Registrars’ Report

Arrangements Committee 2018

I am grateful for having shadowed the wonderful registrars, Sarah Feitler and Lisa Toko-Ross this past year. It is already apparent that it has been a valuable experience. As with 2016, the Meeting in 2017 shrunk in comparison to the previous year with 265 attendees in 2017 compared to 300 in 2016. The following table indicates the breakdown of registrations by age group:

2017 / 2016 / Diff / % Diff
First Time / 35 / 39 / -4 / -11%
CYM / 21 / 29 / -8 / -38%
JYF / 14 / 12 / 2 / 14%
SYF / 23 / 25 / -2 / -9%
YAF / 11 / 9 / 2 / 18%
Adult / 196 / 225 / -29 / -15%
Total / 265 / 300 / -35 / -13%

IMYM had approximately 176 people registered to arrive during early days—including 114 registered to arrive on Sunday. 108 stayed for the entire Meeting indicating a significant interest in attending the entire week. Rumors of a large number of people wanting to come to IMYM only for early days are greatly exaggerated.

The breakdown of attendees by meeting is indicated at right, with the meetings having over twenty attenders in descending order (including no answer): Mountain View, Boulder, no answer, Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

22 people indicated mobility needs, including four requests for ADA bathrooms. If this trend continues, we should still be able to meet needs, especially on the lower level of Ghost Ranch housing.

We would like to promote the online registration as much as possible as it greatly improves the accuracy and retention of registration information. Both in 2016 and 2017, 91% of IMYM attendees used online registration. We would also like to continue the practice of setting May 24 (or an earlier date depending on the Ghost Ranch deadline) as a hard deadline, after which registrations will be considered on a case by case basis, primarily due to the reservation and availability of housing.

The implementation of Complete Cost as an option with the Traditional Cost of IMYM appears to be a success with 45% of those given the option choosing Complete Cost. The breakdown is shown below:

Complete Cost / Traditional Cost / % Complete Cost / Campers / Commuter/Age 0-3 / Total
87 / 105 / 45% / 67 / 6 / 265

This is heartening to have such a high percentage of adoption, especially with some of the challenges succinctly explaining the concept.

That being said, a big challenge for the registrar this year will be how to implement Pay-as-led in the registration process. We have several ideas, building off the subsidized cost/true cost model and am looking forward to discussing these with Finance and IMYM Arrangements as a whole. We are optimistic due to the positive anticipation of Pay-as-led in the evaluations from 2017, but realize that socialization and explanation of the concept is where the true art comes in.

We would also like to entertain the idea of various forms of electronic payment for IMYM, including credit/debit cards and/or PayPal. We realize this approach has some fees associated with it (potentially not even the same fees), but with the advent of Pay-as-led and continued transparency of costs, this might be actually easier to implement now than previously, with the understanding that it may be best to do only one major change per year.

Finally, we are aware that we have big shoes to fill, as evidenced by the 4.61 out of 5 rating for registration in 2017 and hope that we can at least maintain and hopefully continuously improve the registration process so that there are as few impediments to attending IMYM as possible.

Respectfully,

Marc Gacy, Registrar

January 2018