FWIW a fair bit of what you mention below can be found under the 1st link of the (slightly dated) iaoc meetings page: https://iaoc.ietf.org/ietf-meetings.html Lou On 12/18/2017 10:59 AM, John C Klensin wrote: > > --On Monday, December 18, 2017 10:30 -0500 John R Levine > <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >>>> It wouldn't help us get rooms for IETF-101, but it would >>>> help with IAOC oversight (who oversees the overseers?) to >>>> know how many rooms were in the block. For example, knowing >>>> that only 75 rooms were blocked out and that 74 of them are >>>> reserved for staff and I* might raise questions. This where >>>> some transparency would help. >>> Indeed. Or at least it can't hurt. >> As I understand it, you're saying that you suspect the problem >> is that the IAOC, which is all volunteers you know, is holding >> back unneeded rooms for the people who run the meetings? If >> that's not what you mean, what do you mean? > John, Let me take a try at answering the question. > > Over the years, we have moved very gradually from a rather small > number of people for whom the Secretariat reserved and held > rooms in the HQ / meeting hotel to what some people believe is > an ever-expanding list. I can remember a time when, if rooms > in the main hotel were scarce, most of all of the Secretariat > stayed somewhere else and just about the only special > reservations were for members of the IAB and IESG and maybe not > all of them. While I'm willing to assume that every addition > makes sense, I think it would be healthier if the community > understood how far the umbrella spreads and, insofar as it > becomes a constraint on getting work done, that the fundamental > decisions about criteria be subject to community review. For > example, do IAOC members now get reserved rooms? Can that be > justified in the same way that the IAB and IESG originally were, > i.e., improving accessibility to those people, freeing up extra > space for very small meetings with them, and making the meetings > run better. How about senior (or other?) ISOC or ICANN or other > guest people or organizations staff or representatives? > > The question of how many of those rooms there are and who they > go to is important for another reason: once upon a time, most of > all of those rooms were comp-ed by the hotel in return for > bringing the meeting in, just as meeting rooms are. Has the > number of comp-ed rooms become part of meeting location and > hotel locations? Or, if not, is IASA paying for some of them > and how, if at all, does that affect the bottom line and the > meeting fees paid by "ordinary" participants? > > Note that this interacts with a different concern. The number > of reserved small meeting rooms is definitely on the increase > relative to where it was 15 years ago (IIR, if I recall, at that > time it was one each for the IAB and IESG, a work area for the > Secretariat, and, in season, one for the Nomcom). If the number > of those rooms that are required has expanded to the point that > it is a constraint on hotel choices and negotiations, whether it > is a source of upward pressure on registration fees or not, then > I think the community is entitled to knowledge about, and > probably even control over how the tradeoffs should be > considered. > > I note that none of this is about contracts with particular > hotels or the like, only how much visibility fundamental IASA > policy decisions have the community and whether the community is > given enough information to provide effective input into those > decisions. > > john > >