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

[Curtis Villamizar <[e-mail]>]

Dave,

Comments from me about sorry state of trains in US + Cananda > /dev/null.
It was intended as a comment on the trains and airlines, not choice of venue.

I support continuing to seek venues in secondary cities.  I happen to like Maastricht, Prague, and Quebec City.

Hotel wired and wireless will probably be problematic for years.  A decade ago Internet access in the hotels barely existed unless IETF installed it for the hotel.  I can remember hearing reports of running cat5 cable up elevator shafts in preparation for IETF Chicago in the 1990s, one of the first IETF to have any wireless at all in the rooms.  I prefer to look at the progress, not the problems.  Things look very good from that perspective.

Wireless at the venue was flawless as far as I could tell.  This is real progress particularly from Anaheim for example (not intending to open an old wound, so follow up on Anaheim to /dev/null please).  Thanks to the volunteers that set this up.

Curtis

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] [mailto:81attendees-
> [e-mail]] On Behalf Of Dave CROCKER
> Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 8:12 AM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: [81attendees] are we getting complacent? Good job!
> 
> Disclaimer:
> 
>       I have not noticed a groundswell (or, even, /any/) support from
> others
> about the concerns I've raised with venues in secondary cities.  That
> appears to
> make this thread entirely academic.  I'm pursuing it because of the
> degree of
> mythology about hubs-vs-secondaries and about the risks of new venues.)
> 
> 
> On 8/3/2011 8:49 PM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
> >> 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.
> >
> > I do about six conferences a year and I can't remember the last time
> I was
> > given a layover anywhere close to that long.  Mine are typically
> anywhere
> > from 50 to 90 minutes, assuming no delays or missed connections.
> Sometimes I
> > actually wish they were longer.
> 
> Sorry I wasn't clear.
> 
> I am citing the aggregate cost, not just the time on the ground.  Over
> the
> years, my sense of of the incremental flight cost, in having to land
> and take
> off for a connection, is that it seems to add about an hour.  Then
> there is the
> time on the ground.
> 
> Also, the less planned time on the ground, the less robustness against
> delays in
> the first leg of the flight.  Planning only for best-case scenarios is
> typically
> not terribly good project management.  However, given the suggestion on
> another
> thread that we shouldn't worry about dropped packets, perhaps the
> IETF's new
> mission is only to consider best-case scenarios...
> 
> (Special additional circumstance:  a transition that includes
> Immigration/Customs, such as QC -> ORD -> home, needs quite a bit of
> additional
> time.  United allocated 1.5 hours and it wasn't enough.)
> 
> 
> >> On a good trip, the extra hop to a non-hub location typically costs
> 4-8
> >> hours round-trip, often also costing more money.
> >
> > Conversely, a flight to a hub rather than through one is itself often
> more
> > expensive.
> 
> often?  I don't think so.
> 
> Orbitz shows a flight from SFO to Quebec City, one month from now,
> costing
> US$550 and having no non-stops (of course.)  From SFO to Toronto is
> $514 with a
> non-stop.  (To Montreal, there is a non-stop, at a massive premium.  A
> 1-stop
> costs $524.)
> 
> That's not a huge difference, of course.  My recollection for Hiroshima
> vs.
> Tokyo was that the difference was around US$300.
> 
> Hubs have more servicing airlines which means more competition. There's
> a theory
> that competition among providers is better for the consumer.  But it's
> only a
> theory.
> 
> 
> >> I have never understood why we are so cavalier about the aggregated
> cost.
> >
> > When I weigh the potential costs of a layover against the idea of
> only ever
> > going to a handful of major transit cities, I'll take the former.
> 
> That's a tourism argument.  I recently heard someone comment that we
> officially
> do not count tourism in our planning model, but when there is a choice,
> it is
> always a strong (dominant?) factor.
> 
> My point was not that new cities aren't interesting, but that
> constantly going
> to new cities carries quite a bit of risk and cost and that going to
> secondary
> cities costs more time and money.  Not just transit time or airline
> dollars, but
> site visits to inspect new locations, site planning for wifi, and then
> all the
> fun of discovering unknowns, such as the secondary hotel in Maastricht
> only
> allowing Internet through port 80...  All of that required, additional
> research
> and planning increases the meeting fee, as well as increasing the
> likelihood of
> a serious, unanticipated problem.
> 
> Over the recent three-year period, we seemed to experience a
> significant problem
> at least one site per year.  These were unanticipated problems inherent
> to the
> place.  That's a 1/3 rate of significant problems.
> 
> 
> >  The entire experience
> > would begin to get dull; to me, then, the layover risk you've
> described is
> > ultimately worth it.
> 
> As I said, we tailor our planning for experienced, frequent travelers.
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/3/2011 11:26 AM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
>  > * Limiting ourselves to "hubs" will further limit our ability to
> find
>  >    suitable meeting venues,
> 
> That's why we are moving to lining up sites earlier.  (Roughly 15 years
> ago, we
> were told that we should plan international sites roughly 3 years
> ahead,
> specifically to ensure choice.)
> 
> 
>  > * While it may be easy to define a hub on paper, reality tends to
> make
>  >    things a lot more complicated. A fair number of our attendees are
>  >    "locked in" with certain air carriers and are thus forced to
> travel
> 
> You are suggesting this as a rationale for requiring /everyone/ to make
> plane
> changes?
> 
> 
>  > * Hubs (assuming we agree on the definition) tend to be in expensive
>  >    locations,
> 
> You are suggesting that Quebec was inexpensive?
> 
> 
> d/
> 
> ps. There was a question about the definition of a hub.  A simple one
> is
> multiple carriers with non-stop flights to another content, although I
> seem to
> recall a stricter one requiring multiple carriers with non-stop flights
> to /two/
> continents.  I suspect the latter is more useful.
> 
> pps.  Just in case the disclaimer, at the start of the message, has
> been
> forgotten after wading the fog of the message content, I'll repeat that
> I'm not
> seeing any base of support for my concerns but /am/ seeing strong
> support for
> secondary cities.
> 
> 
> --
> 
>    Dave Crocker
>    Brandenburg InternetWorking
>    bbiw.net
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