I am totally in agreement with Melinda. Either meetings are important, or they are not. At this point, its clear that having meetings somewhere as part of the outreach program is, but that clearly is not optimizing for the existing attendees. To that end, I’d rather have meetings in a few locations regularly that can fit the entire attendee list, rather than working this plan to have the IETF in strange and odd locations as part of some “outreach” program to increase participation; its clearly not. The odd/off-the-beaten path location situation is becoming a real problem given the added costs (time/money/etc…) for people, as well as clearly causing issues for people who regularly attend the meetings to progress ongoing work and are trying to stay in the meeting venue hotel. This is now the second time in a row where this is happening and its a real problem. If you can’t stay in the main venue, you have added travel costs (as Melida pointed out) not to mention the likelihood of added hotel costs due to increased, non-negotiated rates once the relatively few rooms in the main hotel are exhausted. —Tom > On Dec 16, 2015:11:59 AM, at 11:59 AM, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 12/16/15 7:52 AM, Ted Lemon wrote: >>> Why are we continuing to have hotel issues meeting after meeting >>> after meeting after meeting? >> >> Because we can't force hotels to give us large allocations. > > We already have a list of hotels which will. > > Either meetings are important or they're not. If we're > going to continue to treat meeting participation as necessary, > we need to make it easier logistically. Instead we keep throwing > up barriers to participation. The closest overflow hotel > is nearly a mile from the Hilton - how's that going to work > out for people with limited mobility? I'm very happy having a > walk each morning and evening but I'll tell you that it can be > a huge PITA for breakfast meetings for people not staying > at the headquarter hotel. Getting work done should be one > of the primary considerations, here. > > Melinda >