--On Sunday, August 29, 2010 14:29 -0500 Mary Barnes
<mary.ietf.barnes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Joel,
>
> Thank you so much for your sensitivity - you've done a
> wonderful job of re-enforcing the idea that IETF is a hostile
> environment for women. My guess is that you've never
> personally been in a situation where you've been on a train
>...
Joel,
While I've tried to avoid commenting on the general whining and
complaining, I fear that I have to side with Mary on this one.
While our weighting factors are different, I think it is the
obligation of the Secretariat and the IAOC's meetings committee
to find locations at which the people who contribute
significantly can have an efficient and productive meeting, with
a minimum of distractions from logistical, health, and safety
problems. While one can take the position that people who don't
find a meeting site appropriate should just not come, doing that
changes the profile of people who are invited to participate in
the IETF from "interested in the improvement of the Internet and
(we hope) technically competent and willing to do work" to
include "have sufficient free time to spend extra time traveling
relative to other cities in the same region, have no health
problems that make one location more attractive than another,
aren't women traveling alone or those whose dress is
distinctive, don't have problems with air of marginal quality or
special food requirements, etc."
I think that change would be a considerable disadvantage to the
Internet and the IETF; YMMD.
I don't expect the Secretariat/ IOAC to cater to everyone's
slightest whim and I actually do expect those with special needs
to be willing to exert some extra effort, but I also expect that
the Secretariat/IAOC efforts will extend to making attendance
plausible for as broad a range of active participants as
possible. I also expect that those efforts will go beyond
believing whatever the would-be host tells the meeting
committee. And I believe that, if the IAOC selects an
out-of-the-way location (for whatever reason) in which we can't
be together in a single hotel or small cluster of
closely-located hotels that are readily accessible from a hub
international airport, the IAOC and Secretariat thereby take on
extra responsibility for being sure that the right information
is available and accurate. That extra effort and expectation
is, IMO, simply part of the cost of such a meeting -- if the
cost of having the Secretariat, IAD, or IAOC do the
investigations is too high, then the IAOC needs to decide that
the site is too expensive.
Sure, we can all do our own checking and trip planning, but I
think that, somehow, it is in the best interests of the IETF
that most of us spend whatever time we are willing to contribute
on substantive work, not trying, one at a time, to track down
logistical details (I recognize that some people have corporate
or organizational travel departments who can deal with those
issues, but think it would be a bad idea to further bias IETF
participate toward them).
And I find the evidence, via the venue survey and the failure to
understand that Minneapolis and Maastricht are very different,
that the IAOC doesn't "get" any of this to be extremely
problematic relative to the future of the IETF.
Again, YMMD.
john
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