At 6:12 PM -0400 8/29/10, John C Klensin wrote:
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."
It really comes down to which bias to apply in site selection: towards those who want to be a tourist, or those who want to do work.
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 would have thought this to be obvious, but from the comments in Maastricht and here, it's not.
-- Randall Gellens Opinions are personal; facts are suspect; I speak for myself only -------------- Randomly selected tag: --------------- For best results, be sure to double clutch when you paradigm shift. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf