On 12/17/2015 1:24 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
On Thu, 17 Dec 2015, Dave Crocker wrote:
In this case, hotel choice is only part of the equation. Travel
time and travel cost are two other major factors. So are additional
costs, such as food in the main venue. (We had one main venue with
reasonable hotel room rate but US$ 25 hamburgers...)
***OLE: I assuming you are referring to Yokohama, correct me if I am
I meant a hotel we were at in Europe, I believe, some years ago and
possibly again recently. The city itself was not generally insanely
expensive. But food in that hotel was.
And yes, Japanese major hotels have crazy prices. It was my first
encounter with US$10 coffe, 20 years ago, while street-level outside
food is better and a fraction the cost. In terms of inside food prices,
I believe there is no choice in Japan, but there's plenty of choice in
North America and Europe.
To get better surveys, they need to be dramatically more carefully,
in terms of question formulation, respondent selection and response
analysis. This is not a new or unmentioned issue within the IAOC
and meeting committee. What we currently do produces results
dominated by well-funded, continuing participants who are highly
experienced travelers; in effect, we get a tourism response from
folk who are already likely to attend.
***OLE: At the end of the day it comes down to selecting a venue which
will accomodate our MEETING requirements, we use A LOT of rooms for
our meetings which makes that particularly challenging.
Sorry, no. While yes, it limits our choices, we've have found a number
of places over the years that handle us quite nicely.
What actually is challenging is regularly having to find /new/ places.
That's a very different problem.
Choices like BA or Sydney inconvenience essentially all attendees, in
favor of goals other than getting work done.
***OLE: Just to be clear, the IAOC did not choose Buenos Aires, the
IESG in dialog with the community did.
The initiative was from the IAOC. And the 'dialog with the community'
is a good example of the problematic survey methodology I was citing.
This has been well-hashed before, so I won't review the details.
To date, there has been little interest in making the necessary effort
to focus on requirements for being more inclusive.
***OLE: It's a complicated issue and it's getting more complicated
as attendance grows, the economy expands (prices go up) and so on.
It would certainly be *possible* to go back to meeting at some
University campus...
It is made particularly complicated by the introduction of social and
marketing requirements that appear to be laudable but actually are
entirely outside the requirements that we claim are primary for our
meetings. They also tend to have no operational foundation for
efficacy. Think of it as outreach theater...
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net