--On Friday, May 29, 2009 15:24 -0700 David Kessens
<david(_dot_)kessens(_at_)nsn(_dot_)com> wrote:
John,
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 03:39:17PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
When you have time, I (and I believe others) would like to
understand better how you evaluate "reasonable costs for the
IETF and attendees". I think it is general knowledge that it
is possible to trade IETF costs off against participant costs
(e.g., making things cheaper for the IETF and more expensive
for participants). It would be good to know how the
participant costs are estimated and how the two are balanced.
While I appreciate your interest in such details, I believe we
should also be realistic in how precise such trade-offs can be
made. Eg. the IAOC just doesn't have the staff or budget to
create detailed models on the cost/benefit analysis and the
IAOC would easily end up in a situation where more
money/energy gets spend to try to determine the optimum site
location and to fully inform the community on every decision
it makes. Basically, what I expect the IAOC to do is to make a
judgement call based on the various variables.
Please reread what I wrote. I didn't ask for "precise
trade-offs". I didn't ask for "details models on the
cost/benefit analysis".
Bob said that they looked at "participant costs". I'd like to
know what they examine in that process. I care less about how
they make the calculation / judgment call than I do about
whether "participant costs" equals "hotel room rates plus
registration fee" or whether there is some effort to consider,
e.g.,
* Costs of getting from the airport to the hotel.
Sometimes those are significant, sometimes not.
* Costs of eating around the venue. We've been in
places where the only real options are hotel restaurants
or long cab rides and other places where the hotel and
meeting facilities are surrounded by a large range of
options.
* Costs of transport to/from the venue. I have no idea
how to actually calculate that without a model of the
IETF population and where we come from and am _not_
suggesting constructing such a model. But there are
places to which airfares are traditionally very high
relative to other places, either due to distance or to
the vicinity being served by only one character, and I
wonder whether IAOC is trying to consider it.
Now, in each of those cases, I am actually asking a very simple
question. Both your note and several private ones I've gotten
seem to think I'm asking "please expose the complex mathematical
model you are using and what the parameters are for each site
considered". I'm not and never have. For each of the above and
anything else that the IAOC or its meeting committee think might
be part of "participant costs", I'd like to know:
(1) Is this factor being considered?
(2) If so, has there been some attempt at data-gathering
or estimation, or is the judgment purely subjective?
Please note that those two questions have "yes" or "no" answers.
They don't even require explanations.
It is possible that, once the community gets those answers,
there will be a discussion about whether the IAOC's optimization
criteria agree with those that the community prefers. As an
example, if the "participant cost" category is considering only
hotel room costs, I think we might have a discussion about
registration fees. I would consider that discussion
constructive as long as it was about principles rather than an
attempt at micromanagement. I hope the IAOC would consider it
constructive too.
For completeness, I hope that the IAOC is also considering
"participant comfort" and "environmental livability". I note
that we are now getting information about construction projects.
That is a significant improvement but, like it or not, it took
one of these flaps about the decision-making process before the
information started being shared with the community and, I
suspect (but don't know because we weren't told), before the
question started being asked aggressively. We've also had long
discussions about air quality, safety, smoking conditions, and
availability of options for particular diets. Again, my
concern is whether those questions are being asked in the IAOC
and the answered considered and _not_ what the answers are.
And, like the question above, the questions have simple, binary,
answers and do not require analysis and detailed models.
The _only_ question I've asked that can't be answered in such a
way is how "participant costs" and "IETF costs" are compared and
weighted. Without answers to the questions above, that question
is meaningless (which is part of the reason for asking those
questions). And I realize that the answer to this one is likely
to be entirely subjective... and have no problem with that.
But, come on... it really is possible for the IAOC to answer,
however subjectively and informally, whether a site would be
chosen because it saves the IETF a lot of money even if the
difficult-to-measure participant costs were very high. I assume
the answer is "no", but then --absent the extensive models that
I'm _still_ not asking for, it is, IMO, reasonable for the
community to ask the folks in the selection process to say a few
words about how they think about that balance.
