Re: [Mtgvenue] I-D Action: draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-14.txt

[Mary B <[e-mail]>]

Andrew’s suggestion of removing he non-smoking bullet and adding the
general one is fine with me.  My big issue was that if we were explicitly
including mandatory requirements for non-smoking then the mold should be
given equal consideration.

Thanks,
Mary

On Wednesday, May 9, 2018, Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> Mary's, Ted's, and Ole's discussion of particulars of environmental
> contaminents (in this case, smoking and mo[u]ld) makes me again wish
> to suggest the position I held before the specific change was made to
> draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-14.  My position at
> the time was that the Important criterion
>
>    o  Economic, safety, and health risks associated with this Venue are
>       acceptable.
>
> was what we needed.  It was pretty unlikely to be traded off with any
> kind of regularity, since "risk" and "acceptable" were sufficiently
> flexible that we'd need to call out things that were in stark contrast
> to what we normally dealt with.  In any case, I thought, further
> specification would be a problem.  Therefore, I claimed, the above
> criterion was as good as anyone could reasonably expect and it seemed
> that the details needed to be left to meeting planners.  (I didn't
> support it becoming Mandatory because the "are acceptable" language
> means that there's no test, so no way to know whether the Venue
> necessarily fails.)
>
> We are now in the situation where we have a Mandatory criterion about
> smoking in various parts of the Venue, and at least one person who
> claims that such a Mandatory criterion requires site-visiting staff to
> do some kinds of spot checks.  It's totally unclear to me what that
> would mean or what we would do if, 2 or more years later when we
> actually show up, the spot checks turn out to have been wrong.
>
> We are now also faced with the suggestion that the same staff are
> supposed to do mo[u]ld tests without having the requisite training or
> hazardous materials equipment.  If in fact we are demanding staff do
> such things, it seems to me at least plausible that staff would have a
> future complaint if we did not provide them with appropriate equipment
> to undertake the tests.  This is, I think, an important reason why we
> cannot realistically mandate such tests.
>
> Moreover, once we begin requiring such tests by staff, there are other
> pollutants that (1) could be required to be tested and (2) are not yet
> mentioned in the document, either because we haven't yet thought of
> (or discovered) them or because someone who is affected wasn't
> involved in all this.
>
> Therefore, I would like again to propose that we go back to the
> previous text -- which had the nice advantage too of having had
> consensus in the WG -- and drop the new Mandatory criterion in section
> 3.1, relying on staff to do their level best (as they ever have done)
> to address health issues that are likely to affect IETF participants
> at meetings.
>
> None of this, please note, is in any way intended to minimise or
> denigrate the health issues (or even discomforts, for all that) people
> have talked about.  But we need a document that establishes
> principles, not rules.  If one's particular concern cannot be covered
> under the principles laid out, then I think it would be most important
> to raise that.  But this particular change seems to me to be the
> addition of a specific rule where an exising principle in the document
> was already adequate to the purpose.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> [e-mail]
>
>

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