Re: Planned changes to registration payments & deadlines

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 12:33:18PM -0400, Jonathan Lennox wrote:
> 
> At what point will it be possible to buy tickets for the social event?  Because the social sells out so quickly, I regularly register as soon as the social is announced, so I can buy a ticket; but I delay paying the registration fee until a later credit card cycle, so I can get my travel reimbursement before my credit card bill is due.
> 

Thanks for this question.  The answer is not perfectly clear, because
there are a few possibilities.  Keep in mind that the social is not
actually operated by the IETF, so some of these details are up to the
host sponsoring the social.  Nevertheless, I can think of three
obvious alternatives:

    1.  The social usually has between 500 and 800 tickets.  It would
    be wildly outside our expectations that 500-800 people registered
    (including payment) for the meeting so far in advance that only
    the early birds could get social tickets.  So maybe do nothing,
    and social tickets are first come, first served.

    2.  Perhaps the social tickets could be released about a month
    before the meeting, meaning that people undertaking standard
    registration would have the same shot as early birds.

    3.  Perhaps some % of the tickets could be available as soon as
    the social is announced, with the (smaller) remainder being
    released close to the meeting, to guarantee that even late
    registrants could have a shot at a social ticket.

We may experiment with different approaches to see what works best.

There is one assumption in your question, however, that is worth
emphasising: you can't get a social ticket until you're registered,
and under our plan "registration" means "paid registration".  This
also applies to companion registrations to the meeting, &c &c.  There
will simply be no such status as "registered but not paid", even if
registration may take many weeks so that payment can be processed
separately from sign-up.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]