: Re: earlier registration, suggestion for the next IETFs
All agreed, but we currently pick locations based on geographic
locality to participants - maybe picking them based on visa
availability for participants might be more useful?
I doubt that's going to be a productive route. For people who live in
the US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia, and NZ, all those countries allow
citizens of all of the others to travel without a visa, requiring at
most an online un-visa (US and Australia.) Beyond that, the rules are
all over the place. The US has soms unfortunate rules (good luck if
you have a Cuban or Iranian passport) but even a normal visa often
takes months if the consulate in the visitor's country is backed up.
We might find a small country that has relaxed visa rules, but was more
expensive to get to, the overall number of people who came might well
be less.
Opening the registration earlier seems like something that wouldn't be
very hard to do, and would be a boon to people who need visas. By way
of comparison, ICANN's next meeting is in February, and the
registration has been open for a couple of weeks.
R's,
John
PS: Wait until you see what the un-visa for Argentina involves.
I also think that opening the registration earlier would be easier than
thinking about changing location with less visa limitation such as countries
like Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
Thanks,
Best,
Hosnieh