Subject: RE: IETF Meeting Venue Selection Criteria

From: "Ed Juskevicius" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:35:15 -0400

> Is that hope for future participation by new attendees
> an acceptable basis for making venue choices that hurt
> current participation by primary contributors?
>
> What is the evidence that we will not gain that new
> participation without hurting current participation
> by primary contributors?

Maybe I am an optimist.  I believe the world is a big place, and are
lots of venues where the IETF has not yet met, which would work for all
of us, and attract a lot of local participation.

My sense of why we are discussing "venue selection criteria" is that we
wish to encourage people to volunteer to be local hosts for future IETF
meetings.  To make the best use of the prospective local hosts' time, it
would help if we could articulate the venues that would be acceptable,
versus ones that would not 'meet' (pardon the pun) our venue selection
criteria.

Regards,

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 3:05 PM
To: Juskevicius, Ed [CAR:1A12:EXCH]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IETF Meeting Venue Selection Criteria

Ed Juskevicius wrote:
> The "ideal" venue (if there is such a thing) would enable both:
> - good participation from WG primary contributors AND
> - lots of local participation
>
> The second factor is important, imho, because a fraction of local 
> newbies are going to be impressed by their IETF experience, and will 
> want to participate again in the future.  The may well become primary 
> contributors themselves down the road.

Is that hope for future participation by new attendees an acceptable 
basis for making venue choices that hurt current participation by 
primary contributors? 

What is the evidence that we will not gain that new participation 
without hurting current participation by primary contributors?

d/

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 12:25:27 +0200

>>participation without hurting current participation

It's very hard to get those data. We've tried looking
at how many local first-time attendees from (say) Korea
later became regular attendees but the data are hard to
state in any meaningful way and the time constants are
long (years). There is no objective way to identify 'primary
contributors' other than by assuming the regular attendees are
also contributors.

We certainly know that going a long way from most places,
as we did in Adelaide, impacts attendance significantly -
but my recollection is that Adelaide was a very successful
meeting in terms of WGs making progress.

> of us, and attract a lot of local participation.

Which, BTW, means income that we badly need.

> versus ones that would not 'meet' (pardon the pun) our venue selection

It will also help the IAD significantly in comparing hosting offers.
We also badly need hosts for financial reasons.

     Brian

---

From: Eric Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 09:00:56 -0400

> There is no objective way to identify 'primary contributors' other than by
> assuming the regular attendees are also contributors. 

This is simply  silly.  It's not much of  a secret, in any WG,  who does the
work and who comes to listen. 

> We've  tried looking  at how  many local  first-time attendees  from (say)
> Korea later became regular attendees but the data are hard to state in any
> meaningful way and the time constants are long (years). 

This  is a  somewhat round-about  way of  saying that  you have  no  data to
support your position. 

> meeting in terms of WGs making progress. 

Obviously recollections differ. 

By  scattering meetings all  over the  world, with  no consideration  of the
average travel time,  you encourage the creation of  a class of professional
standards-meeting-attenders, which is just the opposite of what is wanted.

> income [from local participants] that we badly need. 

Well, this is  the first I've heard  that we want to maximize  the number of
people who come  to listen rather than to work.   Everything I've ever heard
in the past  suggested the opposite.  If we now want  to maximize the number
of passive attendees, I'm sure we can find a way to do it without scattering
the meetings all around the world.

---

From: Andrew McGregor <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 03:14:48 +1300

> meeting in terms of WGs making progress.

As a data point, I'm now a regular attendee, and that is entirely  
because the Adelaide meeting was within the radius of where I could  
travel just to see if participating would be useful.  As it turned  
out, it was and has been useful, certainly to me and my company and  
I'd hope to the IETF.

Andrew

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:01:38 +0200

> work and who comes to listen. 

I didn't say it's a secret. But it's subjective. And listening is a useful
activity if it carries information back to future implementers.

> This  is a  somewhat round-about  way of  saying that  you have  no  data to

I don't have a position. We're discussing what our criteria should be.
I'm telling you that the data are hard to interpret.

> Obviously recollections differ. 

Well, I re-read my trip report from Adelaide to check my
recollection.

> standards-meeting-attenders, which is just the opposite of what is wanted.

By holding most of its meetings in Geneva, ITU-T appears to do the same.

> the meetings all around the world. 

The objective is surely to keep the IETF fresh with new active
participants joining from wherever in the world Internet technology is
being developed or deployed. But we do need the money too, and that
means welcoming listeners in practice.

    Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 08:43:33 -0700

Brian,

> It's very hard to get those data... There is no objective way to 
> identify 'primary
> ...
> ...

