FYI just in case there are any concerns for supply for London. I just booked my room in London through the public booking link. And there are rooms available in the main venue hotel right now. IMHO one challenge for the hotel room supply might also be our generous cancellation policy, which leads to people rushing to book early and then cancel late without risk. That can lead to unnecessarily shortening supply up for a long period of time up until 2 weeks before the meeting... And as a general comment: I would be in favor of transparency. Best regards, Tobias (IAOC hat = off) -----Original Message----- From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John C Klensin Sent: Monday, December 18, 2017 11:59 PM To: John R Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx>; Tim Chown <tjc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: IETF general list <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: How many rooms _actually_ available ? Re: IETF 101 - Registration and Hotel Reservations Open! --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