Re: Meeting Venue Preference Survey

[Randall Gellens <[e-mail]>]

At 10:17 AM -0700 8/28/10, Dave CROCKER wrote:

>  From the survey:
>
>>  2. Meeting Preferences
>>
>>  1. It is important to me to have the meeting venue be easy to get to:
>>  It is important to me to have the meeting venue be easy to get to:
>   > Very unimportant
>>  Slides
>
>  What does "slides" mean?  I'm guessing it's an extraneous entry, 
> since it throws off the apparent model of a balanced 5-choice set 
> of responses.

I took it to mean "depends on other factors" but wasn't at all sure. 
The problem is that most of the questions had no clear answer in 
isolation, but depended on other factors.


>>  2. Do you prefer a meeting in a gateway city,
>
>  I believe the underlying problem with this question, as 
> demonstrated by the postings about it so far, is the lack of 
> consistent criteria for defining "gateway" and "secondary".
>
>  I'll offer the view that a "gateway" city is a principle hub of 
> international air travel, while a "secondary" city should have at 
> least some international air access.  I think that's a useful 
> distinction, but it means that more than one of the examples of 
> secondary, in the survey, really would be classed as tertiary or 
> worse, and there's a reasonable chance that Vancouver would count 
> as primary.

 From an air travel point of view, Vancouver is a gateway.  There are 
non-stop flights on multiple major carriers within multiple alliances 
to multiple cities on multiple continents.  It's commonly used as a 
transfer point.  However, I'm not aware of any major carrier that 
uses it as a primary hub (e.g., LAX, DFW, ORD, JFK, LHR, AMS, HKG), 
so if this is the criteria then it doesn't qualify.


>>  8. Would you attend if we held the IETF in Africa?
>>  9. Would you attend if we held the IETF in South or Central America?

Like the question on an earlier survey about Quebec City, I think it 
requires more information and more individual research to have a good 
answer.  Which venue in which city?  How hard is it to get to the 
city and venue?  Could I get an airfare that my company would 
approve?  Would we be in a central facility with a lot nearby, or 
would we be scattered around?  (I would personally want to know what 
the rules are for smoking, but I understand only a few other 
participants would care.)

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.  --Evan Davis