I'm also irritated by some of the offensiveness in the discussion.
To me, several issues appear to be "accessibility" issues,
even if the number of IETF Meeting participants affected
by them might be rather small. I think it is not appropriate
to universally apply a 80/20 good-enough principle when it
is about accessibility for human beings. There are issues
that deserve a little more consideration than "rough consensus".
David Morris wrote:
On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Fred Baker wrote:
As to food issues, I think the hosts of recent meetings at least have
done a pretty good job of pointing people to travel and food options in
the host web sites. I find myself wondering, though, if the data should
be organized in a different way. If we could get hosts to identify
restaurants in the area that cater to muslim (no pork, not even in the
kitchen), jewish (kosher rules), and vegetarian (which has multiple
meanings), and identify grocery stores where people with
medically-driven diets can find appropriate things, that might help.
IMHO gathering restaurant food option information is often part
of the normal job of the concierge (at least it used to be in the
IETF Meeting hotels 10 years ago, the last time I was on an IETF Meeting).
Maybe the IAOC should compile a list of questions for the concierge
of potential meeting hotels and send it to them so that they can
collect such information ahead of time and without time pressure.
Interesting information to collect about nearby eating places
would be:
- food type/style (chinese, italian, mexican, ...)
- availability of specific diets (jewish, muslim, vegetarian, vegan)
- hours of operation
- seating capacity
- whether advance reservation is required
- average time-to-serve
- walking distance to venue
- requirement for formal attire
(does anyone remeber Dallas, Dec. '95 IETF and the
IETF-incompatible "dress code" for the Reunion Tower restaurant?)
Religious, culturual and purely personal persuasions on
acceptable food could be covered to some extent in a questionary for
the concierge. Medically-driven diets are likely harder to cope with
including this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_intolerance
I was suprised about the significant regional differences about
Lactose tolerance in the world population (being a northern european
who drinks a lot of milk).
What might be interesting for people on a diet is the availability
of acceptable foods in grocery stores and their exact labelling
(some labelling might be limited to the local language, especially
when it is about medical food (in)tolerance. like Gluten sensitivity)
or about regionally predominant logos for certain types of
food categories (like kosher or halal) and brands that produce
food of these categories. Or stores that are specialized on
supplying specific communities or interest groups.
Opening hours of nearby food stores during the entire week will also
be extremely helpful--including weekends and any public holidays during
the IETF Meeting week. (The '97 summer IETF was in Munich, Germany,
and Friday was Aug 15th, a public holiday in that part of Germany).
I have an orthodox jewish friend who when coming to my house for a
meal would bring his own meal sealed in foil to be heated and eaten.
There are a number of restrictions on importing food in international
air travel (e.g. Europe->US, Hawaii<->Mainland), in particular for
agricultural products and also for meat. In some reagions, restrictions
may even apply to ground transportation (e.g. Arizona<->California).
-Martin
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