On 8/12/2016 10:55 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
(i) the IAOC should be making the hotel contracts public (at
least in redacted form) so that the community can review them
and make suggestions about the importance of situations like
this, how to avoid them, and how important it is to do so or
I'm on the Meetings Committee, so I get to participate in the lengthy
process of selecting venues. The committee does not, however, have
anything to do with the contracting process and it has few direct
discussions about contract details. The committee is pretty diligent,
but I don't remember actually seeing a contract or even believing it
would be helpful. (And I'm sure folk will be surprised to learn that I
suspect I generate the most questions and suggestions about meeting
details of anyone on the committee...)
Here's why the above suggestion is exactly wrong:
The IETF community is a customer to the IAOC process. It needs to
be very clear about its functional/cost/etc. requirements about venues
and it needs to press to have them satisfied.
What it does /not/need to do is emulate administrative and legal
staff tasks of implementing those requirements. To have the general
IETF community pore over contract details is to have invite non-experts
to debate about details rather than debate about requirements.
Decide what geographic, cost, access, and other functional issues
have to be resolve. Resolve them. Then let the folk who have to make
it happen figure out how.
In the current case, my guess is that what should be debated is how
large a room block is needed at the main hotel. (That probably should
be in terms of percentage of estimated total attendance.) You don't
need to see a contract to settle on that choice.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net