Dave, A few points: > If a non-hub venue offers dramatic net price savings, fabulous facilities, or > some other strong justification, it makes sense to go there. > > Otherwise, a non-hum city forces virtually the entire set of attendees to: > > 1. Experience an extra flight, each way, with its attendant inconveniences and > risks (higher risk of lost luggage, missed connections, etc.) > This is a something of a fair point, but if we were to limit our conferences to hub cities when in the U.S., that would mean San Francisco, LA, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington D.C, and maybe Boston. There's a trade off. My absolute favorite location for an IETF these many years was Santa Fe. It was beautiful. Aside from the conference there was art, scenery, and history, including Bandelier National Monument and the Sandia Mountains. Santa Fe required most of us to change planes, land in Albuquerque, and then drive for an hour or so. In as much as our size permits us to visit such locales, it's a nice change of pace. And honestly I think we all get along a little better when we can see and do some fun things together outside of work. > 2. Pay higher air fares, since secondary venues do not have the airline > competition that major hubs do. > This is not necessarily true. Sometimes airfares are actually CHEAPER for those spoke cities. For instance, I have seen airfares to San Diego that are cheaper than those to Los Angeles. It's counter-intuitive and demonstrates that one really has to be some sort of a clairvoyant to understand airfares, but there it is. My recollection is that the Savvy Traveler and the Wall St. Journal have reported on this phenomenon. > 3. Experience a higher risk of losing access completely, because of that lack of > airline competition... The primary airline to the non-hub might go on strike, > for example, as (nearly) happened to us in Minneapolis one time. > Minneapolis *is* a hub for Northwest. > 4. More generally, secondary venues have less total airline seating capacity and > the concentration of our 1200-1400 attendees flying in and out close together > usually has a noticeable impact on their flights. > This is unlikely to be a problem, because we're merely the next 1200-1400 attendees that fly in, and in an area like San Diego we're one of several conferences that will go on at the same time, I'm sure. What's more, the next 1200-1400 will begin to fly in as we depart. So the capacity is probably there. Eliot _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf