On Friday, Jan 17, 2003, at 17:24 America/Montreal, Lynn St.Amour wrote:
This supports:
The RFC Editor = $428,300
The IETF Chair's discretionary funds = $73,748
The expenses related to the IAB = $13,287
Insurance = $20,000
Lynn,
Thanks much.
All,
It would help if a sentence or two could be written on the web page
to describe
- Expenses related to IAB
- Insurance
- IETF Chair's discretionary funds
I assume that (1) means things like paying for teleconference calls
and IAB dinners, but random folks reading the web page won't have a clue.
It needs to be made more clear what kinds of things the funds are spent
upon.
And I assume that (2) is liability insurance for IAB/IESG folks that
is needed in the context of the standards process, but it would also
be good to make this very clear.
It would be pleasant if Harald gave examples of (3) things that the
discretionary funds have been spent upon, but that's entirely his call.
Generally, I'm pleased to see all the information go public. I do think
that it is VERY important to make descriptions of each item available
on the same web page. Random folks (e.g. newspaper reporters) are NOT
going to have any clues about what a lot of these line item entries are.
And it needs to be clear that IAB/IESG are not compensated in any way from
IETF funds or from ISoc funds, but instead are either self-funded or
employer-funded or what have you.
Finally, historic conversations with Marcia have indicated that the way hotels
work, we can't just cut expenses by cutting the IETF meeting food budget.
If I understood her several years ago (and if things haven't changed), then
hotels expect groups using meeting rooms to order some amount of food
as part of the room package. Someone might want to confirm the current
facts with her, then put a note up about this to forestall the inevitable
("just cut the food budget and redirect that money to foo") comments.
As the person who actually signs the contracts I can tell you that we
are seeing more and more minimum dollar amounts for food consumption
written into contracts. A few years ago, we were often able to
placate hotel and remove the minimum requirement by telling them what
we intended to order. Unless we contracting with a hotel we used
recently and know the staff it is becoming very hard if not
impossible to remove such clauses from hotel contracts. Hotels now
want more than their room nights. They are being squeezed just like
everyone else and because we occupy as many meeting rooms (sometimes
it is the all the hotel has) as we do, the dollar value the meeting
as a whole needs to meet some minimum. Food is part of that
equation.