Thanks so much for your efforts on both Singapore meeting and improving future
IETF meeting selections. You have done an excellent work on respecting various
opinions and making a >necessary compromise.
+1
Regarding to diversity among future IETF meeting selections, there are
actually multiple meanings of diversity. But in my opinion, the most important
task for IETF organizer should be to >get and keep high quality and consistent
contributors. Arising the awareness of IETF in wider areas, attracting more
diversity people (particularly, if these people would not join the follow->up
IETF meetings) are much less important than the convenience for our majority
consistent participants. Therefore, the most important diversity should be
geography diversity among the >current majority consistent participants.
Consequently, I strongly support 1+1+1 policy. One potential option is that we
may have a set of side/secondary IETF meetings apart from the >three main IETF
meetings per years. They could be hold out of main areas to serve the other
diversity purposes.
Sheng, I find the idea of "secondary or side" meetings very intriguing. I
think this may be a path for regions who do not have a large set of
participants (yet). I would like to see this idea elaborated upon. What are
your thoughts?
Nalini
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of IETF Chair
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2016 9:58 PM
To: IETF Announcement List
Cc: recentattendees(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org Discussion
Subject: actions related to improving IETF meeting selections
The discussion about the Singapore meeting has been difficult for us. The IETF
needs a meeting that we are generally happy with. Various past mistakes and
new learnings aside, we are now in a situation where no decision in this space
will be perfect. We knew that no matter what choice is made, there will be
groups of people who feel they are unfairly impacted.
But perhaps the most important things are that, long-term, the community
gets to carefully weigh what they expect from meeting locations, that we all
learn from more about the various challenges discussed, we are an open
organisation for everybody including minorities, and that we improve our
processes going forward. It is also crucial that the IETF remains an
organisation that can do its technical work, and be open to all of our global
participants in a fair manner. And obviously be capable of arranging our
operations in the real world, in areas that our participants come from.
What follows is what we are proposing as additional onward work to address
the issues highlighted in this discussion:
o The IAOC as well as members of the community have asked me to
charter a working group to continue the discussion of the detailed meeting
criteria document (draft-baker-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process). All
criteria are on the table for discussion. The working group proposal is being
reviewed by the IESG, and will be out for community review shortly. A WG
meeting in Berlin is planned.
o Develop a BCP that defines the community-backed, official policy for the
overall strategy of geographic meeting distribution (our current strategy is
referred to as 1-1-1*). An initial draft for this is in the works.
o Arrange a special session in Berlin to discuss the role of human rights,
visas, and other aspects of international meeting arrangements. We have
begun to work to find outside experts in this space who can join a
conversation. (If you have suggestions, let us know.)
o Continue the new practice of informing the community of potential
future meeting destinations, and collecting “crowd-sourced” input on their
suitability.
o Commit to a proper, informed process to identify issues that any
subgroup (including but not only the LGBTQ community) has with our site
selections.
o Commit to returning to the 1-1-1* meeting model — or what the
eventual BCP policy is -- for Asia for the remainder of the decade. For the
last
decade, we’ve only met there 4 times.
o Commit to holding all other currently planned meetings as they are, and
focusing on making the most appropriate decisions about future meetings, as
informed by community input.
o While we do not believe that we should respond to the current
discussions merely with a suggestion of conducting our meeting virtually, it is
a clear direction that IETF and other organisations will be using more virtual
collaboration tools in the future. The IESG has discussed taking initial steps
with regards to bigger virtual meetings. Experiences from this could drive
further efforts.
Jari Arkko, IETF Chair