Re: [802SEC] Why Buzz
Mat -
Clearly you can't poll people that are not there, so it makes it more
difficult (but maybe not impossible - see below) to figure out how
many people are (or maybe are not!) being disenfranchised by the
current NA-centric plenaries.
Equally clearly, you CAN figure out from polling the people that ARE
there, and from other available data, certain truths.
From the poll data, for example, we can determine what proportion of
those that showed up in Atlanta would potentially be disenfranchised,
depending on how high we set the meeting costs.
From the attendance data at our interim meetings, we can actually
get a fair idea of what effect NA vs nNA has; most (all?) of the WGs
meet nNA for some of their interims these days; why not go look at
the numbers and see what effect there appears to be. 802.1's meeting
attendance data looks like this over the past 3 years (this is counts
of people that had >75% qualifying attendance - total signins would
be greater):
Jan 05: 41 (Sacramento)
Mar 05: 64 (Atlanta)
May 05: 43 (Berlin, Germany)
Jul 05: 63 (San Francisco)
Sep 05: 64 (Orange County)
Nov 05: 74 (Vancouver)
Jan 06: 74 (Sacramento)
Mar 06: 92 (Denver)
May 06: 87 (Beijing, China)
Jul 06: 105 (San Diego)
Sep 06: 56 (York, England)
Nov 06: 95 (Dallas)
Jan 07: 55 (Monterey, CA)
Mar 07: 108 (Orlando)
May 07: 81 (Geneva, Switzerland)
Jul 07 112 (San Francisco)
Sep 07: 75 (Stockholm, Sweden)
Nov 07: 117 (Atlanta)
Now, its a small sample, and all of that, but there are some things
that you can observe about these data points. Amongst them are:
Firstly, there is a clear overall trend - numbers of attendees are
increasing. If you look at a 2nd order polynomial trend line on a
spreadsheet, plenary numbers have increased almost linearly from ~60
to ~120 over the 3 years.
Secondly, the attendance at plenaries is far more consistent than
attendance at interims. The order polynomial trend line for interim
attendance shows that while attendance in the first year and a half
closely matched Plenary attendance, over the second year and a half
the trend has levelled out and if anything, extrapolating onwards,
is predicting a downturn in our January interim attendance. The point
at which the levelling off/downturn occurs matches pretty closely
with the point at which we moved from the occasional (no more than
one per year) nNA Interim to 2 years where we had 2 nNA Interims in each year.
So, my personal "feel" for the nNA experiment as it applies to real
numbers gleaned from real attendees at real meetings is that we get a
falloff of serious attendees (those that attend enough to get voting
attendance credit) when we hold meetings in nNA locations. The one
exception to this was Beijing, where the numbers were significantly
boosted by attendees from the host company.
OK...now I'm sure that there will be a major outbreak of statistical
analysis in response to this, and I'm sure that, as with all
statistics, they can be made to prove anything you like. But my point
is twofold:
Firstly, using the real meeting attendance data that I have in front
of me, my conclusion is that 802.1's attendance goes down when we
meet nNA. If you wanted that quantified, the trend lines indicate
that the hit is of the order of 20 people.
Secondly, I'm getting heartily bored with arguments of the form "We
don't have the data, so we can't do the analysis" being put forward
to bolster potentially spurious conclusions. We have a lot of data to
hand - based on real attendances at real meetings. If we took the
trouble to examine it instead of throwing up our hands in despair, it
might actually tell us something useful.
Regards,
Tony
At 18:11 04/12/2007, Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
>Buzz,
>
>At some point I think we will need to agree to disagree. You can't poll
>people who aren't there. We don't know who would attend our meetings if
>we took them overseas, and your current polls won't tell you. Other
>IEEE organization don't seem to have problems with people affording
>their venues, so I don't believe we will either.
>
>Bottom line for me - Sure let's try hosting for year. But if it doesn't
>pan out in a reasonable amount of time, we pay the extra cost and go
>abroad anyway....
