+1, and there's another reason why successful hybrid meetings are a win: it's an important contribution to sustainability. A 1000-person meeting with 500 remote participants approximately halves the carbon cost, compared to a 1000-person traditional meeting. Even if it replaces a 750-person traditional meeting, it's a double win: 33% less carbon and 33% more participants.
We can even check those numbers, sort of.
Brisbane got 687 on-site, 742 remote, in an era when total participation is ~1500.
Adelaide got 1431 on-site, 0 remote**, in an era when total participation was ~2300. We could scale that down to 933 on-site today (1432*1500/2300). So that suggests that the hybrid format for Brisbane saved ~250 flights.
Of course the impact for each destination will be different. But if the numbers for a meeting in China worked out similar to Brisbane, where's the problem?
** I guess remote audio was available, but not remote interaction.
Regards
Brian
On 24-Sep-24 10:07, Toerless Eckert wrote:
Thanks S
Let also CC two more mailing lists for a followup to an IMHO very important
observation of yours that worries me:
On Mon, Sep 23, 2024 at 12:36:10AM -0700, S Moonesamy wrote:
Some regular attendees have their reasons for not attending meetings in
Asia. The non-attendance could result in working groups not scheduling
sessions at those IETF meetings or moving to interim meetings as a
substitute.
Partial attendance is IMHO not a good reason enough to do that. In the case of my
WG and Brisbane i had many key contributors who could not travel for monetary reasons
to Australia, so us chairs took care of this by ensuring we got a remote attendants TZ friendly
slot. And while the mayority of key attendands where thus remote, i was told it
was one of the most productive WG meetings. We (IETF/meetecho) do know how to do hybrid well!!
Likewise, reasons like i think foremost the visa policies of Canada did turn a lot of
regular contributors to remote instead of local attendees at the last IETF.
The sheer absence of any discussion about these policies on our mailing lists in comparison to
those related to China (for IETF125) does IMHO speak unfortunate volumes about the bias in the
active IETF mailing list community. Of course, this is also an issue with those who do not speak
up here, but my point is that even if you have not noticed because it was not discussed extensively
on the mailing lists: Hybrid participation also for key contributors is an unfortunate reality
for many IETF meetings these days, and will not be new for IETF125. Just the specific contributors may differ!
So, i can only encourage, that those who can not attend IEF125 in person will
be as supportive of the in-person WG meetings at IETF125 with them attending
remotely - as those who could not attend for other third-party reasons recent IETF in person meetings,
such as in Brisbane or Vancouver. And that especially WG chairs take this into account
as well and don't consider moving to an interim maybe "just" because they themselves
can not be attending in-person. That's why we have delegates.
Cheers
Toerless
I would look at the issues in terms of policy effectiveness.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
