I'm also irritated by some of the offensiveness in the discussion. To me, several issues appear to be "accessibility" issues, even if the number of IETF Meeting participants affected by them might be rather small. I think it is not appropriate to universally apply a 80/20 good-enough principle when it is about accessibility for human beings. There are issues that deserve a little more consideration than "rough consensus". David Morris wrote: > > On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Fred Baker wrote: > > > As to food issues, I think the hosts of recent meetings at least have > > done a pretty good job of pointing people to travel and food options in > > the host web sites. I find myself wondering, though, if the data should > > be organized in a different way. If we could get hosts to identify > > restaurants in the area that cater to muslim (no pork, not even in the > > kitchen), jewish (kosher rules), and vegetarian (which has multiple > > meanings), and identify grocery stores where people with > > medically-driven diets can find appropriate things, that might help. IMHO gathering restaurant food option information is often part of the normal job of the concierge (at least it used to be in the IETF Meeting hotels 10 years ago, the last time I was on an IETF Meeting). Maybe the IAOC should compile a list of questions for the concierge of potential meeting hotels and send it to them so that they can collect such information ahead of time and without time pressure. Interesting information to collect about nearby eating places would be: - food type/style (chinese, italian, mexican, ...) - availability of specific diets (jewish, muslim, vegetarian, vegan) - hours of operation - seating capacity - whether advance reservation is required - average time-to-serve - walking distance to venue - requirement for formal attire (does anyone remeber Dallas, Dec. '95 IETF and the IETF-incompatible "dress code" for the Reunion Tower restaurant?) Religious, culturual and purely personal persuasions on acceptable food could be covered to some extent in a questionary for the concierge. Medically-driven diets are likely harder to cope with including this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_intolerance I was suprised about the significant regional differences about Lactose tolerance in the world population (being a northern european who drinks a lot of milk). What might be interesting for people on a diet is the availability of acceptable foods in grocery stores and their exact labelling (some labelling might be limited to the local language, especially when it is about medical food (in)tolerance. like Gluten sensitivity) or about regionally predominant logos for certain types of food categories (like kosher or halal) and brands that produce food of these categories. Or stores that are specialized on supplying specific communities or interest groups. Opening hours of nearby food stores during the entire week will also be extremely helpful--including weekends and any public holidays during the IETF Meeting week. (The '97 summer IETF was in Munich, Germany, and Friday was Aug 15th, a public holiday in that part of Germany). > > I have an orthodox jewish friend who when coming to my house for a > meal would bring his own meal sealed in foil to be heated and eaten. There are a number of restrictions on importing food in international air travel (e.g. Europe->US, Hawaii<->Mainland), in particular for agricultural products and also for meat. In some reagions, restrictions may even apply to ground transportation (e.g. Arizona<->California). -Martin _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf