On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:34:53AM -0400, John C Klensin wrote: > It seems to me that, if the IETF does nothing, it could provide > critics of the IETF community to assert that the IETF is > insensitive to issues of diversity and that its role and work > should be discounted because they represent only privileged > "majority" interests. I have reluctantly levelled this criticism because I believe it to be true: the IETF's fixation on physical meetings means that only the privileged few can attend: this mechanism selects for those with time (their own or their employer's), money (their own or their employer's), the ability to travel, the willingness to travel, the freedom to travel (e.g., ability to leave family and work and other responsibilities), the willingness to undertake all the risks associated with travel (legal or otherwise, see current discussion thread), and so on. If all the time, money, and effort that has gone into this discussion and this meeting had been applied to virtualizing meetings, it would have done much more to broaden participation not just geographically but demographically. And it would alleviate the need to ever have this conversation again -- instead of necessitating it repeatedly, something I'm sad to say that I think may become more rather than less likely as political/legal conditions shift in various countries. ---rsk