Re: Hotel situation

[Ole Jacobsen <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 5 Jan 2016, John C Klensin wrote:

> 
>
> I note that "pick locations to maximize meeting fee income" was
> not on any of the lists of criteria that have been posted in
> recent weeks by various IAOC and Meetings Committee members.  I
> presume that means it is not an important criterion because, if
> it were, the criteria that the community is being told about and
> the criteria that are being used are different... and that, to
> me, would be a very serious matter.
> 
>     john
> 

Speaking as the chair of said committee, no "maximizing meeting fee 
income" is not and (at least in my opinion) should not be the primary 
reason for selecting a venue. There *is* obviously some predictable 
correlation between location and attendance number, for example if we 
have a meeting in San Jose or San Francisco we would expect a larger 
than average number of "locals" to attend because there are many of 
them in that area. But it's not clear that such a peak in numbers 
would benefit the IETF in the long run, in other words, it isn't clear 
that such extra attendees would become regular contributors.

The primary requirement is that we find a venue where we can have a 
successful meeting, and that typically starts with a meeting room 
analysis while taking into account all the other desires of our 
attendee population (hotel, travel, local facilities, etc, etc).

Please understand that this is an optimization excercise with no
perfect solutions unless we are really willing to give up some of
what we consider "nice" and meet in a place that strictly caters
to conventions.

Las Vegas would clearly win, but I have a strong impression that
many of our attendees would object to going there. (It also happens
to be a "tourist destination" for reasons that kind of escapes
me, but that's yet another discussion).

Ole


Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
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