Re: Concerns about Singapore

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

Also, if you live in a country with censorship, or with low bandwidth, it's
possible that the only way to attend an IETF meeting will be in person.
It would be nice if there were a bright line to draw on one side of which
is total inclusiveness, but there is not.   We need to make both kinds of
meeting work.

What Stephen said is right--the IAOC needs to systematically, rather than
informally, analyze what it is that needs to be done in confidence, and
expose the rest to public view.   I know this is non-trivial, and I do not
say this in the spirit of bashing the IAOC, who work very hard for us with
little reward other than our complaining.

If I were on the IAOC right now, I would be thinking about how to get off
of it.   I've been in the situation of having what seemed like a big chunk
of the IETF upset at me, and it's pretty soul-crushing.   Nevertheless, I
think what Stephen proposes is the thing the IAOC can do that is most
likely to prevent future woe of this kind.

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Yoav Nir <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> > On 11 Apr 2016, at 1:45 PM, Rich Kulawiec <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 08:05:19AM +0000, Andrew Allen wrote:
> >> We could be left with the only possible venue being a cruise ship
> >> sailing in international waters - [snip]
> >
> > There is another alternative -- one I've raised repeatedly.
> >
> > Don't have physical meetings.  Then this entire problem space simply
> > vanishes, along with the need for a discusion thread that's now over a
> > hundred messages.  (And it's not the first one.)  YES, it's replaced by a
> > different problem space, which roughly works out to "how can everything
> > be done virtually?"  but given that this is the *Internet* engineering
> > task force I have no doubt that the collective expertise is more than
> > capable of dealing with that.
>
> I don’t believe that this technology exists. People have been singing the
> praise of Meetecho in IETF 95, and yet remote participation is nothing like
> being in the room. And the “virtual interim” meetings are nothing like
> physical meetings. There is a reason why airlines make great money from
> business travel and don’t shut down for the winter.
>
> > Particularly if all the discussion, effort,
> > and expense going into the logistics of physical meetings is redirected
> > into virtual ones instead.
>
> Yeah, perhaps, some day when we’re all wearing virtual reality headsets
> and our avatars are hanging out in a virtual venue, and we all have
> sufficient equipment and bandwidth to handle all that. We’re not there yet.
>
> > I really can't take any of the platitudes about "inclusion" seriously
> > until that happens -- because as long as the IETF persists with physical
> > meetings, most people *will* be excluded due to cost, distance, time,
> > legal climate, personal safety, etc.  The IETF is, even if accidentally,
> > selecting for the elite few who are fortunate enough to be attend.
>
> Virtual meetings with the technology we have today makes it very hard for
> people with mediocre English to follow the discussion. The “I don’t quite
> follow what you’re saying” look does not translate well to the kind of
> video we can use today. That extends even to people with relatively good
> English (for non-native speakers) like me.
>
> Yoav
>