> This discussion seems to be ignoring the IETF's financial need for local > sponsors, and sometimes that sponsorship leads to particular locations. > For example, I know (because I was part of the local sponsor) that the > first time we went to Minneapolis in 1999 was due to the IETF working > with the sponsor to choose the location. We never would have gone to > Memphis if Fedex hadn't sponsored that meeting. And so on. So there are > other constraints that keep us from just meeting in Minneapolis, Prague, > and (pick one Asian city) all of the time. Versions of that argument have been raised consistently over the last 25 years. Remember that we used to wait until we had a host before we chose a venue, and remember the very serious problems that caused in then finding hotel and meeting arrangements due to that delay. The premise that we must recruit sponsors from local venues is well-ingrained. And, of course, is sounds reasonable. Like many other problematic assumptions and assertions in our venue selection process, it suffers from actively excluding proper consideration of reasonable alternatives. This, in turn, then serves to make getting a local host more important than holding meetings in locations that are convenient, inexpensive and having good resources near the meeting venue. Again, the requirements that actually serve to make meetings more accessible to a more diverse population are secondary to other concerns. We usually satisfy some/most of these legitimate requirements, but we often don't. Given the risks we take by forcing ourselves to move around to new locations so much, it is guaranteed that we often won't. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net