Hi,
Speaking as an individual, all hats off.
The practical reality is that the geographic zone of consideration for your question needs to be set at about the level of “Asia”.
We don’t do well at finding locations anywhere Asia that have the hotel space for meetings and attendees (Sections 3.3.2 and 3.3.4), with appropriate network access (3.3.3) We still struggle with finding and securing locations that work — as evidenced by the fact that this announcement is less than a year before the actual meeting. There are many reasons why this is true — and not a reflection on the venues in Asia, so much as our ability to interface with opportunities. IMO, it’s an area we desperately need to improve our skillset.
Back to the question at hand, and quoting from draft-mtgvenue:
Where do we meet?
We meet in different locations globally in order to spread the
pain and cost of travel among active participants, balancing
travel time and expense across the regions from where IETF
participants are based. We also aim to enhance inclusiveness and
new contributions.
To your question — Bangkok is much more “local” for most in Asia than Vancouver is, which has been, and remains, our fallback for failed attempts at securing a location in Asia proper.
Leslie.
--
Leslie Daigle
Principal, ThinkingCat Enterprises
ldaigle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2 Feb 2018, at 11:38, John C Klensin wrote:
Just out of curiosity about criteria, could the meetings
committee or Secretariat identify the average and total number
of distinct IETF participants resident in Bangkok or elsewhere
in Thailand who have attended, e.g., the last five IETF meetings
in person? By registering as remote attendees? How m8ch would
those numbers change if Thailand and all adjacent countries were
included?I should stress that I'm not objecting to the location; Bangkok
is a great city, I've attended a number of successful meetings
there, and, while previous experience predicts that someone will
find something to be afraid of or outranged about, I certainly
will not be one of them.However, given the Last Call on
draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process and, that,
while it says some things about convenience for active
participants and "to have someone participate in the site visit
who is familiar with both the locale and the IETF" (last bullet
in Section 3.3 or -12), the longstanding requirement (or at
least preference) for there to already be active IETF
participants in near-proximity to the meeting venue is not
obvious in the document (presumably because of an explicit
decision to drop it or because "near proximity" has been
interpreted so broadly in the past as to be meaningless). It
would be good to understand, in quantitative and specific terms
rather than generalizations, the relationship between this
meeting site choice (and possible future ones like it) and the
specifications of the document.best,
john