Re: Planned changes to registration payments & deadlines

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 03:57:50PM +1200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Let me just adjust your text to make it more precise:
> 
> "If you could register for ancillary things without having *paid* for the
> meeting, then if you never *pay* we'd need to have tracked those
> other things and be able to undo them."

That's not "more precise"; that's just a different meaning of
"registered."

I confess that I have never understood the IETF meaning of
"registered", in which one could be in this half-state of registered
for the meeting but not paid.  I've never been to any other
paid-attendance thing where there was any way to be publicly
registered without paying first.  But it is true, as I think we have
said all along in this discussion, that we are changing the meaning of
"registered" to mean "paid registration".  The plan does not
anticipate any other meaning of "registration".
 
> Correct, and I fully understand that. But a side effect of the change
> is that anybody currently using the registration system as a convenience
> for arranging a side event can effectively no longer do so until the
> 7 week deadline, because people *will* pay at the last possible moment
> to minimise their credit hit.

I guess I don't understand the complaint.  To the same extent that the
IETF has a hard time predicting whether people will really show up
without knowing whether they've paid, anyone else would not know
whether the prospective attendee was really coming.  And presumably
the entire list of IETF attendees wouldn't be going to the side event,
so the list is too broad anyway.  Finally, the list is collected for
the purposes of registration for the IETF meeting and not some other
event, so actually using the data for some other purpose might be in
contravention of EU laws (alas, I am not a lawyer, so I can't say for
certain).  It seems such a side event would be better off maintaining
an independent list of prospective attendees.

> won't get attendance mainly settled until the last 2 weeks. They will
> see two large spikes in registration corresponding to the two payment
> deadlines. (So will IASA, of course.)

Maybe we (and it's not _IASA_, but the IETF, of course) will see that
and maybe we will not.  It is hard to know without trying it.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]