Re: [68ATTENDEES] Travel Fairness Doctrine

John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com> Mon, 26 March 2007 19:58 UTC

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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:57:56 -0400
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com>
To: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>, Andy Bierman <ietf@andybierman.com>
Subject: Re: [68ATTENDEES] Travel Fairness Doctrine
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Fred,

One final observation from me, and then I'm dropping out of this
conversation rather than prolonging it.

--On Monday, 26 March, 2007 07:50 +0200 Fred Baker
<fred@cisco.com> wrote:

>...
> Two formulations I recall
> using have been that "the IETF meets where its participants
> hail from" and "if I'm working in the IETF, once in a while
> the meeting should happen near me".
>...
> The objective is, as you say, fairness
> among those who already do.
>...
> I analyzed the then-posted Internet Drafts
> (as the most reasonable database of people definitively
> working in the IETF at the time), and came up with roughly 675
> people, who seemed to be distributed 80% North America, 16%
> Europe, and 4% everywhere else. On the basis of the doctrine,
> I instructed the secretariat to schedule one meeting in six in
> Europe, and on my watch we met in Munich in 1997, Oslo in
>...
> Between 1996 and 2001, the demographics changed vastly in the
> direction of Europe and Japan, and they have continued to
> widen. We are now distributed roughly evenly between Europe,
> Eastern Asia, and North America. We have very few participants
> from South America, Africa, Antarctica, or that part of the
> world variously called "Western Asia" or "the Middle East",
> and we have a handful from the land of Oz. IETF policy under
> Harald and Brian, who oversaw a great change in demographic,
> has been to move in the direction of meeting roughly 1/3 of
> the time Europe, Eastern Asia, and North America for that
> reason.
>...

This is a lucid presentation of the criteria, or some of them,
that you used.  You told the community at the time what those
criteria were.  My expectation is that the IAOC will develop
similar criteria, that they will announce them to the community,
and that they will listen to community feedback to tune those
criteria.  Being realistic, I assume that you (collectively)
will need to weight the criteria to actually schedule real
meetings in real places.  I do not expect those weights to be
exactly the same from meeting to meeting, nor do I expect the
IAOC to get into a discussion with the community about weighting
factors.  I also do not expect the IAD to engage in a discussion
with the community about provisions of a particular hotel
contract: BCP 101 appears to me to explicitly exclude that
requirement.

The problems recently have, IMO, been one of communication, not
choices, and of taking responsibility for the choices that are
made.  I think there may also have been some disagreement
between the IAOC and the community about expectations about
openness and/or how important the community thinks openness to
be.  For example, I believe that, if one signs a long-term
contract with a hotel chain, BCP 101 requires that at least a
summary of the provisions of that contract and what obligations
it imposes on the IETF be posted, expediously, on the IAOC web
site, not merely announced (in press release form) on the IETF
list.   

I also believe that the IAOC should be making the list of things
that are considered in selecting meeting sites clear to the
community, just as you did above and while you were IETF Chair.
When an IAOC member appears to tell me, instead, that the
choices are very complex and that they can't be explained to the
community, we have a rather significant disconnect because I
don't believe that BCP 101 allows the IAOC to operate in a model
of "we are the experts and you don't get to find out and/or
shouldn't ask".

Now, my personal criteria come pretty close to Stewart Bryant's
principle of being sure that the "people that need to be in the
meetings and in the corridors to get the work done will be
there".  I think your "near where people are" rule, and some
others, are ultimately ways to realize that principle.  I expect
the IAOC and IAD to work out the details, but I expect them to
tell the community what criteria they have worked out and to
listen to the inevitable feedback when it comes in.

That is really all.  And, for the record, I've been completely
satisfied by Ray's responses along these dimensions.

regards,
    john


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