OK, with some hesitation, I'll say this out loud...
Another data point might be...
In the CCAMP working group five editors or key authors of working group
I-Ds were unable to travel to Chicago (for whatever reason). All of these
are based outside the US.
One new non-WG draft had to be introduced by a friend because none of the
author team was able to travel.
My IETF sponsor organization had a number of authors who were not approved
for travel to the US (probably about 10, or 25 percent of our total,
although I haven't seen a final number yet), so it's not like Adrian just
hangs around the people who weren't approved.
I was also told at this IETF about people who requested visas in order to
attend the Dallas IETF, who have not yet been approved, but who have not yet
been rejected, either. Apparently "background investigation" is the new
black hole of Calcutta. Perhaps they will be approved in time for
Philedelphia, or Minneapolis.
If current plans for upcoming IETF meetings hold, it will be possible for
IETF participants to qualify for NomCom without attending any US-based
meetings. If those plans do not hold - specifically, if a non-US site "falls
through" and is replaced with a US site - people who are unable to travel to
the United States will be excluded from NomCom eligibility, and this also
includes other things based on NomCom eligibility - for instance,
participating in a recall petition.
From RFC 3777:
1. At any time, at least 20 members of the IETF community, who are
qualified to be voting members of a nominating committee, may
request by signed petition (email is acceptable) to the Internet
Society President the recall of any sitting IAB or IESG member.
If you aren't qualified to put someone on the IAB or IESG, you aren't
qualified to remove them, either. This isn't WRONG, but I'm not sure how
many people have noticed this.
Please don't shape your take on this based on whether you think the excluded
people are likely to volunteer for NomCom, or something - the distinction
covers more than the 100-or-so volunteers that sent Lakshminath their "I
volunteer" e-mails.
I suggested a few minutes ago (in private e-mail, before reading the next
slice of this thread) to Ray Pelletier that he consider adding a survey
question that might give some guidance on "didn't attend because of visa
problems" versus "didn't attend because of problems unrelated to visas".
If the plan goes as my son explained to me last week, I'll be grandfather to
twin girls before the end of this coming week. If that happened last week,
*I* would have been a no-show in Chicago.
If someone registered with Iraq as a country code, and did not attend the
meeting, that could be because of visa problems, or because of other
problems, or simply because people in Iraq also have twins, and might even
blow off an IETF to be present at the birth.
The nice people trying to make sense of why people attended/did not attend
any particular IETF meeting don't have a lot of information that helps you
figure stuff like that out.
John Klensin also correctly pointed out that we have IETF participants, AND
IETF MEETING participants, and we're trying to do the right thing for both
of the two categories.
Doug's suggestion - to aim the survey at IETF participants, rather than IETF
MEETING participants, also seems helpful.
Spencer
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