--On Monday, 30 July, 2007 07:04 -0500 Spencer Dawkins
<spencer(_at_)mcsr-labs(_dot_)org> wrote:
OK, with some hesitation, I'll say this out loud...
...
My IETF sponsor organization had a number of authors who were
not approved for travel to the US (probably about 10, or 25
percent of our total, although I haven't seen a final number
yet), so it's not like Adrian just hangs around the people who
weren't approved.
I was also told at this IETF about people who requested visas
in order to attend the Dallas IETF, who have not yet been
approved, but who have not yet been rejected, either.
Apparently "background investigation" is the new black hole of
Calcutta. Perhaps they will be approved in time for
Philedelphia, or Minneapolis.
This has apparently become standard practice for visa handling:
the visa applications are not rejected, which might require an
explanation if US entitles get involves, but approval is simply
postponed past the data at which the applications are relevant.
If current plans for upcoming IETF meetings hold, it will be
possible for IETF participants to qualify for NomCom without
attending any US-based meetings. If those plans do not hold -
specifically, if a non-US site "falls through" and is replaced
with a US site - people who are unable to travel to the United
States will be excluded from NomCom eligibility, and this also
includes other things based on NomCom eligibility - for
instance, participating in a recall petition.
...
If you aren't qualified to put someone on the IAB or IESG, you
aren't qualified to remove them, either. This isn't WRONG, but
I'm not sure how many people have noticed this.
As you know, I believe that use of the Nomcom qualifications for
recalls, etc., was chosen without adequate consideration of
side-effects. In particular, I do not believe that barring
either
* IESG and IAB members, who are in the best position to
observe some types of abuses, from being about to
initiate recall actions or
* active participants in the IETF who do not attend
meetings but may nonetheless be victims of abusive
behavior
from initiating recalls was a bad idea. But the last time the
former was probed, the community and IESG didn't seem enthused
about changing it, the idea got no traction. It was also buried
in noise about the possibility of IESG or IAB members using the
recall procedure to attack each other (I believe that, if things
get to the point that would occur without good cause, it is
desirable that the community know about it and cope with it as
quickly as possible, rather than looking for ways to suppress
possible symptoms).
I suggested a few minutes ago (in private e-mail, before
reading the next slice of this thread) to Ray Pelletier that
he consider adding a survey question that might give some
guidance on "didn't attend because of visa problems" versus
"didn't attend because of problems unrelated to visas".
I think this would be useful for the reasons you give and
others. And best wishes to and for the new arrivals.
John Klensin also correctly pointed out that we have IETF
participants, AND IETF MEETING participants, and we're trying
to do the right thing for both of the two categories.
Doug's suggestion - to aim the survey at IETF participants,
rather than IETF MEETING participants, also seems helpful.
To the extent to which we are moving toward decision-making by
surveys, it is probably time tat we put some energy into
understanding non-attendance patterns and reasons, not just
patterns of attendance and satisfaction with the meetings.
There are, for example, differences among...
* people who would attend meetings, but can't get visas for some
of them.
* people who get visas for some US meetings but, seemingly
arbitrarily, cannot get visas (on a timely basis) for others.
* people who attend some meetings but not others due to travel
distances, costs, or company policies. For example, some
companies require an entirely different approval process for
"foreign" meetings than for "domestic" ones, for meetings with
"away" times over a week, or for meetings held in tourist
destinations. Those extra approval processes may reduce
attendance.
* people for whom total costs of participation, or total budgets
for registration fees, may permit attending only a subset of our
meetings.
* people who have concluded that our face-to-face meetings are a
waste of time and resource, especially if they cannot count on
flying in for the one WG session of interest and then flying
back out, and hence prefer to participate only remotely.
That list probably should be longer, but you get the idea.
john
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