On Nov 15, 2012, at 17:04, Dave Crocker <dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net> wrote:
I'm saying that your point lacks an empirical basis
Yes.
I'm not even arguing that the IETF spend effort on obtaining that empirical
basis (hint: there is probably a great PhD thesis in organizational marketing
waiting to be written).
My hypothesis is mainly based on my perceptions of changes in reception of the
IETF in the German corporate technology and research environments right after
both Amsterdam (1993) and Munich (1997). I'm well aware that perception of
mine may, of course, be all based on confirmation bias. I still strongly
believe I have seen the effect. I'm also quite skeptical that this experience
will reliably transfer to any other market. I still believe that the potential
benefits from repeating the experiment in some of them would be worth a *small*
increase in inconvenience for IETF's regular attendees. I trust the IAOC to
choose a reasonable value of "small".
I probably don't need to point out that we regularly meet in venues that are
ridiculously inconvenient to completely inaccessible for a sizable fraction of
our regular contributors. I don't think we have very good numbers on this
effect, either (I don't think we track citizenship or blacklist name matches).
Just to throw another unfounded hypothesis in the air: in the working groups
where I'm active, this might block access to 10 to 15 % of the contributors,
and it cools down the potential interest of some more. We make a lot of our
decisions on bad data like this.
and, worse, that it can hurt the primary requirement for meeting venues.
Which, again, is not a useful way to falsify my hypothesis.
I don't think that there is any danger to the IAOC's "prime directive" in site
selection (convenience for regulars) from bringing a couple of important, but
secondary concerns to the table.
Grüße, Carsten