Re: Meeting logistics cost, convenience and risk

At 12:41 PM 3/28/2001, John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Wednesday, 28 March, 2001 10:10 -0800 Dave Crocker
> > If we are serious about trying to optimize the meeting in
> > terms of cost, reliability and convenience, we need to choose
> > a standard set of extremely convenient (and less expensive)
> > locations and then keep using them.
>
> We have, so far, found almost no inexpensive (for some weighting
> of meeting-setup and attendee costs) sites outside the US.
Apologies.  There's more to balance than the short list of 3 factors I 
cited, since I am in the camp that believes varying continents is entirely 
appropriate.
Basically I suggest separating the debate about continents from the debate 
about facility, equipment, and staff re-use.  That is, choose a limited set 
of venues around the globe and then, separately determine how often visit them.
So, yes, some continents are more/less expensive than others, along with 
variations within continent (such as the notable Kuala Lumpur comments 
being made on the original thread.)

> > Re-use reduces learning curve and that reduces problems (and cost).
>
> Total aggregate cost, including aggravation costs, certainly. Costs as 
> seen by either the meeting organizational process or the attendees, maybe.
Seems like both organizers and attendees share the aggravation costs and a 
fair part of the total cost.
Yes, it's true that the host absorbs significant costs and letting a 
sponsor continue to pick up the social, seems fine.
Computer projectors, net access, and some other items appear to be much 
better handled by a consistent set of professionals, and probably with a 
consistent set of equipment.  That's an area of technical risk that made 
sense when the industry was new, but not now.

> At many times of year, it is cheaper for me
> to get to London, or Paris, or Frankfurt than to San Jose.
Well, San Jose airfare is unpleasantly peculiar on an on-going 
basis.  Surprisingly, San Francisco often is, too.
Balancing airfare, travel time, number of travel hops, etc. etc. is 
definitely great fun, especially when combined with the IETF requirements 
for local facilities, notably more meeting rooms than equivalently-sized 
groups and especially the need for lots of alcoves for private discussions.

>  As I note above, your concerns are lowering dependence
> on hosts and sponsorship would, IMO, tend to reinforce, rather
> than change, those formulae.   E.g., despite the cold and some
> accessibility factors that have been raised on this list lately,
> I've favored going back to Minneapolis which, with our third
> appearance there, will definitely fall into a category of
> convenient and inexpensive locations which we know how to make
> work.
Probably no one place is ideal.  My focus is on the paradigm of facility 
re-use and "self-reliance" for infrastructure services like net 
access.  Details of which places to place on the re-use list are a 
challenge and I'm not particularly criticing Minneapolis.
Having Minneapolis dominated by a single carrier is unfortunate.  The 
restaurant choices around the hotel seemed poor.  Private meeting alcoves 
were mighty scarce.  On the other hand, they have plenty of close, good 
hotels.  The meeting rooms seemed fine (or better than that) and actually 
getting there was dandy.
d/

----------
Dave Crocker   <mailto:dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking   <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253;   fax: +1.408.273.6464