Subject: Re: Excellent choice for summer meeting location!

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2005 14:04:29 +0200

IETF destinations are always an interesting discussion,
I know this thread is going to generate a lot of fun :-)
We have already brought up points about heat waves,
terrorists, CO2 emissions, wine, and relative city
violence rates. I'm looking forward to the rest of
this thread...

But I wanted to continue the touristy part discussion
that you Paul brought up:

>>Your concern over the travel budgets of others is touching (if a
>>little creepy).
> 
> let 'em spend as much money as they want going anywhere they want.  just
> keep them away from the meeting rooms unless they have a more compelling
> reason to be in there than "this is more fun than my actual job, and the
> company is buying me MFLD, so, what's not to like?"

First, I tend to find tourists and MFLD rather harmless.
In fact, I think they are good for our financing. Some
might say necessary. And they usually stay out of the mike,
don't disturb presentations, and don't comment on the mailing
list where the real consensus is verified. But if some of
them do, that's even better - then we have attracted new
contributors. And we DO need new contributors.

Secondly, the perception that people have about the vacation
or business nature of a location is not universal. Some people
get bored in museums, others can't stand beach resorts. Or what
looks like an expensive vacation trip for a US person looks
like a regular business meeting for Europeans and vice
versa. Say, Los Angeles vs. Paris. And managers who approve
travel are different too. Some might worry if a person tries
to go to a meeting without having a clearly defined goal and task;
others might look more at the location or cost. Intercontinental
travel certainly gets more scrutiny than other travel, but
with participants all over the globe this can't be avoided
all the time or for everybody.

In short, I wouldn't worry too much about the touristy nature
of a location. Lets pick locations based on available & good
facilities and connections. And since we have contributors from
all over the world, its good to have meetings in different parts
of the world too. And changing the locations makes it easier
to attract new people, maybe new sponsors, too.

--Jari

P.S. I hope the IETFers have appreciation for other things
too than that what happens in the meeting rooms. I did enjoy
good restaurants in San Diego, the museums in Washington, the
electronics shops in Seoul, and skiing after the meeting in
Salt Lake City. Or shopping in Minneapolis. Maybe next March
I get to go to the museum of questionable medical devices.

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---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 09:41:03 -0700 (MST)

> From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>

>From my perspective as someone with a decades long perfect
non-attendance record at the IETF parties, I think that is wrong
on all counts.  There are WGs that exist only because it is the
go-ers who feel the greatest need to prove to the folks back at the
factory or to the readers of their trade rag inter-ad filler that
their contributions to the Standards Process are vital to peace,
prosperity, and the continued existence of the Internet.

But then I have the archaic and obsolete notion that the IETF needs
good and useful standards more than it needs contributors.

> of a location. 

Judging purely from good and bad results in the WG mailing lists, I think
that is right and wrong.  Venues that are too hard to reach are attended
by only the most dedicated and so produce agreements that do not reflect
the consensus of the WG mailing list; recall the "agreement" to pick the
ISO OSI Protocol Suite as IPng.  Venues that are extremely popular also
produce bogus agreements by not drawing a representative sample of the
WG as defined by the mailing list, albeit not quite as bad.

If had been asked years ago, I'd have said the IETF WG meetings should
be abolished in favor of the WG mailing lists supplemented by ad hoc
telephone calls among at most 2-4 people to hammer out the relatively
few issues that need "high bandwidth."  I've no doubt that administrative
groups such as the IAB and IESG need real meetings, but in decades of
watching WGs, I cannot think of single case where an IETF WG meeting
was necessary.  Judging from the effects on documents I've watched but
often not contributed to, WG meetings have only neutral or negative
effects.  Good specifications require thinking and understanding.  The
heat of battle in a conference room or any meeting of more than 3 or
4 essentially always precludes anything that might honestly be called
deliberation.  This is true even when you have 3 or 4 people playing
to a silent audience.

Abolishing the WG meetings would also end the silly political
correctness games in the choice of venues.

Of course, I don't expect anything of the sort to happen.  The opposite
of ever more emphasis on meetings and the form of the IETF and less
on useful protocol specifications will continue.  The IETF of 10 years
ago would not have spent a fraction as much time writing RFCs about
accounting and job descriptions as it has in recent months.  Such stuff
would have been flatly inconceivable for the IETF of the 1980s.  However,
it's best to acknowledge and deal with such irresistible changes.
They're the stuff of life and death.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]