Well, *I* just learned something ... inline.
On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 2:37 PM Kathleen Moriarty <kathleen.moriarty.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Carsten,There's one consideration you left out -On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 3:18 PM Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx> wrote:On 2020-02-13, at 15:55, Kathleen Moriarty <Kathleen.Moriarty.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> That said, my travel is mostly booked and I am planning to attend, but will watch to see what happens with any IETF pandemic planning.
Which is what is probably true for most of us.
We already know that companies’ and countries’ policies will place some limitations on the meeting (which actually is having some limited impact on planning for the meeting). With the knowledge we have today (2020-02-13), we can assume that we will have a productive meeting, not the least because we have good remote attendance possibilities for those who can’t (or choose not to) make it.
On a health/responsibility level (and, again with the knowledge of today), there simply is no reason to cancel the meeting. It is still way more likely for an IETF attendee to have a traffic accident than to be impacted by COVID-19.Individuals from an entire nation likely cannot attend what is meant to be a global meeting. This deserves some thought.
I agree with Kathleen that we're talking about things that deserve thought in this thread, and I went to grab the mailinfo page for https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches, which the IESG set up to give people a place think about these very topics, post-2016-Zika virus.
The description for that page is "Manycouches -- List is a design team list to identify issues that would arise should an IETF meeting ever be held with O(1000) 'remote' participants."
What I learned, was that the discussion on that list, which had wound down in 2017 because things seemed less urgent, was restarted by Wes and Ted about a year ago, and has continued, including people who are on this very thread.
I have no idea how prepared the IETF is now, for a sudden shift to a meeting with 1000 people remotely, but I do know we're not starting from zero here. Maybe that's a good plenary question in Vancouver.
If remote participation is reasonable (and we say that it is, and that was my experience when I bailed on IETF 102 for personal reasons), I think if an entire nation is forced to participate remotely that's unfortunate, but if remote participation doesn't turn out to be reasonable, that's worse.
IMO, of course.
Best,
Spencer
