On 10/27/2014 10:36 PM, John Levine wrote:
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.)
For *most* of them. Those un-visa rules have nice little extra text that
they can be suspended for any reason. So for those of us who happened to
run into an immigration officer that was having a bad day, the waiver
program doesn't apply anymore. Getting a visa after that is expensive,
and takes a lot of time and effort (order of months, multiple extensive
forms, and a live interview beforehand, as well as multiple extra checks
when actually traveling). Getting a visa for China, to name something,
has turned out to be way simpler.
I realize that this can happen in any country, and that I am an
exception, though I hear it happening more and more often in the US.
I do not get the opportunity to visit every IETF anymore, but those that
require travel to or through the US are certainly the first to drop off
the list.
BTW, I am not advocating locations are picked differently, and I do
think at least a third of the meetings should be in or near the US. But
please realize that even for Europeans (and non-us americans, btw), it
can be pretty difficult to get over there.
Jelte