At 09:05 AM 8/7/2010, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Dear Noel;
On Aug 6, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
From: Bob Hinden <bob(_dot_)hinden(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
I do note that it seems clear that registration is related to where
we meet. That show up pretty clearly the current data. So judging
where to have future meetings based on past participation will tend
to keep us where we used to meet.
...
I think an important part of the meeting rotation is to equalize the
travel cost/pain for most attendees.
The last makes some sense, but I wonder about the 'local attendees'
affect. Clearly you will always get a goodly number of people from the
location where the meeting is, but how far does the 'continental' effect
reach in that breakdown?
We do have some data on this point - the day pass experiment (DPE) has shown
pretty conclusively IMO that the IETF
does not get a lot of truly local ad-hoc participants. Most day pass attendees
appear to be regular attendees who could only make it to that particular IETF
for one day for whatever reason, not local people who just wanted to sample an
IETF meeting.
It has long been known that IETF meetings have a local attendance effect. I
thought, before the DPE, that this indicated a potentially large number of
observers, presumably interested, but not interested enough to travel long
distances due to the cost and time required for longer trips. This, to me,
suggested that day-passes, at a reduced rate, would bring out a lot of new
people (as the time and financial burden would be even less). This did not
happen, on any of the 3 continents where the DPE has been run.
So, I now assume that the "local attendees" are people who are seriously
interested and involved in the IETF, able to travel in-region or in-country
but unable to get approval, funds or time for week-long international travel.
I hate to be blunt, but this reasoning appears seriously flawed.
None of the last 3 sites have been what I would consider "convenient" for drop
ins. Had these been in say San Jose, or DC, or London or Tokyo I might agree,
but not for the sites actually chosen. When you get to a certain distance from
your home, a day pass makes no economic nor time commitment sense - better to
attend the most of the week (or at least a couple of days), do your working
group meetings, attend the plenaries and have dinner with your colleagues (or
the folks you just met in the WG meeting) than try and fly in on one day, do a
1-2 hour WG and then decamp. I've done that - but its not the best use of my
time.
I mean really - is Maastricht such a hot bed of Internet design activity that
you would expect 20-30 locals to show up? And being 2 hours from Brussels and
3 from Amsterdam, I wouldn't expect to pick up any day pass folk from there. I
forget what your numbers showed, but weren't most of the day pass folk previous
attendees?
I wouldn't generally expect first-timers to use a day pass. Mostly, they don't
understand what an IETF meeting is like (and generally don't believe us when we
tell them). Many of the first timers I've met over the years are surprised
there aren't more instructional sessions - they're thinking symposium, not
working meeting - and they're here for the whole learning experience. I would
expect day passes to be more attractive to a repeat attendee involved in a
specific working group who has other time commitments dragging him away from
the site (work, family, etc).
Mike
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf