Re: [81attendees] are we getting complacent? Good job!

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

Preface:

     Perhaps it is not unprecedented, but I do not recall seeing such a strongly 
positive post-meeting set of postings before this, especially in the face of a 
noticeably thin set of complaints.  Whatever Quebec City's magic, it worked 
impressively well and that definitely should count for quite a lot.

    In particular, since real attendees at recent meetings must be treated as 
the sizable core population for future meetings, that reaction overrides most 
other concerns.

(Just to be thorough -- the concerns that I saw raised that seemed to have a 
base of agreement were:  Delta's network, a tendency for very cold meeting 
rooms, and high food prices.  I also heard some complaints about food at the 
Hilton, but not on the list.  Were there others?)


Regularly-scheduled programming:

As for some of the long-standing points about meeting at non-hub venues:


On 8/1/2011 5:32 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> SFO-ORD = about 4 hours
>
> ORD-YQB = about 2 hours

plus transit time /in/ ORD. Changing planes typically adds at least 2-3 hours to 
the total trip time, counting landing and takeoff and in-airport transfer.

In addition, non-hub venues have much more fragile and limited connectivity. 
Quebec city is serviced by a couple of regional carriers, to only a few cities, 
codeshares with major airlines notwithstanding.

Transitions always make a process more fragile and carry additional cost.

(This includes opportunities for luggage or the passenger to miss the 
connection.  I enjoyed both of these excellent experiences on this trip -- one 
going and one returning -- by way of demonstrating that these are not matters of 
theoretical concern.)

On a good trip, the extra hop to a non-hub location typically costs 4-8 hours 
round-trip, often also costing more money.

That's 500-1000 extra person days spent in transit.

I have never understood why we are so cavalier about the aggregated cost.



> On 8/1/2011 2:57 PM, Fred Baker wrote:
>>     Where it gets crazy is if there are not adequate
>> flights to support meeting attendance (if we wanted to have the IETF in Santa
>> Barbara, I'd be happy, but the rest of you would be whining up a storm), if
>> routes or layovers are just plain silly (I once flew Kampala->Cairo via
>> Lilongwe and Johannesburg, and don't get me started on San
>> Francisco->Bangalore), or such.
>>
>> I don't think we have an appropriate emoticon for "I am so very OVER people
>> whining about not being able to get end to end on a single airplane"...

Presumably there is an important distinction between whining and serious 
criticism.  I say this with some doubt, since postings like this are quite 
common and appear to confuse the two.

For example, I challenge folks to find anyone having asserted the requirement to 
get "end to end on a single airplane".  However it does evoke a convenient basis 
for dismissing serious discussion.

One might even say that most of the whining about venue choice is by the people 
attaching the label whining to efforts at serious.

IETF lists do get silly postings and one would think, by now, that we would all 
know how to distinguish between them and serious postings. Instead we often use 
the silly postings as an excuse to dismiss the serious ones.

Tsk. Tsk.

Discussion about travel to IETF meetings tends to be dominated by highly 
experienced travelers who already spend a great deal of their lives on planes 
and in foreign countries and for whom an extra connection really is in the noise.

As such, it means that we ignore or denigrate those who do not travel as much 
but who want to come to a meeting to do work.  For these latter folk, extra 
hassles (and costs) are significant, whether we respect that or not.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net