Dear Sirs, Sorry for this long email, but I need to give the respond details. Thanks for your concerns and support, and I believe that IESG is doing its best to make IETF the best organisation. However, I have already send my concerns before years to you about this issue that most meeting in US is not correct strategy for the best practice of IETF, the respond I think was that most participants are from US, My addition thoughts were that most companies participating/hosting are from US. My reasons of my concerns is that IETF should not follow others it should lead the participants. Also IETF should not care about volume of participants (especially old participants), it should care about varieties/diversity and future participation, the world is changing very quickly (including US) and hopefully the IETF. M past suggestions (in many IETF discussions) were to make the most/best meetings in UK (ex. in London) or Europe, because US participants get better offers to travel to UK than other offers to countries in Europe. I also suggested in the past that we need more work in General Area, but the IETF need to follow interests to such WG, if no interest the IETF does nothing for its best future. I studied in the UK and one of the best things I seen from experts/managers in UK is that they look into unexpected situations to find solutions. Did we do that so far? I am not sure, please advise me. IMO, Your concerns is not enough, you need to change your policy in General Area, to include diversity and future strategies. May be I am not familiar with our ADs/IESG decisions in IETF-strategy, but your email did not mention your past actions/startegies to solve the unexpected barriers. Old Strategies that include unexpected issues will help to solve new/future barriers. The WG in General Area your email referred to is about meeting venues but what about strategies that this group need to follow. This WG will have majority of participats from US therefore, it MAY not be fare to work for the IETF interest, but may support for other companies interests. Do you have a strategy for the future management issues? please tell me your procedure as a strategy-plan already defined, or as WG charter (or even special group) with milestone. There is no doubt that any successful organisation needs a strategy to increase opportunities and decrease threats. My aim for this email is communicate with you for the best of IETF. Thanks, Best Regards, AB IETF Participant from Libya University of Tripoli, Tripoli On 2/16/17, The IESG <iesg@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > The IESG, IAB and IAOC note the recent US executive order concerning > entry into the United States and the ongoing discussion of it amongst > the IETF community. While nations determine who may cross their borders, > we are very concerned that the resulting uncertainty has damaged our > ability to host appropriately inclusive meetings and workshops, and may > result in increased travel restrictions in other locations going > forward. The present uncertainty affects participants traveling to a > meeting in the US, or US-based participants returning from a meeting > held outside the US. We are also concerned that such actions may > unreasonably limit the ability of engineers the world over to take a > full part in IETF activities that involve face-to-face meetings. It is a weakness to follow your participants, because they should not be your customers, the IETF customers are the users not the participants. Why you follow your workers, they MUST work for you so you can continue. IETF should not concern about meeting volumes. > > Our primary means of communication (email) does not suffer from such > restrictions, and we have worked to continually improve remote > participation for face-to-face meetings. But those who cannot attend > face-to-face meetings are at a disadvantage compared to those who can, > and the meetings overall are less effective opportunities for high- > bandwidth collaboration, cross-pollination of ideas, and focusing on > running code. We expect the results to be detrimental to our goal of > making the Internet work better. > > The IESG, IAB and IAOC are committed to planning our future meetings in > locations that do not present an undue risk to our participants and our > efforts. Our next meeting in Chicago is going ahead as planned, but we > are working now to investigate any ways in which we can mitigate > possible disruptions in the near term. Future meetings in the US are > being reviewed, as we would normally do when we learn of significant > access issues in any of our planned meeting locations. Good to know > > We encourage the IETF community to raise awareness of travel > restrictions that make it difficult to attend our meetings in person. London is the best location for IETF business and future, > The venue-selection mailing list <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ > venue-selection> is available to provide direct input to the IAOC, and > the IETF Discussion list is available for other awareness-raising. We > also urge IETF participants to contribute to the MTGVENUE working group > <https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mtgvenue/charter/> that is developing > criteria and processes for IETF meeting venue selection. > >