Rene
Dear Jay:
A third option may be to cancel the Prague meeting and decide on
online/offline meetings closer to the date (where the assumption is that
hotels are so sparsely booked that it may be possible to get another
venue organized, say, around end of Nov (4 months prior to the meeting
[with enough time for anyone to book travel]). Not sure whether the
fine-print of the Prague venue allows that option, though.
Thank you for the suggestion. What follows is not meant to be an admonishment just an explanation, as I think sometimes people underestimate just how much work goes into arranging an in-person meeting. We generally take over a year to assess the location and venues, then several months to complete the contracting, and several more months to make all the on-site arrangements such as the network connectivity. Some parts of this can be compressed in a rushed situation and even more if the venue is one we are familiar with, but even then it is highly unlikely we could arrange everything in even six months and certainly not four. This is why we arrange our in-person meetings some years in advance.
Personally, I think the virtual-only meetings are a major setback
compared to the real thing, where we should try and avoid the latter if
we can.
The responses to our post-meeting survey for IETF 108 [1] suggest that the majority of participants also regard online meetings unfavourably compared to in-person meetings (see Q7 on p9 and the open ended comments for Q48 on p111 and onwards).
As an aside, it may be reasonable to use summer university campussettings: they need the cash, summers are more foregiving in terms ofdisease control, and there is not always a need for huge hotels...Best regards, ReneOn 2020-09-14 6:49 p.m., IETF Executive Director wrote:The IETF Administration LLC is considering switching IETF 110, due to be held in Prague in March 2021, to an online meeting long before the meeting and without using the assessment process used for IETF 108 and IETF 109. This note is to explain why we are considering this action and to ask for community feedback.
The background to this is firstly that we are still in the midst of a pandemic with ongoing major disruption to global travel. A vaccine is expected but the timing cannot be predicted and there are still many obstacles to overcome. In this context, while March 2021 is still six months away, the likelihood of a return to normal by then, or at least open travel, is low.
Secondly, for 2020 the IETF LLC was fortunate enough to have both pandemic insurance and a strong contractual basis on which to cancel in-person meetings in the event of a pandemic. With that assurance we have been able to wait until the last practical moment to decide on switching to an online meeting. However, pandemic insurance is no longer available and the contract with the Prague venue does not have this protection and requires us to rebook within three years or pay a significant cancellation fee. The restrictions on rebooking are quite tight and there is only one set of future meeting dates available for us to rebook and avoid the fee. It is our assessment that the longer we wait, the higher the risk that this opportunity to rebook without paying the cancellation fee will no longer be available.
We are therefore considering making the decision now to switch IETF 110 to an online meeting and rebooking the Prague venue for a later meeting. The alternative of waiting to make the decision until ten weeks out following a proper assessment, as we have done with IETF 108 and IETF 109, risks us being subject to a cancellation fee of at least $450,000 if the rebooking opportunity has gone. On the balance of probabilities we believe the best course of action is to cancel and rebook now.
We would like to hear what the community has to say on this. Please send any comments either directly to me or to ietf@xxxxxxxx by midnight UTC on 28 September.
Jay
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