this problem.

For the moment, let's assume the problem is to get more participation from current WG members who don't go to meetings. As a first guess, "folks who participate on the mailing list, even if it's just a bit, but don't come to meetings". We can work on "people who don't even say anything on the mailing list" later.

Given that, would there be a significant difference between $0, $25, and $100 for someone who wants to participate?

(Don't worry about the cost to the IETF for registration; it will very probably be way below $25, according to a first guess from AMS.)

--Paul Hoffman

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:10:29 -0500

For a student wanting to participate in one WG, $100 is probably a pretty big hurdle. In some cases, charging any amount means filing for reimbursement, which can be a fair amount of hassle in budget-challenged companies or government agencies. Most people would probably be willing to "eat" a $25 charge, but $100 might well put you in the "big enough to have to file a travel voucher and hope that the finance folks understand what remote attendance means" category.

Also, as soon as you charge a non-trivial amount, you have to worry about refunds if the technology doesn't work. This may not be a big problem if the policy is pretty liberal, i.e., without worrying about where the fault may have been.

Henning

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From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:31:13 -0500

Note: We already have a split-tier cost structure for students vs. 
everyone else. I could see that notion being extended into this space.

     Tony Hansen
     [email-masked]

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From: Brian Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:56:47 -0500

Leaving aside the issue of payments, I would like to have attribution of participants.  I don't care about a passive listener, but when you "speak" (or write or …) I want to know who you are with about the same level of authentication as a registrant with a credit card.

And yes, I think it's different than a participant on an IETF email list.

Brian

On Feb 12, 2012, at 9:31 PM, Tony Hansen wrote:

> Note: We already have a split-tier cost structure for students vs. everyone else. I could see that notion being extended into this space.
> 
>    Tony Hansen
>    [email-masked]
>

---

From: Brian Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:20:31 -0500

I don't think 5378 is relevant.

I think that a tool enabling remote participation should require an identity that is fairly good.  I think anonymous participation in a real time meeting is unwarranted and could leave to problems.

We have no requirement for good identity for in-person meetings, but we have it anyway.  I don't want to lose that.  

I'm not looking for foolproof, or more specifically, I'm not interested in a real high bar.

On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:00 PM, joel jaeggli wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Brian Rosen <[email-masked]> wrote:
> we have  rfc 5378 for that...
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/about/note-well.html
> 
> and no, a contribution is a contribution, mailing list or otherwise.
> 
>> Brian
>>

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:21:18 -0500

>> For the person who would otherwise attend, yes.  For the person
    >> who could not afford to attend, it's different.
    >> 

    Paul> For the moment, let's assume the problem is to get more
    Paul> participation from current WG members who don't go to
    Paul> meetings. As a first guess, "folks who participate on the
    Paul> mailing list, even if it's just a bit, but don't come to
    Paul> meetings". We can work on "people who don't even say anything
    Paul> on the mailing list" later.

Any idea what this number is?
i.e. what's our upside if we make the perfect solution?

Could the secretariat tell us what the number of unique email address
subscribed to [email-masked] mailing lists?    That's your second number.

I guess the first number could be determined by a grep of the mailing
list archives.