Re: [Mtgvenue] Last Call: <draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy-04.txt> (High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF) to Best Current Practice

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Apr 20, 2018, at 10:18 AM, Richard Barnes <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 8:36 PM, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> First, if you look at historical demographics, over the past 12 IETFs,
> we have 23% Asia, 26% Europe, and 42% NA). Put another way, the last
> time we had > 1/3 Asian attendance was IETF 94 in Yokohama, and the
> last time we had less than 1/3 NA attendance was IETF 79 in Beijing.
> So, a policy that was designed to match per-continent attendance would
> be more like 2-1-1-*.

Correlation does not imply causation.   We could as easily say that the reason Beijing had less than 1/3 NA attendance is that it was as difficult for a Norteamericano to get to as a North American destination is for someone from China.   That would argue for having more, not fewer, IETFs in China.   And BTW I suspect this is an accurate assessment—the amount of work it took for me to get a Chinese visa as a USian seems relatively commensurate with the amount of effort it takes someone from China to get a visa to a North American country; if anything, it was less for me, more like a taste of the difficulty than a real experience of it.

> Second, continent is not a very good proxy for travel pain, both
> because Asia is so large (for instance, the shortest Tokyo to
> Singapore route is 7:25 out and 7:10 back (on JAL) and the shortest
> Tokyo - Honolulu route (ANA) is 7:20/8:10, so not really much
> different at all) and because flight connections are such a big
> contributor ( for instance, SFO-BKK is almost 20 hours, whereas
> SFO-NRT is 11).

Well, as it happens Singapore is not _on_ the Asian continent, so perhaps this isn't a shock.   Nor is Hawaii on the North American continent.   What Hawaii has that Singapore doesn't is that it's equally difficult for pretty much everybody to get to except Europeans (modulo visa issues).   For Europeans, it's much farther than a continental Asian destination.   Singapore was a long but basically not-bad flight from Helsinki.   Hawaii is almost twice as long; Narita is two hours closer.

Anyway, what I'm pointing to is that relaxing the 1-1-1 policy isn't actually supported by the argument ekr made here. And if there's some idea that we should do another IETF in Honolulu because it's almost like doing one in Asia, please, no.   Tourist destinations suck as IETF destinations.   If you want a vacation in Hawaii, that's great, enjoy, but please do it on your own time and don't make me go there again.   I would much rather fly an extra two hours to Narita and get to go someplace that isn't a tourist trap with all the PITA tourist-milking behavior and bad food that implies.