--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