[...]
If the meetings are planned much more ahead, there will be more resources, and even probably will not need for volunteers, because will be possible to find a host.
I'll also have to dispute that a lack of planning was a significant factor in the wireless difficulties. I've been involved in building every Minneapolis IETF (44, 50, 53, 58, and now 62) and there have been differing qualities in planning efforts. Except for the difficulty in getting base stations, planning efforts this time were more than adequate in spite of the short lead time available.
And no matter how far ahead one tries to plan, the secretariat is just not always able to find sponsors, especially in the recent economic times.
In Minneapolis, because of the good hotel infrastructure built up over the past few years and the extensive support with local individual volunteers and organizations (University of Minnesota, Onvoy), it's pretty easy now to put a network together here. The volunteer crew could easily put a reliable production-quality net together with gigabit access and backup links on 6 weeks notice if necessary.
If we want a true guaranteed professional production network, then we will have to contract that to an experienced outfit who can bring in their own familiar equipment and give contractural accountability of service. So far, we have not been willing to fund that, so, you get the best that individual sponsors or groups of volunteers can do, and mostly, that's not bad.
The wired net and upstream systems were indeed professional and production quality and did their job well. High-density, high-load radio stuff is just a pain and maybe will always be; I don't know.
But it is interesting to note that at one time we were perfectly capable of conducting productive working group meetings and created great bunches of very good Internet protocols at them without large numbers of open laptops on our knees. But, the world changes and I guess that's not possible any more.
-- Dennis Fazio Local Green Dot
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