Re: IETF 97 - Registration and Hotel Reservations Open Now!

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 8/12/2016 10:55 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> (i) the IAOC should be making the hotel contracts public (at
> least in redacted form) so that the community can review them
> and make suggestions about the importance of situations like
> this, how to avoid them, and how important it is to do so or


I'm on the Meetings Committee, so I get to participate in the lengthy 
process of selecting venues.  The committee does not, however, have 
anything to do with the contracting process and it has few direct 
discussions about contract details.  The committee is pretty diligent, 
but I don't remember actually seeing a contract or even believing it 
would be helpful.  (And I'm sure folk will be surprised to learn that I 
suspect I generate the most questions and suggestions about meeting 
details of anyone on the committee...)


Here's why the above suggestion is exactly wrong:

    The IETF community is a customer to the IAOC process.  It needs to 
be very clear about its functional/cost/etc. requirements about venues 
and it needs to press to have them satisfied.

    What it does /not/need to do is emulate administrative and legal 
staff tasks of implementing those requirements.  To have the general 
IETF community pore over contract details is to have invite non-experts 
to debate about details rather than debate about requirements.

    Decide what geographic, cost, access, and other functional issues 
have to be resolve.  Resolve them.  Then let the folk who have to make 
it happen figure out how.

In the current case, my guess is that what should be debated is how 
large a room block is needed at the main hotel.  (That probably should 
be in terms of percentage of estimated total attendance.)  You don't 
need to see a contract to settle on that choice.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net