>
>Mat
>
>Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
>Engineering Fellow
>BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
>Office: +1 973.633.6344
>Cell: +1 973.229.9520
>email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rigsbee, Everett O [mailto:everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 12:56 PM
>To: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
>Cc: stds-802-sec@listserv.ieee.org; dawns@facetoface-events.com
>Subject: RE: [802SEC] Why Buzz
>
>
>Matt, I'm sorry but I guess I don't understand why you think excluding
>people on an economic basis is any more fair or desirable than excluding
>people on the basis of travel time difference, which management rarely
>considers in approving travel. We've had numerous comments from our nNA
>domiciled attendees that indicate they find NA attendance easier to get
>approval for IEEE-802 Sessions because they are inexpensive relative to
>nNA venues. Most groups do nNA venues for interims which are much more
>affordable because of size and attendance is optional for those with
>severe budget constraints. Every time we have surveyed our attendees
>they have said nNA venues are a good idea as long as they are
>affordable. Having hosts seems to be the secret to getting to
>affordable, so that's what we are trying to do. And we have not been
>trying to do that in a consistent and organized way before. We have
>discussed it but there has never been an organized or sanctioned effort
>to recruit some real hosts. So I say we give it a shot a see what we
>get. If we don't get there that way we can always go back to the
>drawing board for other options but right now this looks like our best
>shot. So let's give it a real try with EVERY Working Group making a
>sincere pitch to their members to find potential hosts. If we get some
>real competition going we just might come up with some really great
>deals.
>
>:-) So let's work together to make this a winning plan and we can all
>be happy with the results !!!
>
>
>Thanx, Buzz
>Dr. Everett O. (Buzz) Rigsbee
>Boeing IT
>PO Box 3707, M/S: 7M-FM
>Seattle, WA 98124-2207
>Ph: (425) 373-8960 Fx: (425) 865-7960
>Cell: (425) 417-1022
>everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
>[mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 3:57 AM
>To: Rigsbee, Everett O
>Cc: stds-802-sec@listserv.ieee.org; dawns@facetoface-events.com
>Subject: RE: [802SEC] Why Buzz
>
>Buzz,
>
>First off, I've already stated I support Roger's plan. However that is
>not the point in its entirety.
>
>You ask would I support $1500-2500 per person with everyone getting
>their own hotel space because other IEEE organizations do it? The
>answer is unequivocally yes! That is exactly my point.
>
>My view is that we have a duty to take our sessions outside of North
>America and not stay in NA just because it is cheap. The fact that
>other IEEE organizations can attract thousands of participants abroad is
>an existence proof that it can be done and be viable. Do we want to do
>this every meeting - No way. But once a year?
>
>Do I want hosted meetings? Yes I would prefer that. But this is not
>the first time that idea has been suggested and we don't seem to be
>doing that well at finding hosts. So my suggestion is this - Yes let's
>try Roger's approach and see who signs up. But if no one signs up in
>some reasonable period of time (1 year, 1.5 years, you tell me) then
>lets just bite the bullet and plan that once a year we will have a very
>expensive meeting for the sake of getting our session to other areas of
>the world.
>
>At least that's my view.
>
>Mat
>
>
>
>Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
>Engineering Fellow
>BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
>Office: +1 973.633.6344
>Cell: +1 973.229.9520
>email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rigsbee, Everett O [mailto:everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com]
>Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 8:50 PM
>To: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
>Cc: stds-802-sec@listserv.ieee.org; dawns@facetoface-events.com
>Subject: RE: [802SEC] Why Buzz
>
>
>Hey Matt, I work with those IEEE folks all the time and we share lots
>of info on better-than-average venues. When I showed them our specs and
>told them what we were looking for, their response was basically "Rotsa
>Ruck, Joe !!!" They do lots of International Conferences that need a
>few big rooms, an exhibit hall, little or no break-outs, and last for
>2-3 days. Their typical attendee fees for these are $1500-$2500/person
>and that does not include hotels or transportation. And that's on top
>of all the revenue they get from their exhibitors, and with no hosted
>F&B. Does that sound like what you think we want to do for our
>attendees ??? You should stick to your IETF model; that's at least
>close and the only major differences are they totally rely on hosting
>organizations for their nNA venues and they need a lot less break-outs
>than we do. That's what we've learned in our 3 years of looking hard
>for various nNA options.
>
>I am in touch with my counterpart at IETF (Ray Pelletier) and have been
>for the last 3 years. We have shared a lot of experiences and we are
>currently working on a plan to find a nNA venue where we could do
>back-to-back IETF and IEEE-802 meeting weeks, so that folks that want to
>could do both meetings with just one trip, and we could share costs of
>services over the two-week spread so we get to split one set-up &
>tear-down fee, and minimum Internet bandwidth charges are usually
>monthly fees so we get to split that too (if it is not hosted as it
>usually is for IETF). That's just one more plan under consideration.
>
>Also I should like to remind you that Paul Nikolich had already
>appointed Bob Heile to be our nNA venue specialist, charged with finding
>us some affordable nNA venues because I didn't have enough time and
>travel budget to do the job properly. I've only stepped back in lately
>because nothing was happening after the groups totally vetoed Bob's plan
>to go to Sydney, Australia for March 2009 because we have "been there
>and done that".
>
>Also if you'll remember we had an arrangement with Mary Russell of
>Hamilton Group Meeting Planners (HGMP) to find us some nNA venues for
>our January 2007 802-hosted Interim. After a year and a half we came
>out with exactly 1 venue (the London Metropole, which we already knew
>about) and the cost for that service was $75K plus the $25K we paid in
>penalties, so another $100K down the pooper for a site that nobody
>liked. And Mary Russell has great credentials for nNA venues, but as
>she says we are either too big or too poor to be able to do this on our
>own. We need some hosting organizations to get better (more affordable)
>deals.
>
>So with Roger's proposal I think we are finally on the right track, but
>you have to at least give it a chance to work. If I have to spend all
>my bandwidth on refuting all these personal attacks we really are never
>going to get there. So how about providing some positive support for
>Roger's Plan and let's knock off all of this uninformed second-guessing
>??? It's really not helping; it's just another diversion from what we
>really need to be doing: finding some viable hosts with viable and
>affordable venues. That's where we need the help !!! Are you up for it
>??? I hope so !!! :-)
>
>
>Thanx, Buzz
>Dr. Everett O. (Buzz) Rigsbee
>Boeing IT
>PO Box 3707, M/S: 7M-FM
>Seattle, WA 98124-2207
>Ph: (425) 373-8960 Fx: (425) 865-7960
>Cell: (425) 417-1022
>everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
>[mailto:matthew.sherman@BAESYSTEMS.COM]
>Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 4:10 PM
>To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
>Subject: Re: [802SEC] Why Buzz
>
>Another approach to getting assistance for Buzz is to go to IEEE.
>
>I think they have staff that specializes in setting up meeting venues.
>I'm not sure how cost effective that is but it is another possibility.
>
>Mat
>
>Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
>Engineering Fellow
>BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
>Office: +1 973.633.6344
>Cell: +1 973.229.9520
>email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ***** IEEE 802 Executive Committee List *****
>[mailto:STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG] On Behalf Of J Lemon
>Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 6:08 PM
>To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
>Subject: [802SEC] Why Buzz
>
>I don't understand why Buzz has been having to do the work on meeting
>logistics. Isn't this part of what we pay FTF to do? If it is, let's let
>them do their job. Or, if it isn't, why isn't it? Wouldn't it make sense
>to pay to have this done for us by professionals instead of either
>dumping the load on Buzz or having all of us amateurs try to quickly
>learn the business of huge meeting booking?
>
>If making large nNA meeting arrangements is beyond the expertise of FTF,
>maybe we could issue a separate contract for booking these, or maybe FTF
>could subcontract this out to arrangers in Europe and Asia? I'd rather
>the latter, as I'd prefer to have a consistent point of contact for us.
>And I'd hate to lose all the expertise that FTF has about what we need
>and desire.
>
>jl
>
>On 12/3/2007 6:04 AM, Tony Jeffree wrote:
> >
> > I repeat, I would like for *us all* to truly focus on the problem.
> > Buzz is a volunteer, just like the rest of us; this isn't his only
> > job. And there is a limit to what one person can do in a situation
> > where we are attempting to do something that is new for the
> > organisation and may not necessarily conform to the way business is
> > routinely done in NA. He doesn't need us making more rods for his
> > back; what he needs is practical help and support. Lets start doing
>that.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tony
>
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