Dear TC6 colleagues,
I'd like to inform you of the following financial procedure.
When the organizer of an IFIP TC6 event does not pay the IFIP fee as planned in the IFIP Event Request Form, IFIP will deduct 25% of the amount from the TC6 funds (Because the fee goes normally with 75% to the TC6 funds and with 25% to IFIP General fund).
In other words, TC6 does not get the usual 75% and has to pay the 25% to IFIP, which means that TC6 and only TC6 loses money (100% of the fee in fact).
This procedure has been decided at EB meeting Dec10th 2005 and TC Chairs have been informed at TA meeting at Council 2006 in Mallorca. It seems that this message was not conveyed to TC6 at that time, but this is now repaired.
This rule is already applied to one of our events, namely I3E2006.
So be careful, especially the WG chairs and the steering committees.
Best regards, Guy
Dear all,
I'd like to inform you of the following financial procedure.
When the organizer of an IFIP TC6 event does not pay the IFIP fee as planned in the IFIP Event Request Form, IFIP will deduct 25% of the amount from the TC6 funds (Because the fee goes normally with 75% to the TC6 funds and with 25% to IFIP General fund).
Based on the actual(!) number of paying participants which have to be communicated after the event to IFIP.
In other words, TC6 does not get the usual 75% and has to pay the 25% to IFIP, which means that TC6 and only TC6 loses money (100% of the fee in fact).
This procedure has been decided at EB meeting Dec10th 2005 and TC Chairs have been informed at TA meeting at Council 2006 in Mallorca. It seems that this message was not conveyed to TC6 at that time, but this is now repaired.
I apologize for that omission but the Council and GA meeting are so boring that you will have a hard time to remember everything. To be honest: I never expected that such an event could happen for TC6(!).
Eduard Dundler (IFIP Secretariat) explained the rule to me as follows: "If an event has only 'x' paying participants then it has to pay for them nevertheless. If the conference cannot do that due to a deficit then IFIP will take 25% of that sum (i.e. the amount that would have gone to IFIP under normal circumstances) from the TC6 funds. Here is the example from the conference mentioned below which only had x=30 participants and which couldn't pay since the event ended up in a severe deficit:
The new calculation of the fee would be: 30 participants x 3 days x 10 EUR = 900.-- EUR
According our finances there is no possibility to ignore the bill. If you cannot find way to pay the bill, we will deduct 25% of the amount from the TC6 funds (Because the fee goes normally with 75% to the TC6 funds and with 25% to IFIP General fund).
The absolutely stupid and counterproductive new rule was prepared as one of the activities made by some IFIP officials which are very often characterized by hyperactionism; you may remember as another example the document about "new IFIP strategy" which got so negative by TC6 delegates in Coimbra.
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.
So be careful, especially the WG chairs and the steering committees.
Indeed, the new rule will have as a consequence that nobody will give optimistic or even "normal" estimates for the expected number of participants. WG chairpersons and in particular the TC6 chairperson will have a more complicated life; fortunately, I'm not obliged any more to check all these bloody Event Request Forms ;-). If I understand it correctly, it would be even better if a conference which cannot pay the sponsorship fee would claim that they had 0 (yes, just 'zero'!) paying participants. Should we inform conference organisors about such dirty tricks? The new regulations imposed by IFIP seem to make this an attractive strategy.... but???
Best regards Otto
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