On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 1:34 PM Eliot Lear <lear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > It is possible for the IASA to book a locale that does not meet important criterion. If they do so, they must explain this to the community at the time a contract is made. Members of the community have expressed concern about the U.S. in particular about the United States. As someone who sits on the venue review committee as a community representative, I have reflected those concerns, and I will continue to reflect the community view until my term expires later this year. > > However… > > This criterion can and has come into conflict with other criteria, such as ease of travel to the locale, cost, and even safety and health issues. Michael is correct that we could lose a credit for the moved meeting, and Richard is correct that Canada has refused entry to people as well. Indeed a dear colleague on the IAB from China was refused entry at one point. In addition, it is often hard for some immigrants who leave a country to reenter.. The IASA has to take all of this into account. > > As to community fears and concerns, if we don’t go to the U.S. at all, then we will have no data on just how we are affected. While there are other conferences from whose experience we can and do benefit, the demographic of each community is slightly different. It’s important to know how many people were denied access to a country. I encourage the community to reflect on the numbers as and when they become available from the 2021 San Francisco meeting, not to mention all the other meetings in other countries in between. And yes, a lot can and will change between now and 2021. Hi Eliot, Thank you and others for your work on the mtgvenue group. A couple of data points that we can harness for collecting data about our demographic of attendees (especially those at a disadvantage) are 1. ISOC Fellows to the IETF (technical and Policy Folks). There have been many instances where people selected as fellows were not able to attend due to visa denials. 2. IETF refunds the meeting fees for those attendees who cannot get the visa (or get the visa in time) for the meetings.I am guessing the tech team and the secretariat should already have this data. We can track both these data qualitatively and quantitatively. Regards Vinayak
