Re: Venue Announcement for IETFs 98, 99, 102 and 111

[Ole Jacobsen <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, 7 Jan 2016, John C Klensin wrote:

> Ray,
> 
> However, with regard to setting the policies and priorities
> (other than at least breaking even) that determine meeting
> locations, my understanding of how the IETF works is that the
> IAOC is supposed to be interpreting community views (or
> proposing policies to the community and getting approval) and
> instructing the Meetings Committee accordingly.  

Yes.

> 
> Independent of the specific concerns, complaints, and general
> whining about particular venues or choices, the thing I, and
> apparently others, have heard most consistently in recent years
> involves people in the community saying "we should reprioritize
> so-and-so" and the IAOC or meetings committee responding "can't
> do that because we are working three years out".

No, I hope not. What you have heard (or should have heard) is that 
there are incompatible requirements, kind of like the "cheap, fast, 
reliable, pick two!" joke. So every choice has a set of consequences 
and there is no such thing as a perfect choice.

> Some people have expressed the suspicion that a response of that 
> type is equivalent to "the tradeoffs are complicated, the community 
> can't possibly understand them, we understand these things better 
> than the community does anyway, so we aren't really interested in 
> input or community oversight".

I hope that isn't the case. I have certainly seen the venue selection 
priorities evolve to become much broader and the IAOC reacting to 
them, whereby "meeting facility works" is no longer the dominant 
factor and "alternative accomodation, travel, shops, etc" is taken 
more into account than, oh, say for Maastricht and Dublin, to name a 
couple of less than stellar choices.

> Even without believing that, if working three years ahead 
> effectively suppresses priority determination by the community by 
> making any such efforts ineffective within any reasonable time, then 
> 5 1/2 is much worse.

What specific priority, related to this announcement, is it that you 
think could, should or would change? That we start meeting at 
university campuses again, radically reduce the number of paralell 
sessions, have more or fewer meetings per year, radically change 
remote participation options? Those are all things that COULD happen 
and SHOULD happen if the community agrees, but given how slow anything 
moves in the IETF, would it not make sense to at least assume things 
will continue more or less as currently when making deals for 
resources that are decidedly limited and time sensitive?

I do agree that a deeper analysis of the priorities should be 
undertaken and discussed with the community of course. 


> 
> best,
>      john
> 
>