--On Friday, June 7, 2019 09:21 -0700 Ole Jacobsen <olejacobsen@xxxxxx> wrote: > > You said: > > "...the political situation in Thailand exploding in the > months before IETF 106,.." > > IETF 106 is being held in Singapore, so I am not sure how Thai > politics would impact us. Sorry. Misread my calendar. But I could have as easily said "Political situation in Singapore" or used any other made-up, half-plausible, example involving any other meeting location. The point was that things can happen but that calling off a meeting (or meeting location) because of some unlikely event is likely to lead to madness. After all, I could fairly easily find an article that claims that The BIg One is coming soon and then contend that we should cancel the San Francisco meeting because having an major earthquake in the middle of IETF would be really inconvenient to participants. While it was not my intent and your (or my) view of "relatively close" notwithstanding, Eric's comment also stands -- a major political disruption on that peninsula could affect other countries as well, some air connections to Singapore go through Bangkok, etc. Given air connections from various parts of the world, similar comments would apply to significant disruptions in Hong Kong (which seem plausible, if unlikely, to me). I think the bottom line is that intelligent and strategic contingency planning is always a good idea because things we can barely (or cannot at all) anticipate can happen. Canceling meetings more than two years out, or blocking countries even further in advance, seems unwise to me. If I were negotiating hotel contracts for the IETF (which I am definitely not... and happy about that), I'd be looking to see if I could either get contract escape provisions or insurance to minimize the costs of our canceling due to Acts of God or politicians between contract-signing and meeting dates (and evaluating whether the marginal extra costs of such provisions exceeded the likely benefits) And, if we are actually serious about delegating anything to the IETF LCC, Executive Director, and/or Secretariat, I'd hope to see sufficient reporting to leave the general IETF community with the sense that things are under control but would hope we can avoid debating every political action or possible natural disaster on the IETF list, especially in terms of "if you don't agree with my position or concerns, you are against privacy, freedom, apple pie, motherhood, assorted traditionally-disadvantaged groups, etc." One more comment and then I'm going back into my hole... --On Friday, June 7, 2019 18:38 +0200 JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <jordi.palet=40consulintel.es@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Some of us, who pay from our own pocket, buy the IETF flights > 11-12 months in advance (and they are non-refundable), in > order to be able to get as lower fares as possible. Otherwise, > we can't attend the meetings. > > If the decision is taken only 1 year in advance, is fine to > avoid the cancelation of the ticket, but is if the new venue > is not announced at the same time, is too late to get a low > fare. Jordi, As someone who has been paying for tickets out of my own pocket for years, I've always felt I had to trade off "really low fair from far-in-advance purchase" against the risks of things going wrong. I don't buy tickets a year in advance unless I can either get insurance against various contingencies or conclude that the prices are low enough that it is reasonable for me to essentially self-insure. Under current policies as I understand them, if we had a meeting scheduled in San Francisco (or for that matter, Japan or even Vancouver) and, 30 days or six months ahead of the meeting, there were an earthquake and the meeting facility fell down, we'd presumably cancel or try to move the meeting. While I'd hope you could convince the IETF to refund your registration fee, I don't think anyone would be likely to refund your airfare unless you had personally bought insurance against such catastrophes. I'd be happy if the IETF LLC investigated buying, or offering on a group rate, insurance to cover participant costs associated with meeting cancellation contingencies even if the result of such an investigation were a report to the community about the costs and the conclusion that it wouldn't make sense. And, yes, if meetings are going to get canceled or moved, I'd far prefer that be done at least a year in advance. However, which it is sensible and feasible or not involves many tradeoffs including data the IETF LLC (and the IAOC before it) have concluded is not appropriately given to the community. Probably they are correct, but that means we need to trust them to get it right. And, if we can't do that, we need to either fix their membership (presumably via the Nomcom) or change their terms of reference (presumably via the IASA 2/0 WG or, if the problem lies with the LLC Agreement, whatever revolution is required to change that. My conclusion is close to "good enough given the amount of energy I'm willing to invest". YMMD. best, john
