Re: Are IETF meeting fees exclusionary? (Was: Registration open for IETF 114)

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 14/05/2022 03:56 Michael Douglass <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> > This can be a major challenge, particularly for women. For many younger workers, this period of life tends to fall around the time many are having children. This makes getting away to conferences challenging for women, said Faust, who also has two young children.
> > 
> So I think there's no doubt about the exclusionary nature of in-person meetings. The question is what if anything is to be done?
> 
I don't want to rehash the long discussion on this point that we already had in shmoo/manycouches. The point however is that any form of meeting can be exclusionary for some people; remote participation is so in many cases.

For example, if you live in parts of the world where connectivity is bad and unreliable, virtual meetings will make it very hard for you to participate effectively. If you are a newcomer, virtual meetings will not give you the opportunity to build social relationships and fit within the group as soon as possible. If the meeting is in your same timezone, the same employer that would consider you away for a week if you participated in person will often expect you to continue being available for regular office duties and "just a minute" discussions with colleagues while you try to attend the remote conference. If the meeting is in a different timezone and falls outside of office hours, you might not have a situation at home that allows you to devote several extra hours to your job every day for a week, or you might not have a place to connect from in the middle of the night without waking up your family, etc.

In other words, any form of meeting puts someone at a disadvantage, but none is "exclusionary in nature" - they just change the set of people who get a disadvantage. Hybrid is possibly the least exclusionary form, as it allows people to choose between two modes and promotes a compromise between them.

-- vb.