-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Mark Nottingham
Sent: 09 August 2010 01:42
To: Michael StJohns
Cc: Bob Hinden; IETF discussion list
Subject: Re: IETF Attendance by continent
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.
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
a
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.
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Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
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