IAOC Meeting location selection

Given the recent discusion on travel to IETF78, I wanted to summarize  
how the IAOC makes decisions on IETF meeting locations.
We first set the dates and general geographic location about three to  
four years in advance. For example, the future meeting calendar at http://www.ietf.org/meetings/0mtg-sites.txt 
 goes out through the end of 2013. We are maintaining on average a  
rotation between Asia, North America, and Europe with the goal of no  
more than two of three meetings in North America. We do this because  
we believe the community wants the dates set well in advance and to  
have a reasonable balance between NA, Europe, and Asia.
The IAOC's most important criteria for meeting locations is where can  
we have a successful IETF meeting. That is, hold a meeting where the  
IETF can get its work done. The next items are 1) having the meeting  
and hotel rooms in the same building or a conference center next to the
hotels, 2) direct international flights, 3) reasonable costs for the  
IETF and attendees, and 4) the ability to deploy an IETF style network  
in the venue. This list isn't ordered and we don't always achieve all  
of this for every meeting, but these are the goals. There are always  
tradeoffs.
If we have a host for a specific meeting and the host has a location  
preference we try to honor their preference. Having a host for a  
meeting significantly reduces the cost to have an IETF meeting. This  
is especially important for meetings outside of North America where  
the meetings rooms are not included with a block of hotel rooms. Due  
to the current Visa situation in the US we are planning many meetings  
outside of the US.
In the case of hosted meetings we might relax some of our criteria  
like direct flights or hotel and meeting rooms in the same building,  
but we will never pick a venue where we don't think we can have a  
successful IETF meeting. For non-hosted meetings, we try to pick  
convenient locations and vary the locations. That is, we try to not  
always meet in the same city in the same geographic area.
For example, we are currently trying to decide between holding a  
meeting in Vancouver and Quebec City. We are confident both could have  
a successful IETF meeting and both have hotel and meeting space for  
the dates we are looking for, but there are differences. Note, we  
looked at other Canadian cities, but these were the only cities where  
we could find acceptable hotel and meeting space for our dates. We  
have had meetings in Vancouver twice before and it meets most of the
above criteria, but at the same time Quebec City appears to be a nice  
new place to meet but doesn't have as many direct international  
flights. We decided to ask the community for feedback in the form of a  
poll. I would note that the current results show a strong leaning
toward Quebec City and this is somewhat at odds with some of the email  
thread on IETF78 in that many people seem to be willing to trade some  
travel inconvenience for a new venue. We will publish the results of  
the poll when it is completed on June 1.
In the case of Hiroshima, that is being hosted by WIDE, we know there  
will be challenges for some to travel between Tokyo and Hiroshima, we  
are working with the host to provide a lot of information to make this  
as painless as possible. There is already a link on the IETF web page
with a link to this information. We are planning something similar for  
Maastricht. Also note, that we were originally planning another  
location in Asia but the original sponsor was not able to do the  
meeting, the WIDE group helped us out to find a location in Japan.  
There are other possible locations in Japan, but Hiroshima was the  
only location that had availability on our dates.
For the Masstricht meeting we had a potential host who wanted to  
sponsor IETF78 in the Netherlands. Three venues in the Netherlands  
were available on the dates we wanted, but the other two were  
significantly more expensive. Consequently, we choose Masstricht
knowing that the local travel would be more complex.

The process inside of the IAOC for venue selection is two fold. We  
have a meetings committee that includes the IAD, IAOC members, NOC and  
community volunteers, and the secretariat. Most of the work happens in  
this committee and they produce a list of choices for a meeting in a
specific geographic location and meeting dates. There is normally a  
site visit if it is a new IETF location. The meeting committee  
prepares a summary of the choices including costs, along with their  
recommendation. These are presented to the IAOC as a whole. Based on  
this input the IAOC makes the final selection. Once that is done the  
IAD and the secretariat work with the venue to develop a contract. The  
IAOC will also approve the contract.
If there are people interested in joining the meeting committee please  
let me know. We are always on the lookout for people who have a lot of  
personal travel and meeting planning experience.
Please let me know if you have additional questions. I expect to get a  
lot of questions at the Stockholm plenary :-)
Bob Hinden
IAOC Chair

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