Re: Planned changes to registration payments & deadlines

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Thursday, April 26, 2018 00:35 -0400 Andrew Sullivan
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> 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. 

Like Brian, I have too although it certainly is not a common/
frequent arrangement.  In some cases, whether it is "early
registration without paying" or "tentative statement of intent
to attend" is mostly a matter of terminology.   For the latter,
note that a non-trivial number of meetings require an "I intend
to attend and here is the paper or poster I would like to
present" statement/application with no fee and little
expectation that the person will actually pay registration fees
and show up if the presentation is rejected.  There are, of
course, also a lot of meetings that are "free" or for which the
registration fee is trivial but only after one pays an annual
membership or subscription fee.  Comparisons need to be made
carefully.

> 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".

I think I'm realizing, as the discussion unfolds, that parts of
it have gotten the cart, not merely in front of the horse, but
confused with it.   Is the following an at least s nearly
correct summary of the bottom line:

(1) We need to increase registration income.  We have found are
three possible ways to do that.  One is to manipulate the
charging structure and timing, another is to raise the rates for
everyone, and the third is to charge categories of people (e.g.,
remote participants or remote presenters) who are not now being
charged.

(2) At least for this round, the IAOC has (tentat6ively) chosen
the first option.  This new fee structure is intended to
increase registration revenue in two ways.  One is by forcing
more people, particularly those who cannot commit long in
advance, into the "standard" fee structure.  The other is by
extracting funds much earlier from anyone who wants "early"
discounted rates.  

(3) Those are primarily revenue-based decisions.  There are some
other effects, some of which are anticipated to be useful enough
that "side-effect" isn't quite right, but they are secondary to
the need to make revenue-increasing changes.  They include
elimination of what might be better described as early
notification of tentative plans to attend than as early
registration, but that is, again, a terminology question and,
with that, changes in the data available to AMS and ISOC that
you believe will make those data more helpful.

Viewed that way, the whole question of "register without paying"
is mostly a distraction.  Because of some enterprise policies,
"start registration and complete it (by paying) only later"
probably is an important option, but it has almost no effect on
anything above.  That said, if there is enough demand for what
we've historically called "register without paying", I suppose
IAOC could set up a mechanism for people to indicate tentative
intent to attend and open that process the Monday after the end
of the prior meeting if that made people feel better.  Maybe it
would even yield enough useful data to be worth the trouble
although I gather the IAOC has its doubts.  But it would not
cause any action on the IETF's part: no registration number, no
invitation letters, no fee changes, etc., except possibly
individualized "hey, early registration is about to close, you
indicated you were probably coming, want to register and pay up
before the fees go up" messages if people thought those might
help.

Does that about cover it?

best,
   john