Re: Optimizing for what? Was Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 





On 8/30/2010 1:05 PM, Patrik Fältström wrote:
Also big corporations do have limited budget for IETF participation,

For most self-funded participants, the difference between their budget for travel and the budget a corporation provides is massive. For example, the IETF main conference hotel is typically far above what they can afford.


On 8/30/2010 1:10 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> There's already bias in the population
> of meeting attendees - do you, and, if so, how do you account
> for people who are already not attending because of costs?

Yes! This is exactly the point I keep raising, about sampling error. We need to make sure that our analyses are with respect to the population (the full set of potential attendees) that we have in mind, rather than just a core of folk who usually attend.

A theoretical analysis of fair costs doesn't query real people, so sampling is not an issue. But the second we start surveying, we need to consider folks not on the ietf@ or ietf-attendees@ lists.



On 8/31/2010 4:09 AM, Yoav Nir wrote:
> One place that sucks for everybody has the great advantage of reducing the
> stress associated with travel. A lot of people were stressed about the
> various ways of getting to Maastricht, and a lot more are stressed about
> getting to Beijing (what with various kinds of visas, hotels and taxi drivers
> who don't speak any language other than Chinese)
>
> If we standardize on one place, then by your second meeting, you know
> everything about the place, and people can cut&paste their complaints from
> the previous meeting.

And to the extent that having only one place is not politically acceptable, having a very small number of places provides the same benefit, quickly.[1]


On 8/30/2010 4:13 PM, Tobias Gondrom wrote:
1. First, the location _is_ a significant barrier to entry for newcomers
and other contributors. Optimizing only for the current status quo does
create a strong perpetual cycle of self reinforcing structure of
contributors from the favored location(s).

Nicely stated.

d/


[1] A point was raised earlier that staying with a single venue for a long time leads to deteriorated performance, for a variety of reasons. The way to mitigate against that is to limit how long the contract is for and pursue competitive bidding regularly. One of the advantages of major hub cities is that they have quite a bit of competition among potential meeting venues. While changing hotels means learning its quirks, this is not the same as changing cities.
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf



[Index of Archives]     [IETF Annoucements]     [IETF]     [IP Storage]     [Yosemite News]     [Linux SCTP]     [Linux Newbies]     [Fedora Users]