Having organized (or tried to…) conferences at a US university, some caveats:
- You can get cheap housing, but only in the summer and some places. (I
recently stayed at the U. of Toronto for $38/night, albeit having showers down
the hall may not be everybody's cup of tea. Rates in Columbia summer housing
are no better than NY hotel rates and you'd have to book years in advance to
get a large enough room block, given all the summer events at major
universities.)
- Most university class room are designed for smaller classes than the typical
IETF room size (with 5 or 6 parallel sessions, you'd want 200 or so seats in
each, I'm guessing), so you might have all the larger venues (100+ seats)
spread around campus, maybe one per building. Makes it difficult to have a
single cookie area.
- Some universities will charge pretty hefty sums to use their student center
facilities, which is probably the only facility large enough for a plenary.
Generally, they'll charge market rates for rooms unless you can get local
faculty to sponsor the event.
- With a few exceptions (GaTech is probably one and maybe Toronto, if you
define city center generously), large universities are not in the city center
and not close to large number of business-level hotel rooms, for the obvious
reasons that students aren't their typical customers and you can't survive on
parents weekend and graduation alone. You will typically find more motels and
such, but geared towards driving to campus, not walking.
Universities outside North America may be more suitable, but again only during
semester breaks in most cases. Even Internet2, which presumably could easily
get campus event sponsorships through their CIO members and has mostly
university attendees, typically doesn't have its member meeting at universities.
Henning
On Aug 24, 2011, at 7:32 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
Sorry, I wasn't trying to suggest a bad faith situation, just reacting
to your WORDING :-)
I agree that hotel prices have risen and that isn't limited to the
venues under consideration by the IETF. NANOG and APRICOT hotel rates
have gone up as have other meeting hotel rates, and certainly the
hotels I stay in as an individual have gone up a LOT in, say, the last
ten years, and that's not even accounting for the currency changes. I
have a couple of "favorite" hotels that have have gone from "under
100" (for values of Euros, Pounds, Dollars, other kinds of dollars) to
"well above 200" in that timeframe.
I think the only way to get HQ hotel rates down is to go to the sort
of places that the IETF seems to not want to go. One of the cheapest
places to fly to in the world is Las Vegas. You can also get really
good hotel rates there, group or individual. Since I went to Las Vegas
every year for 10+ years and basically did nothing but attend a
conference and tradeshow *I* have no problem going back and would
certainly consider it an option, but I certainly don't love it and
wouldn't care if I ever set foot there again, and I know for a fact
that many on this list feel the same way.
The University Campus, or maybe "University Conference Center" idea
is worth exploring, such places do exist (in Atlanta for example),
but, as others have pointed out, we need to clearly define what the
goal is here and recognize that there are some incompatible
requirements.
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
Skype: organdemo
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011, Stephen Farrell wrote:
On 08/24/2011 11:07 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
"....doesn't look that good in terms of iaoc performance over time."
Are you seriously suggesting that we are looking for more and more
expensive venues over time?
No. And obviously not. I don't see how it helps to suggest
that either.
Do you not think there might be some
factors such as inflation, currency fluctuations, general cost
increases (oil prices perhaps) that dictate most of this?
Inflation is accounted for in the figures given. We're
still >20% above inflation in terms of hotel prices based
on these figures.
You might claim hotel price inflation is higher than the
overall, I don't know. I would hope the iaoc would know
that. What I'm claiming is that the numbers seem to me
to show that the outcome is not so good. And hence it seems
to me that the iaoc is not performing that well in this respect.
You might bring out the meeting fee argument etc. but I
think you (the iaoc as a group) should start by acknowledging
that there is a real issue here and then try to address
that and *not* argue I'm accusing you of bad faith or
something.
S.
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
Skype: organdemo
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