Fred Baker said the following on 13/07/2006 13:38: > My point is that it is not about the price of the hotel, nor is it > about taking the Internet gospel to those who haven't been able to > participate in its development [...] > It's about having productive meetings in an atmosphere conducive to > them Fred, The place where we had the ICANN meeting in Marrakech provided fast connectivity, very good mobile phone coverage and all you would need for a productive meeting, despite the fact that it was located in Africa. This is a counter example to what your are trying to demonstrate. There are many places places in Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America where you could have a productive meeting. One only needs to look for them. In terms of image, I tend to think that it would indeed help the IETF to have meetings outside the Northern America and European regions. It is not so much about spreading the Internet gospel - others do it better - although it would help. It is more in terms of interacting with the local community to find out what they expect to come out of a standardization process. The hypothesis by which whatever is good for the Northern hemisphere is automatically fine for the rest of the world seems slightly colonialist to me. Best, Patrick Vande Walle ISOC Luxembourg _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf