Re: [68ATTENDEES] Travel Fairness Doctrine

The IETFers from other-than-North-America thank you for saying that,  
I'm sure. BTW, I don't think that's a paraphrase; it's a direct  
quote, or very close to one. 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 thought actually came up at lunch today, when yet  
another person commented to me that the IETF should meet in a place  
from which people are *not* coming. Yes, there are quite a few of  
those places. I most frequently state my view here when told "if we  
were to have an IETF meeting in <some truly out-of-the-way place>,  
people from there would then participate in the IETF".  That's not  
the objective. The objective is, as you say, fairness among those who  
already do.

Among the first questions I was faced with as incoming IETF Chair in  
1996 was whether to schedule meetings in Munich, Naples, somewhere  
else in Europe I don't recall, or Adelaide. Mark Prior's proposal to  
post in Adelaide was from a group of IIRC 8 people who had been  
working steadily in the IETF since a decade before. 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 1999,  
and London in 2001. On the basis of that I also told Jun Murai that  
we would *not* meet in Japan, which was sending a few people that sat  
and listened but posted no internet drafts, and then scheduled a  
meeting in Yokohama in 2002 after the Japanese became serious  
contributors to the IETF. And some here will remember me sending a  
private note to each of those ~675 people (and a couple of mailing  
lists by mistake) and reading the perhaps 150-200 responses that came  
back, asking how others viewed the possibility of a meeting in  
Adelaide. What the IETF told me was that its participants had  
business reasons to attend. While the cost and complexity of the  
travel might affect how *many* from a company would come to a  
particular meeting, enough participants would come to have effective  
meetings. We met in Adelaide in 2000.

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.

The IETFs we have scheduled coming up are in Chicago, Vancouver,  
Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. I was not on the IAOC at the time,  
although I am now. That said, I can tell you why this scattering has  
happened. The IAD came on with only one future meeting contracted,  
and had to work hard to find venues. He worked a deal with Hilton  
Hotels, and has been burning rubber trying to get venues in place  
18-24 months in advance. He tried to put IETF 70 in China (we would  
have had meetings in Prague, Chicago, and Shanghai this year), but  
that didn't work out, and Vancouver was a fall-back option. Frankly,  
given the kinds of comments IETFers make when (as in Vienna) we are  
scattered across the town, he tries really hard to put IETF meetings  
under one or at most a few roofs. It is easier to place meetings in  
North America for that reason. He has put in place IETF meetings that  
he has been able to arrange.

On the schedule, though, the undesignated slots are named by  
continent, and he is considering locations in Australia, Japan,  
China, and several places in Europe. We'll see what the IAD can  
actually work out, but I expect IETF 72 is likely to be in Eastern  
Asia, and 2009 might not find us in North America at all.

On Mar 25, 2007, at 5:18 PM, Andy Bierman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Prague was even more incredible than I could of imagined, well  
> worth the trip from Los Angeles.
>
> However, the extended opportunity to experience the air travel  
> industry, and all its comforts, made me realize just how important  
> it is that the IETF venues "sometimes happen near me" (para- 
> phrasing Fred Baker's notion of fairness here) be true for everybody.
>
> The level of de-humanization, indifference, mixed in with  
> incompetence and economic pressures, has reached a new high, or  
> rather a new low. Unless you are very rich, the sir travel  
> experience is just something you have to endure to go to an IETF.  
> (My carrier's employees seemed united in their quest to mess up at  
> every step. I hope I get my luggage back someday.)
>
> As much as I like having the IETF near Los Angeles often, it is  
> clearly not fair to many other in the IETF, especially in Europe  
> and Asia.
>
> Andy

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