All,
I'm confused about what really applies for travel to the US just now.
There were a lot of restrictions posted in late January 2021, including
a requirement of 7-days self-quarantive after arriving to the US.
I can't find, what applies at the moment, and I can't find the the
January regulations has been lifted.
/Loa
On 20/09/2021 17:09, STARK, BARBARA H wrote:
Agree with Phillip, but I would add one more thing. Stewart's
note includes "country that is open to International
participation in technical standards meetings". I'd would be
happy --or at least amused-- to see a counterexample, but,
AFAICT, the number of countries who have imposed travel
restrictions -- regardless of when, for how long, and with
various details-- but have said "except for technical standards
meetings, whose attendees are exempt from the rules" is zero.
Actually, for the upcoming Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam in October it's possible for attendees to get an exemption from the quarantine requirement (which is the most onerous part of a travel restriction -- vaccines and tests are less onerous except for people from places where vaccines and tests are difficult to come by). BBWF isn't a "technical standards meeting"; but the exemption is possible to request for all business-related conferences which I would expect might include "technical standards meetings".
Barbara
I think Brian Carpenter's note of some weeks ago is key.
Restating it from a different perspective. Until either a very
large fraction of the worldwide population has been vaccinated
with a vaccine that is highly effective in preventing infection
and transmission and not just against serious illness,
hospitalization, and death (likely many years at the rate things
are going) or almost all of those who have not developed nature
immunity have died off (likely even longer), we are going to
have countries with significant exit or reentry restrictions and
companies with travel restrictions of their own. Maybe
predictability will improve to the point that we get months of
notice about who is going to impose (or drop) which restrictions
and when rather than the "little or no notice" Phillip mentions,
but the odds of getting enough notice to plan meetings well are
about zero.
Net result: Unless we really want to have never ending
discussions about how one country or company is more protective,
infected, or reasonable than another (and likely to remain so
some months or years off) or about which groups of participants
are more important than others, it seems to me that there are
only three realistic questions:
(1) Do we plan on all-remote meetings for the indefinite future
or is it possible, operationally and economically, to plan
"hybrid" meetings with significant numbers of people remote,
meetings whose physical locations can be cancelled or moved on
relatively short notice? As others have pointed out, big parts
of the latter question are financial and I hope the LLC (really
Jay) will tell us rather than having those of us who are not
expert and who do not have access to key data debate the topics
at length.
(2) Would there be significant enough value in cluster meetings
that are f2f on a national or regional level with the clusters
participating remotely in global IETF meetings to justify
sorting out the many challenges -- technical, logistical, and
financial -- associated with such arrangements (and noting that
some countries and companies have imposed in-country travel
restrictions, not just international ones)?
(3) Do we really need to have these discussions on a per-meeting
basis or can we consider the time they take away from
substantive technical work that might make the Internet better?
Can we cut the frequency down and increase our overall technical
productivity? And, if the answers are "less often would be
fine", can we determine the frequency (or delegate that
determination) and then start treating any threads that bring
the issues up on the interim without introducing new and
significant information and circumstances as disruptive?
thanks,
john
--On Monday, September 20, 2021 08:55 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't think there is any value to be had in the game of
guessing which country will be more or less open to visitors
in nine months time.
Any country can shut down with little or no notice. And it is
not just stopping people in that is the issue, it is people
unable to get back home. There are still people who have been
unable to get home from the 2020 lockdowns.
US regulations have much wider impact than the US. Corporate
travel restrictions tend to be at least as restrictive as the
US. It is highly unlikely that we can have a productive
meeting anywhere on the planet while US travel restrictions
are in place.
The people of a certain ideological faith spend a lot of time
jabbering enthusiastically about 'regulatory arbitrage'. In
practice, regulation tends to spread far beyond the sovereign
territory it theoretically applies to. The device you are
reading this on is almost certainly RoHS certified (or
pretends to be) despite the fact that this is only a legal
requirement in the EU.
On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 1:16 AM Stewart Bryant
<stewart.bryant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know that it is a long way out, but there seems to be a
significant body of opinion that the US will not open up to
travel by the residents of a significant number of IETF
participants until the end of 2022.
Under these circumstances should we not be moving IETF 114
from the USA to a country that is open to International
participation in technical standards meetings?
Moving a meeting is no small undertaking, and the sooner we
take steps to move to a less restrictive country, the higher
the chance that we will have a face to face rather than
virtual meeting.
- Stewart
--
Loa Andersson email: loa@xxxxx
Senior MPLS Expert loa.pi.nu@xxxxxxxxx
Bronze Dragon Consulting phone: +46 739 81 21 64