Unfortunately, the ultimate and practical meaning, of these kinds of 
conclusions about venue selection, is that we do not place productivity 
as a high priority.  We have a collection of other priorities that take 
precedence, for a collection of reasons. This means that the impact of 
face-to-face meetings, on productivity and quality, is almost entirely a 
matter of luck.

I should note that this is a similar problem with respect to Nomcom 
member selection:  We use highly indirect criteria, because they are 
easy to administer, but which are certain to have poor correlation with 
member expertise about IETF management -- although IETF management is 
what is being chosen -- and then we hope for the best.

It is interesting that essentially all public discussion of these sorts 
of stategic issues and the criteria for pursuing them almost always 
focuses on what is easy or already established, rather than what will 
work best for achieving the desired result.  In particular, negative 
implications appear to be entirely ignored, such as the one Eric Rosen 
just pointed out, about encouraging participation by professional 
standards goers.

For an organization that claims to care about the quality of its work 
product, this all seems a rather strange approach to its management. 

I suspect that organizations rarely achieve their primary goals by 
making strategic and tactical decisions that ignore those goals.

d/

p.s.  "Primary contributors" could be operationally defined as previous 
IETF attendees who are authors or chairs of current work.  One might 
always want to factor in mailing list activity levels for some 
individuals, but that's also an indirect measure.  However, all involve 
objective data that are available.  An additional approach is a 
variation on something that is already done:  Currently, some 
participants are queried for schedule conflicts within the IETF week.  
That could be extended to "venue conflicts" which would prevent them 
from attending at all.    And the primary point behind my making these 
suggests is to point out that it is easy to give up on pursuing criteria 
that are not trivial to enforce, but that that is not always warranted...

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 19:31:01 +0300

Dave,

> conclusions about venue selection, is that we do not place 
> productivity as a high priority.  We have a collection of other 
> priorities that take precedence, for a collection of reasons. This 
> means that the impact of face-to-face meetings, on productivity and 
> quality, is almost entirely a matter of luck.

I think some of the goals beyond immediate productivity are also
important, such as financing for our activities or boosting future
productivity. Anyway, I agree with you that face-to-face meeting
results are somewhat random in terms of people turning up or
the most needed people being there. We have, however, experimented
with various meeting details (e.g. Paris timings) and adapted
our behaviour based on what we learned. We are tracking what
number of participants we are getting in, and presumably optimizing
a little bit towards larger crowds. We are changing our locations
to distribute access problems and travel costs a bit better.

But you seem to talking as if you knew where the IETF needs to
meet in order to optimize productivity. Please tell us where :-)
Is our key contributor (draft author) distribution the same as the one
in participating in meetings, or different? We are choosing our
meeting sites according to the meeting participant distribution,
I think. What change has there been in the key contributor
participation across meetings in different continents or meetings
in different times of the year? Have we experimented by holding
meetings for a long period of time at the same location and
determined what effect it had on the number of contributors?

--Jari

p.s. I'm working on a little script to extract author information
such as location data from drafts. If I get it accurate enough I can
post some statistics about contributors. Or maybe someone
already has this data.

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 16:24:23 -0400

On Friday, October 21, 2005 03:14:48 AM +1300 Andrew McGregor 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> travel just to see if participating would be useful.  As it turned  out,
> it was and has been useful, certainly to me and my company and  I'd hope
> to the IETF.

Pittsburgh's not as exotic a locale as Adelaide, but it had the same effect 
for me -- attending a local meeting is what got me active in the IETF.

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <[email-masked]>
   Sr. Research Systems Programmer
   School of Computer Science - Research Computing Facility
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

---

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:43:48 -0700

Hi Dave,

While I see your point, and certainly agree in some degree, I also think
that any of the measures to look into who are "primary contributors" will
turn to be unfair and subjective.

In a so big community this kind of measurement will never work well, unless
everyone has the right to speak up for the venue selection, which will turn
to be absolutely impractical.

Just one example from your own one, not to be taken as any personal issue.
Why you have been queried for a schedule conflict (by the way "secretly")
while others have not had the opportunity for that (including myself) ?.
Clearly is not fair and is not consensus based, good or not, it may turn in
being the only realistic way and always could mean people being limited to
attend for this. How you know if there is much more people not being able to
attend because those who had been surveyed are able to attend and how you
measure how many of them are "more" primary contributors ?

Regards,
Jordi

> De: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
> Organización: Brandenburg InternetWorking
> Responder a: <[email-masked]>
> Fecha: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 08:43:33 -0700
> Para: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
> CC: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
> Asunto: Re: IETF Meeting Venue Selection Criteria
> 
> Brian,
> 

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