the number of folks who are -required- to do cross-area review are generally paid to commit the time for IETF work. so thats not a big issue. committed old-timers will do it anyway. and the hard part is when there needs to be liasion work between Standards Bodies that are working on similar efforts, like the existing IETF liaisons to ITU, WC3, ACM, etc... wrt tourists… we have evidence of coordination for spouses, children, SOs, food, ADA compliance, etc by the IETF Support staff… If becoming a boutique tour company pays the bills, sure. Lets do that. I’ll go on quilting cruises with my SO and she can come to Atlanta with me. And about the time I become an adept at long-arm, she will be a WG chair in the IETF. longwinded way to say the IETF should focus on its core values, Internet Engineering, and less on how easy it is to meet with 900 of my peers with all the required amenities. /bill Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet. On 12August2014Tuesday, at 19:05, Ted Lemon <ted.lemon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Aug 12, 2014, at 9:40 PM, manning bill <bmanning@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> why does it not work for you? are you being prevented from participating in multiple areas? > > Work being done in the IETF frequently needs cross-area review. Segregating the IETF into separate areas that do not meet together would make that sort of thing either impossible, or much harder for those willing to do it. > > Anyway, this is a solution in search of a problem. It is not clear to me that tourists are a significant problem at IETF meetings. Indeed, I would say that of the problems I'm aware of, tourists barely register. > > So whether or not encouraging tourists is architecturally clean, if it helps fund our work, I think it's a net positive and we should stop worrying about it. And anyway today's tourist is tomorrow's contributor.