On 30 aug 2010, at 21:57, Olaf Kolkman wrote: > If you want to be fair to the individual participants you have to optimize in such a way that attending 6 meetings costs the same for every individual that regularly attends the IETF. Obviously one can only approximate that by putting fairly large error bars on the costs but isn't the X-Y-Z distribution where X= approx Y= approx Z the closest optimum? (or finding one place that sucks equally for everybody) > Am I missing something? Yes. Optimizing for min(X+Y+Z) WITH the constraint X=Y=Z is almost certainly going to produce a higher X+Y+Z than without that constraint. In other words, if you want to be fair the total expense for the entire community will be larger. Contrary to popular belief, distance is not the most important factor in travel expenses. My flight from Madrid to Dublin cost almost what I paid to fly from Amsterdam to Minneapolis a few years before. Hotel rates have a much bigger impact, especially now that the official IETF hotels seem to be getting more expensive every time we meet. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf