On Tue, 5 Jan 2016, John C Klensin wrote:
I note that "pick locations to maximize meeting fee income" was
not on any of the lists of criteria that have been posted in
recent weeks by various IAOC and Meetings Committee members. I
presume that means it is not an important criterion because, if
it were, the criteria that the community is being told about and
the criteria that are being used are different... and that, to
me, would be a very serious matter.
john
Speaking as the chair of said committee, no "maximizing meeting fee
income" is not and (at least in my opinion) should not be the primary
reason for selecting a venue. There *is* obviously some predictable
correlation between location and attendance number, for example if we
have a meeting in San Jose or San Francisco we would expect a larger
than average number of "locals" to attend because there are many of
them in that area. But it's not clear that such a peak in numbers
would benefit the IETF in the long run, in other words, it isn't clear
that such extra attendees would become regular contributors.
The primary requirement is that we find a venue where we can have a
successful meeting, and that typically starts with a meeting room
analysis while taking into account all the other desires of our
attendee population (hotel, travel, local facilities, etc, etc).
Please understand that this is an optimization excercise with no
perfect solutions unless we are really willing to give up some of
what we consider "nice" and meet in a place that strictly caters
to conventions.
Las Vegas would clearly win, but I have a strong impression that
many of our attendees would object to going there. (It also happens
to be a "tourist destination" for reasons that kind of escapes
me, but that's yet another discussion).
Ole
Ole J. Jacobsen
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