Re: Newcomers [Was: Evolutionizing the IETF]

On Nov 9, 2012, at 12:28 PM, SM wrote:

> At 06:31 09-11-2012, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:
> > I am newcomer and not able to attend because most of meeting in
> > America instead of Europe.
> Most of the money comes from North Americans.  There is some historical 
> information in RFC 3717.
I'd suggest a more thorough analysis.

Data from https://www.ietf.org/meeting/upcoming.html and 
https://www.ietf.org/meeting/past.html. Take a look at the attached spreadsheet.

IETF demographics and meeting location policy have changed over time.

Originally, in 1986, not only was the IETF entirely American, it was entirely 
US Government, and nobody else was invited. That changed pretty quickly, but 
the community attending remained predominantly US for some time. So meetings 
before 1993 all occurred in North America, and if truth be told, the reason 
that the meeting in August 1990 was outside the US was that it had been 
intended to be in Seattle, the host had a problem, and UBC came to the rescue.

Starting in 1993, we noted that the demographics had changed; about one in six 
IETF participants came from Europe. So, we tried to place one meeting in six in 
Europe. We had a small group attending from Australia, and in 2000 had a 
meeting there in recognition of the fact. But by that time, we were starting to 
have a more significant attendance from Asia, notably Japan. So we changed 
policy to trying to position three meetings in six in North America, two in 
Europe, and one in Asia+Australia. And starting (IIRC) in 2005, we simplified 
that policy to having one meeting each year in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Regarding that last policy, we have unfortunately had some problems; one 
meeting that we intended to have in Asia recently fell through, and we had to 
move it somewhere, and in another recent case the Asian venues we were looking 
at essentially priced themselves out of the market. Our Asian friends told us 
that a meeting in Vancouver was an acceptable compromise; getting a visa wasn't 
as hard for them as a US visa, and it was not too hard to get to. So we have 
had at least two meetings in Vancouver that we fully intended to have in Asia.

Since 2004, we have in fact had about 1/3 of our meetings in Europe. If anyone 
has been shortchanged, it has been our Asian friends. "Where the money came 
from" was an issue in the 1990's - we had to assume that a meeting outside the 
US would be financially short due to US participants not attending; in 2000, 
the meeting in San Diego had 2810 people and the meeting in Pittsburg 2344, but 
the meeting in Adelaide had 1431. By 2004, distribution had become roughly even 
- meetings that year had right around 1300 attendees regardless of location. 
The issues are now related to success in finding affordable venues.

ietf-meeting-data.xlsx
Description: ietf-meeting-data.xlsx