--On Tuesday, August 23, 2011 07:57 -0400 Thomas Nadeau
<tnadeau(_at_)lucidvision(_dot_)com> wrote:
I obviously don't have all of the information available to me
that you and the IAOC do, but it seems to be there is always
another alternative. If there are no local ones, that
alternative is usually described as "just say no and go
elsewhere". What I'm trying to understand, mostly for the
future and with the understanding that it is presumably much
too late for Taipei and the several following meetings, is
whether you would ever consider that an option for a meeting
for which you have a sponsor if you hold it in a particular
place or if you and the IAOC really believe there is no
alternative under those circumstances.
I think we need to adopt a simple rule of thumb whereby we do
not book venues where room rates of less than $200 USD are
unavailable - sponsor or otherwise.
Tom, I'm usually not the one to leap to the defense of the IAOC
on meeting costs, but I think we need to be very careful about
such rules. For many of us, total cost of meeting -- total
hotel room costs (which may be different from quoted rate), air
fares and other transport, days away from home, meals,
registration fee (for this meeting, I notice what I think is is
a new incentive to register at the last minute prior to the
"early" cutoff), even the cost of beer for those who depend on
it to lubricate conversations -- is far more important than the
hotel bill alone. In many cities, rooms quoted at USD 200 (or
much less) are easy to find, but one can make up for it in taxi
charges or Internet access surcharges. Others may have
different constraints -- I've worked with companies for whom
transport to a meeting comes out of different accounts than
being there and therefore counts either more or less. And hotel
(and other on-site) costs can fluctuate considerably as exchange
rates change.
Of course, the difficulty of calculating total meeting costs is
that each of us has different habits, comes from different
locations, has different travel perferences, etc. IAOC claims
that they try to approximate that number and consider it. I
think they often get it wrong but acknowledge that it is
probably impossible to get it right.
So I'm opposed to a USD 200 (or any other number) firm limit on
hotel rates. At the same time, I continue to wish that the IAOC
would be more open with the community about how these decisions
are made and, in particular, how the tradeoffs between
sponsorship (and hence lower costs to the IETF for meeting
infrastructure and arrangements) and meetings costs to attendees
are made... open enough that the community could give
substantive guidance on the subject, guidance that I assume the
IAOC would follow if it were coherent and plausible.
Being a little cynical, I do wonder if we would see a difference
in meeting selection patterns if all IASA staff and IAOC members
were required to stay in hotel or other rooms costing no more
than, say, your USD 200 per night figure (including transport,
if necessary, to and from the meeting site). It might help to
calibrate the pain level. The idea is not realistic for a
number of reasons, but might make an interesting
thought-experiment.
john
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