[Mtgvenue] Visa problems to Thailand -- tourism vs ED

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

0) Lots of references to IASA in both draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy-07
   and draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-16 reference
   IASA and IAOC.  Is there an AUTH48 plan to change these to LLC?

1) I'm asking because maybe we need an additional AUTH48 change detailing
   what "visa requirements" means in section 3.2:

Section 3.2 includes:

      Travel barriers to entry, including visa requirements, are likely
      to be such that an overwhelming majority of participants who wish
      to do so can attend.  The term "travel barriers" is to be read
      broadly by the IASA in the context of whether a successful
      meeting can be had.

And we have a long thread this month about whether a VISA is required,
if a tourism VISA is acceptable, or whether one of the various business
visa's might be appropriate.  Along with opinions from a variety of
consolulates in various countries who clearly do not know what kind of VISA
to issue.

At this point, I think that there is a great deal of FUD in the air.
It's tangible uncertainty, not just marketing that is occuring here.

It started with a request for the IAOC to please collect the list of official
statements in one place so that we don't have to do all the leg work (and the
uncertainty that we have the wrong info!)
The response was that the IAOC can not provide specific advice for any
specific travellers is of course reasonable, but completely missed the
point.  That the IAOC can't manage to point to a specific visa requirement is
of great concern.  That we do not seem to be on the list of conferences
seems to cause a great deal if uncertainty.
  see:  https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/XWeYQJjsZRVNDHcaVAEdpUW4Ri8


I'd like to see a paragraph basically saying that a mtgvenue criteria
is the ability to get a clear statement as to what the visa requirements
*are* for a specific meeting place.
  {I'd like to say that a reference to a government web site would be a great
  thing, ideally hosted in a clear "gc.cctld" place, but it appears that Thai
  government web sites often use .com. (There is an entire rathole of
  web-site reputation standardization that we could avoid here... maybe we
  can make it a W3C problem)}

Please note that I am not asking for the VISA process to be predictable,
repeatable, or rational.  While many of us would like the legal codes to
be subject to standardized interpretation, this is clearly not within
our ability to affect.  That doesn't mean that we can't ask for a stable
ISO9001-type reference.  Even if the documented process involves
rolling die or consultation of the pineal gland.

I rather feel like this is micromanaging the IAOC mtgvenue cmte by the
community.

Maybe this need to do this is part of the frustration that some have with the
IAOC.  Two months ago, I would not have thought that we needed to write
this down, that it would be obvious that a request to place collect the
information in one place would be responded to with: "yes, of course, sorry
that we didn't point to official-site-X in the announcement"

--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-