ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

RE: Meetings in other regions

2006-07-15 10:03:22
 
Brian,

Possibly.

But when putting all under consideration even from that point of view, travel 
(time and cost) is only one factor. Cost of facilities, facilities it self, 
quality of service, cost for participants on site etc is also important and 
often way lower in some of the locations not considered so far by IETF.

Attendance of the usual contributors is important. But that arguments seems to 
have be rehashed endlessly. Still I have seen this year WG meetings organized 
in NA and in a (far away) Asia location outside currently typical IETF 
locations. There were more than double of active participants at the meeting 
away from NA...

So I think so me of the basic assumptions may be revisited (or at least more 
carefully stated) namely 1) that cost / time is really higher outside NA (and 
sometimes selected European or Asian location) - it is often not true even 
factoring in travel costs and travel time is a quite relative considerations 2) 
that main contributors mostly come only to NA (and sometimes selected European 
or Asian location) and that therefore we would not have active participants 
when going there...

Stephane


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brc(_at_)zurich(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 9:36 AM
To: patrick(_at_)isoc(_dot_)lu
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions

Patrick,

It may have got lost in this thread, but Fred has got the nub of the argument 
here: the IETF's goal is to do its work as efficiently as possible, and that 
means assembling at locations that are (on some sort of average) convenient for 
our active participants.
In practical terms, that means assembling in countries or regions with a good 
number of current participants.  I show a pie chart at every plenary (a 
tradition started by my predecessors) that gives a pretty strong indication of 
what those countries or regions are. You saw the version of that pie chart from 
IETF65 in the ISOC Board meeting in Marrakech. The IETF66 version is in the 
Wednesday plenary proceedings from this week.
(temporary location:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=66 )

Outreach is important, and welcoming new active contributors is important, but 
the dominant consideration is a location that is convenient and effective for 
our current active contributors.

Regards

     Brian

Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
Fred Baker said the following  on 13/07/2006 13:38:

My point is that it is not about the price of the hotel, nor is it 
about taking the Internet gospel to those who haven't been able to 
participate in its development [...] It's about having productive 
meetings in an atmosphere conducive to them

Fred,

The place where we had the ICANN meeting in Marrakech provided fast 
connectivity, very good mobile phone coverage and all you would need 
for a productive meeting, despite the fact that it was located  in Africa.
This is a counter example to what your are trying to demonstrate. 
There are many places places in Africa, Asia-Pacific  and Latin 
America where you could have a productive meeting. One only needs to look for 
them.

In terms of image, I tend to think that it would indeed help the IETF 
to have meetings outside the Northern America  and European regions. 
It is not so much about spreading the Internet gospel - others do it 
better - although it would help.  It is more in terms of interacting 
with the local community  to find out  what they expect to come out  
of a standardization process. The hypothesis by which whatever is good 
for the Northern hemisphere is automatically fine for the rest of the 
world seems slightly colonialist to me.

Best,

Patrick Vande Walle
ISOC Luxembourg

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>