Just to give a counterpoint, Maastricht was incredibly productive. Perhaps you didn't see clusters of people at the conference centre, but there were plenty of groups going for walks, going out to dinner, and having interesting discussions. I don't subscribe to the notion that shutting everyone into a confererence centre-cum-campus with all amenities onsite (and a corresponding dearth of other options, e.g. Minneapolis or Anaheim) is going to lead to higher productivity. Cheers, On 09/08/2010, at 4:14 AM, Michael StJohns wrote: > Hi Bob - > > I appreciate and believe that this is your highest priority, but I think we may differ on how to best accomplish a successful meeting. Maastricht for me was an example of the low end of sort of successful sites and that's primarily because of the conference center with hotels model rather than the opposite model of a hotel with a conference center. > > In Maastricht, there wasn't a central hotel bar, no place to happen upon 3 or 4 disjoint conversations on wide topics, no 11pm discourse on how to fix the problem that came up in the session earlier that day. No place to buttonhole Russ or Olaf over a beer after dinner, etc (although they may appreciate that). > > A great portion of the IETFs success is due to cross fertilization and serendipity and that has been fed in the past by having a comfortable place with drinks and food that you pretty much have to go by to get to your hotel room. Typically, these have been the most successful (in terms of new ideas and energy) meetings. > > In Maastricht you had that big central room with uncomfortable chairs and pretty much no reason to be there if you weren't using the internet or weren't either going to or coming from a WG session. I saw few random gatherings (but I admit, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them from the non-random ones). Compare and contrast this with Anaheim for example. So, Maastricht was probably fine if you were narrowly focused on your WG(s), but not so great if you were interested in how the various problems might interact or were interested in learning about the IETF itself. > > It's also possible that I'm waxing philosophical for a portion of IETF culture than is no longer important to the current crop of participants - but that's life I guess. > > Mike > > > > At 11:16 PM 8/7/2010, Bob Hinden wrote: >> Mike, >> >> Just to be clear, the highest priority in venue selection is to find a venue where we can have a successful meeting. We won't go anywhere were we don't think we can get the work done. This discussion is where to have a meeting, but not at the expense of the work itself. >> >> Bob >> >> On Aug 7, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: >> >>> Fred said this much more eloquently than I could. >>> >>> On the IETF78 attendees list there's been a lot of discussion about where to meet - with the primary consideration seeming to be "pretty and small". I may be in the minority, but I'd really rather the IETF go places where the ability to "get work done" is the primary consideration. >>> >>> So going forward, I hope the considerations for location will give higher weight to meeting the needs of the folks doing the work (my second list of folk) and the folks who keep coming back (the first list) than to the single meeting snap shots. Its possible the demographics for my two lists are similar to the raw demographics so my point may be moot - but why guess when we have the data? >>> >>> Mike >>> >>> >>> >>> At 12:34 AM 8/7/2010, Fred Baker wrote: >>> >>>> On Aug 7, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Bob Hinden wrote: >>>> >>>>> I do note that it seems clear that registration is related to where we meet. That show up pretty clearly the current data. So judging where to have future meetings based on past participation will tend to keep us where we used to meet. Nomcom is, as you point out, 3 of 5 meetings. WG chair and authors might have a longer history. >>>> >>>> I agree with the "openness" principle, but I disagree with this analysis. >>>> >>>> "3..5" is another way of saying "people that attend multiple times". As noted by others, first-time attendees (who by definition haven't attended anywhere else and therefore give us no guidance) and local-only attendees (which is unknowable but demonstrably a component) aren't very interesting. What is interesting is trying to serve people that participate. We went to Adelaide on the observation that we had IETF participation from there and a proposed host (which was also why Adelaide was chosen over, say, Sydney) at a time that we had never been to Australia. We went to Amsterdam, Stockholm, and so on on the observation that we had significant European participation and proposed hosts. We went to Japan when Japanese participation became important, and we're going to China in November largely in response to the fact of credible levels of Chinese participation. So observing participation doesn't limit us to where we have been, it extends us in the direction of those who p a > rtic >>>> ipate. >>>> >>>> Looking at people who have attended multiple meetings, and using the nomcom rubric, make sense to me more than worrying about first-time and local-only attendees. I would take it on faith that we will have the latter wherever we go, and build on those that return. >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Ietf mailing list >>>> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf >>> >>> > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf