Brian, Possibly. But when putting all under consideration even from that point of view, travel (time and cost) is only one factor. Cost of facilities, facilities it self, quality of service, cost for participants on site etc is also important and often way lower in some of the locations not considered so far by IETF. Attendance of the usual contributors is important. But that arguments seems to have be rehashed endlessly. Still I have seen this year WG meetings organized in NA and in a (far away) Asia location outside currently typical IETF locations. There were more than double of active participants at the meeting away from NA... So I think so me of the basic assumptions may be revisited (or at least more carefully stated) namely 1) that cost / time is really higher outside NA (and sometimes selected European or Asian location) - it is often not true even factoring in travel costs and travel time is a quite relative considerations 2) that main contributors mostly come only to NA (and sometimes selected European or Asian location) and that therefore we would not have active participants when going there... Stephane -----Original Message----- From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 9:36 AM To: patrick@xxxxxxx Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions Patrick, It may have got lost in this thread, but Fred has got the nub of the argument here: the IETF's goal is to do its work as efficiently as possible, and that means assembling at locations that are (on some sort of average) convenient for our active participants. In practical terms, that means assembling in countries or regions with a good number of current participants. I show a pie chart at every plenary (a tradition started by my predecessors) that gives a pretty strong indication of what those countries or regions are. You saw the version of that pie chart from IETF65 in the ISOC Board meeting in Marrakech. The IETF66 version is in the Wednesday plenary proceedings from this week. (temporary location: https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=66 ) Outreach is important, and welcoming new active contributors is important, but the dominant consideration is a location that is convenient and effective for our current active contributors. Regards Brian Patrick Vande Walle wrote: > 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 mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf