On 8/28/2010 12:54 AM, Tschofenig, Hannes (NSN - FI/Espoo) wrote:
I have not seen an IETF meeting where people have not complained about
the layout of the venue,...
A primary requirement for participating in a open environment like the IETF is
the ability to apply damping filters, rather than getting distracted by what is
often merely noise.
The single biggest example of being distracted is tending to class everything as
noise and then complaining about the noise. The complaint, itself, serves as
another distraction. It gets in the way of serious discussion about legitimate
issues.
Yes we always have complaints about venues. That does not make all of them
silly or wrong. We merely have to look for real patterns of complaints.
Some venues have had significant problems. Not merely irritants or points of
small inconvenience, but serious deficiencies. Typically, careful venue
selection could avoid most or all of these.
Maastricht is a delightful town... for tourism. But for the IETF meeting,
Maastricht displayed a strikingly large number of serious problems and there
seems to be some consensus about this. What is impressive to me is that a venue
having displayed so many serious limitations and problems would garner any
vigorous defense.
Perhaps the largest problem with venue discussions is the failure to identify
salient, objective criteria and discuss meaningful implications of the criteria.
That basic failure reduces these exchanges to mere expressions of personal
preference about a venue. In other words, it makes it a popularity contest.
Mike St. Johns' posting:
<https://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=933&k2=53120&tid=1283016769>
is quite excellent, for its attempt to describe what he wants from a venue, in
terms of participating in a meeting.
I suggest we should try to develop some language like his that garners
meaningful consensus in terms of convenience, /total/ cost, functionality,
reliability, and other core criteria. Convenience covers travel, lodging, food,
and other resources local to the venue.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf