Dear Otto,
At 3:41 PM +0100 2/22/07, Otto Spaniol wrote:
This rule is already applied to one of our events, namely I3E2006.
Indeed this has happened since IE2006 had no more than 30 paying participants. The organisors expected to get 80. Should I have made a serious question mark concerning this expected number (which appears to be ridiculously low given this more than attractive research area!)? Should I have expressed serious concerns that Turku could be so far that maaybe not many participants would be coming?? NO! I have signed the ERF without any hesitation.
Of course. I'm not at all saying that you shouldn't have signed the ERF. I'm saying that the steering committees and the WG chairs have to inform the organizers correctly about the rules of the game to avoid similar problems in the future.
Note that the ERF is not the big issue any more, because the new ERF contains nothing related to financial issues, nor estimated number of participants. There is now a financial form to be filled in in case of main/full sponsorship only. There is also a publisher form and an event report form. See http://www.ifip.org/events/evforms.htm for all the new forms. The fee requested by IFIP will be based on the numbers indicated in the event report form. If the latter is not sent to IFIP, then IFIP will use the numbers in the financial form instead, which may be a problem for the organizer.
Best regards, Guy