So far, I don't believe there is any evidence that IAOC has
made decisions to hold meetings in places that are completely
out of the question. At the same time, by occasionally holding
a meeting in a location that is somewhat unusual, we will
continue to be able to evaluate whether all our assumptions
about the importance of airline hubs or the desirability of a
short train trip are really that important for all
participants.
Absolutely.
As a partial response to Fred's comments, I don't believe that
the community has ever supplied the IAOC with consensus about a
consistent and well-defined set of criteria either. I also
don't believe that convening a WG to try to develop such
criteria would be either productive or a good use of time. The
effort by Dave Crocker and others that Fred mentioned was
strongly influenced by the advantages of picking a handful of
locations and simply rotating among them. I think that many of
us, while recognizing the advantages of that approach, still
prefer a larger number of locations.
As another example, there used to be a principle that we meet in
locations from which there were IETF participants and probably
still is. But "location" seems to have evolved from "city" to
"country" to "continent". I don't know how the community feels
about that and I don't think the IAOC does either.
But the only ways I know of to work these problems are either
for the community to assume that the IAOC will read our
collective minds (I don't think the IAOC members would claim the
ability to do that), and make the right decisions on that basis,
and have us quietly accept any such decision or for us to engage
in a running dialog that gradually refine and continually adjust
criteria and IAOC perceptions of them. I hope that can be kept
constructive and can avoid getting into micro-details of
particular meetings or ongoing second-guessing.
But I don't think that the risk that some members of the
community will go down those paths, or even the perception that
some have, is an adequate reason to try to eliminate the
discussions. And I continue to believe that more spontaneously
and timely openness on the part of the IAOC --as BCP 101 appears
to me to require-- would head off most of the "why did you do
this and why aren't you telling us" part of the discussion.
Basically, instead of endless discussions on the merits of a
required short railtrip from 1 of 3 different very large
airports that are all listed very high in the european top 10
hub airports, let's go to Maastricht and see how it will work
out.
David, again, please reread what I've said. I haven't opposed
going to Maastricht. I asked what happened to the international
airport criterion and pointed out (as did others) that asking
someone to transfer to a train connection after a long flight
are not quite the same as asking someone to change planes.
But your comment does identify the other difficulty I see here.
"See how it will work out" is entirely reasonable if we are
learning from these experiences. But, as far as I can remember,
the community has never been given a retrospective review on a
previous meeting and what has been learned from it. Ray does
surveys after every meeting now, but I can't recall the
community ever being given a report on the results of those
surveys and what was learned from them. I do remember one
conversation in which I encouraged a plenary discussion of some
issues with a meeting while it was still in progress and was
told it needed to be avoided because it would embarrass the host
but don't believe there was any follow-up, at least outside IAOC
private discussions.
It may be that the IAOC is doing those evaluations, learning
from them, and making adjustments. I assume that they are. But
the IAOC is not supposed to be operating in "trust us, we have
knowledge you don't and we are in charge" mode. And it is
ultimately variations on that mode to which I'm objecting.
So, given your comment, I'd like to make a specific proposal.
Let's "go to Maastricht and see how it will work out". Let's
also go to Stockholm and Hiroshima and see how they will work
out. But let's also put a report from the IAOC on how things
worked out, what, if anything, was learned, and what adjustments
are contemplated for the future on the agenda for the IAOC
plenary report at IETF 76 for Stockholm and at IETF 77 for
Hiroshima. To make time for that, let's ask the IAOC to move
the usual statistical and financial part of their report to
their web page at least a week before the IETF meeting starts
and call people's attention to it so that questions can be asked
if needed but no meeting time is taken up reciting numbers.
Does that makes sense, or do you still think I'm leading either
a effort to second-guess the Maastricht decision or to force the
IAOC into complex mathematical or financial modeling of every
site under consideration?
best,
john
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