Re: Unhosted IETF meetings

On Mar 21, 2005, at 7:38 AM, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:
> I mean, several people from outside US offered for years (not just me, 
> I talked with others), and the feeling was somehow "hostile". In 
> general no clearly documented "why not", so the percentage is probably 
> not a good measure !
My information is a little dated, but may be relevant...

When I was chair, the secretariat mostly set these things up, and my 
role was more one of "advice and consent" than "specification". I might 
be told that there had been "several" proposals, they had investigated 
A and B in detail, and what would I think about those two? The 
considerations I brought to the party were varied:
 - the likelihood that key contributors would make the trip
 - the cost of the meeting
 - projected attendance
 - location
 - the people involved

and a number of other points.

Specifically, before agreeing to go to Adelaide in 2000, I sent an 
email to each working group chair and each author of a current internet 
draft (total of just shy of 700 people; this would be hard today, as a 
similar poll would go to ~3000 people based on the addresses in this 
morning's internet draft directory) in spring 1998 placing those 
questions in some detail, and I got quite a number of detailed 
responses. The notes indicated that employers tended to have a 
more-or-less fixed sum that they planned to spend on travel, and if the 
travel costs went up the number of people they sent would go down. Some 
working groups chose to not meet; they were working groups whose ADs 
told me they were frequently not meeting or were not being productive. 
I got some personal observations as well. One person from a Nordic 
country told me that there was no way he would subject his body to that 
number of hours in flight to get to Adelaide; another person from a 
Nordic country told me that if it was outside the US he would come no 
matter what. The big picture I got in fact correlated with reality when 
we could measure it - attendance would be smaller and some groups would 
not meet, but the meetings that occurred would be productive, and in 
general folks believed that they had a business reason to attend 
regardless of the location.
In that note, I not only asked about Adelaide, but asked about several 
other locations that were on the table at the time. Without naming 
them, I got very negative comments on the other locations, and not just 
from the US folks - worries about pick-pockets, the number of airports 
one has to go through to get to them, likelihood of being able to get a 
meal on schedule (which is a question of customs - many places in 
Europe a restaurant assumes that you don't enter the restaurant to eat 
and leave, but to enjoy the evening with your associates in the context 
of a meal, but which can often mean that evening meetings are difficult 
and even having two meetings in an afternoon can be difficult), etc.
I have also been known to do my own site surveys, mostly in Asia and 
the Pacific Rim. When a meeting in Seoul was originally proposed, the 
venue was different, and on a visit to the region the proposed host 
walked me through it. He thought of it as fairly expansive, and I think 
my response was a surprise to him. Basically, the room the plenary 
would have occurred in would have seated half the required number of 
people, and while there was a food court nearby, the proposal for a 
terminal room was a gaming facility a 5-10 minute hike away from the 
facility. The facility we actually used was, of course, far more 
suitable, no doubt due in part to the proposed host looking through 
more practical eyes at the facilities.
The note to prospective hosts is this: we're walking in with a group of 
perhaps 1200-1500 people, operating on a schedule. We need for 1500 
people to be able to walk out of a room, get food, and return in 90 or 
120 minutes around both lunch and dinner, we need to have a certain 
number of rooms that seat a certain number of people, we need hotels in 
walking distance or with convenient and inexpensive transit, we need 
serious wireless networks and connection to the Internet, and we have 
people coming from all over who need to arrive on a schedule within a 
budget and leave in a similar way. If that can't happen, it's not a 
suitable venue. Saying as much isn't "hostile", it is speaking plainly.
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