Roman, et al
Thanks for this. One other thing I will note is that more and more companies have altered their view on conference travel post 2020-2021.
The savings on reduced travel has made the bar to attend conferences much higher than before.
"Chairing a Working Group, meeting with authors and others, presenting a draft in another group, and you desire to attend a hackathon"
now gets the "you can do that all remotely in our view"
Sometimes we become the victim of our success.
tim
On Tue, Sep 24, 2024 at 10:24 AM S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Brian, Toerless,
At 08:23 PM 23-09-2024, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>+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.
Andy provided some useful information at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/jZ08A3b0oQOq25NUBbG27pA9d5M/
A simplified explanation for the increase in remote attendees is
because of a change in policy in or around 2017. Nowadays, meetings
are a mix of in-person and remote attendees. Toerless mentioned that
the mix is not a problem for his working group.
I don't remember seeing significant discussion about the
participation angle. It's good to have people submitting
I-Ds. People would have to discuss/review those I-Ds or else "this
document represents the consensus of the IETF community" would be
somewhat fictional. That work could also be outsourced to the
directorates. However, there are some disadvantages to such a model.
Another angle is the time to get from I-D adoption to "approved for
publication. I am not enthusiastic about spending four or five years
to push an I-D through the process.
According to IETF figures, the air travel emissions for a meeting in
the U.K was 3,508 metric tons of CO2 while the air travel emissions
for a meeting in Thailand was 5,328. The reduction in carbon
footprint is not listed as an objective in BCP 226. Such an
objective might be perceived as a push for less meetings in Asia.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
