These facilities discussions! As my wife said - did you finish all technical
subjects to talk about?
But what the ... I have also attended 30+ IETF meetings, so let me comment on
two details issues:
1. 'Bar BOF' - what was exactly the problem in Vienna? That there was no bar,
with TV loudly shouting CNN or ESPN? On the other hand there was a sandwich
bar, you could buy drinks (including beer), or had them for free (excluding
beer) for most of the time. There was plenty of sitting space around, and I had
at least three editing sessions during the week. Much, much better than in San
Francisco for example.
2. Water was brought in rooms on Wednesday morning, which is rather middle of
the week, not 'near the end'.
BTW, I am still waiting to attend an IETF meeting in a US facility serving
decent coffee. In Vienna, there was plenty of it, and we did not have to pour
it by ourselves :-)
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael StJohns [mailto:mstjohns(_at_)mindspring(_dot_)com]
Sent: 18 July, 2003 12:11 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Critique vs Criticism - Plenary comments
Folks -
I want to make a further comment about tonight's discussion
about the site
and site logistics. I'd like to ask all of you to listen to
the discussion
less as a bashing of the local host and the city and people
of Vienna, and
more as I think it was intended - a critique of the site and
facilities as
they relate to serving the needs of the IETF. The person who
started the
discussion made at least three separate points related to the
facilities -
at no time did he impugn or otherwise denigrate Vienna, the people of
Vienna, or the local host.
The points were (as near as I remember) - that the geographic
separation of
hotel and meeting facilities was a problem, that there were
power issues in
the rooms both related to the amount and to the location, and
that there
was no water in any of the rooms until the near the end.
We've had meetings with geographic separation before - mostly
this causes
problems in the formation of the usual IETF bar BOFs. Going
back to the
beginning of the IETF, much of the small group discussion at
the IETF has
taken place after or between the session in and around the bar at the
conference hotel. Quite a lot of the ideas which have made
it into the
standards process have started because of the free flow of
information and
the liberal application of two or three beers. The Bar BOF is a well
established part of the IETF meeting culture and meetings without an
obvious place to meet post session have generally been less
productive.
The power issues are more properly the purview of the
facility (e.g. the
conference center) coordinator. Letting the secretariat know
about the
problem is both appropriate and helpful for their evaluation of the
facility for possible later use.
The lack of water, drinking fountains, cups, etc was frankly
painful to
me. This was attributed to the policy of the conference
facility... maybe
I'm spoiled, but I found this policy strange and unusual and
not applicable
to any of the other facilities we've met at previously.
I do want to echo Randy Bush and others with thanks to the
host for an
excellent wireless system and network. I didn't have to fall
back once to
the terminal room, so I can't comment on good/bad there.
Please, let's try and take comments at face value and not
treat the people
making them like they're trying to kick your puppy.
Thanks - Mike
ps - I've been to 55 of the IETF meetings... I get to
comment from time to
time.