Mike,
There sort of was a "central hotel bar" in Maastricht, one which
extended to the outside and one which you pretty much had to walk
by to get to your hotel room --- even if you were not staying at
the NH.
However, on Monday night it became painfully obvious that the
staff was not capable of handling a crowd as large as the IETF
and while things seem to improve the next day and beyond, I think
a lot of folks had given up on the NH hotel by then and scattered all
over town etc. It would have helped of course if the NH had been
bigger, with more rooms and more staff, but that's part of the
tradeoff that had to be made. Amsterdam, in comparison would have
given us a couple of hotels near the convention center and the
rest in town, all costing about $50 per night on average. In
retrospect Amsterdam *may* have been a better choice, for some
value of "better".
The facilities in Hiroshima were not "high capacity" either, but at
least it was somewhat easier to get to nearby restaurants, bars, etc.
We'll certainly factor in all the input for future venue selections
and even explore other models as Bob outlined in his presentation
at the plenary.
Ole
Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972 Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: ole(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj
On Sun, 8 Aug 2010, Michael StJohns wrote:
Hi Bob -
I appreciate and believe that this is your highest priority, but I
think we may differ on how to best accomplish a successful meeting.
Maastricht for me was an example of the low end of sort of
successful sites and that's primarily because of the conference
center with hotels model rather than the opposite model of a hotel
with a conference center.
In Maastricht, there wasn't a central hotel bar, no place to happen
upon 3 or 4 disjoint conversations on wide topics, no 11pm discourse
on how to fix the problem that came up in the session earlier that
day. No place to buttonhole Russ or Olaf over a beer after dinner,
etc (although they may appreciate that).
A great portion of the IETFs success is due to cross fertilization
and serendipity and that has been fed in the past by having a
comfortable place with drinks and food that you pretty much have to
go by to get to your hotel room. Typically, these have been the most
successful (in terms of new ideas and energy) meetings.
In Maastricht you had that big central room with uncomfortable
chairs and pretty much no reason to be there if you weren't using
the internet or weren't either going to or coming from a WG session.
I saw few random gatherings (but I admit, I probably wouldn't have
been able to tell them from the non-random ones). Compare and
contrast this with Anaheim for example. So, Maastricht was probably
fine if you were narrowly focused on your WG(s), but not so great if
you were interested in how the various problems might interact or
were interested in learning about the IETF itself.
It's also possible that I'm waxing philosophical for a portion of
IETF culture than is no longer important to the current crop of
participants - but that's life I guess.
Mike
At 11:16 PM 8/7/2010, Bob Hinden wrote:
Mike,
Just to be clear, the highest priority in venue selection is to
find a venue where we can have a successful meeting. We won't go
anywhere were we don't think we can get the work done. This
discussion is where to have a meeting, but not at the expense of
the work itself.
Bob
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