Speaking as a working group chair, what is important to me is the ability to make progress on the milestones the working group is committed to achieve. Traveling to some far away location in order to fill the seats with spectators does not result in work being accomplished. I require that not only can I afford to travel there but that the half dozen active participants be able to do so as well. We are already at the point where I and others are experimenting with methods to improve the capabilities of remote participants to actively partake in the working group sessions. My belief is that working group sessions should avoid presentations whenever possible. The working group gets two hours of face to face time every four months. I'm not going to waste that time on presentations meant to instruct the locals and if you don't know what is going on before you arrive in the meeting room chances are you will not be able to contribute in a meaningful way. At IETF66 the Kitten, Kerberos and SASL working groups used a format that involved wandering microphones in the audience to permit natural dialogs among the active contributors in the room similar to that experienced at any technical design meeting while ensuring that those listening on the audio stream do not miss a beat. At the same time the Jabber room was projected on a second display in order to enable all of the participants in the meeting room to see the input of those not physically present. This model worked so well in fact that in SASL one of the primary document authors who was not present at the meeting was able to lead the discussion with him typing away on Jabber and the rest of the room responding via voice. When I attend IETF it is rare that I ever get to experience the world outside the conference hotel. My days are filled from breakfast meetings to late night work sessions. There is so much that needs to be done that I could care less about where in the world I am or what the weather is like outside. What is important is that when I am not in a session that there be lounges in the hotel for to use for meetings that have working network access. For me Paris and Montreal were the two worst meetings I have experienced in ten years because of the separation of the IETF hotel from the meeting locations and the in ability to provide network access in the hotel public spaces. My productivity dropped significantly because of those failures. The best IETF meetings from my perspective are those held in Minneapolis. The hotel understands what we need. The lounge and bar areas are smoke free and plentiful. There is accessible food via the habitrails. Things just work. To summarize, before the IETF should visit new countries folks from those countries need to participate on the mailing lists and begin to actively involve themselves reviewing documents and editing documents. That is the work we do. Traveling to Casablanca is not going to help get the work done. The one piece of evidence that might change my opinion would be this. Show me evidence that first time attendees at a local meeting results in those attendees editing a document and becoming repeat attendees in the future. Jeffrey Altman
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