Re: IETF Attendance by continent

On 8/8/10 5:41 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:

Just to give a counterpoint, Maastricht was incredibly productive.
Perhaps you didn't see clusters of people at the conference centre,
but there were plenty of groups going for walks, going out to dinner,
and having interesting discussions.

I don't subscribe to the notion that shutting everyone into a
confererence centre-cum-campus with all amenities onsite (and a
corresponding dearth of other options, e.g. Minneapolis or Anaheim)
is going to lead to higher productivity.


I''m inclined to argee, and I the the experience in vienna was
relatively similar, that said, I also had at least three breakfast
meetings at hells kitchen the last time we were in minneapolis so I
don't that that venue is per-see devoid of opportunities to escape.

Cheers,


On 09/08/2010, at 4:14 AM, 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

On Aug 7, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:

Fred said this much more eloquently than I could.

On the IETF78 attendees list there's been a lot of discussion
about where to meet - with the primary consideration seeming to
be "pretty and small".    I may be in the minority, but I'd
really rather the IETF go places where the ability to  "get
work done" is the primary consideration.

So going forward, I hope the considerations for location will
give higher weight to meeting the needs of the folks doing the
work (my second list of folk) and the folks who keep coming
back (the first list) than to the single meeting snap shots.
Its possible the demographics for my two lists are similar to
the raw demographics so my point may be moot - but why guess
when we have the data?

Mike



At 12:34 AM 8/7/2010, Fred Baker wrote:

On Aug 7, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Bob Hinden wrote:

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. Nomcom is, as you point out, 3 of 5 meetings.  WG
chair and authors might have a longer history.


I agree with the "openness" principle, but I disagree with
this analysis.

"3..5" is another way of saying "people that attend multiple
times". As noted by others, first-time attendees (who by
definition haven't attended anywhere else and therefore give
us no guidance) and local-only attendees (which is unknowable
but demonstrably a component) aren't very interesting. What
is interesting is trying to serve people that participate. We
went to Adelaide on the observation that we had IETF
participation from there and a proposed host (which was also
why Adelaide was chosen over, say, Sydney) at a time that we
had never been to Australia. We went to Amsterdam, Stockholm,
and so on on the observation that we had significant European
participation and proposed hosts. We went to Japan when
Japanese participation became important, and we're going to
China in November largely in response to the fact of credible
levels of Chinese participation. So observing participation
doesn't limit us to where we have been, it extends us in the
direction of those who p

rtic

ipate.

Looking at people who have attended multiple meetings, and
using the nomcom rubric, make sense to me more than worrying
about first-time and local-only attendees. I would take it on
faith that we will have the latter wherever  we go, and build
on those that return. 
_______________________________________________ Ietf mailing
list Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org 
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf



_______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list 
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf



-- Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

_______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list 
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf