On Fri, May 10, 2019, 7:00 AM Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com> wrote:
On May 10, 2019, at 9:47 AM, Joe Touch <touch@strayalpha.com> wrote:
The only  people who get a fully free ride that I know of are the IEEE Comsoc Board. 

Hm.  I’ve never paid to attend IETF.  Granted, this is not because IETF comped me, but because I was fortunate enough to have an employer who could afford to send me at no cost to me.

Ted,

I have paid to attend IETF. It is expensive. In fact, for Prague IETF registration alone plus VAT cost twice as much as the airfare to get there from US! I was only able to justify the trip only because we ran Netdev conference at the same location a week before.

This model unfortunately doesn’t work for open source developers who are not on the payroll of a company with deep pockets.

Yes, and I hope this is considered a bad thing lest IETF becomes an elitist organization with only a handful of bigger players running the show.

Maybe there should be a "non-sponsored" registration tier with a discount to help make it affordable for the little guys.

Tom