Subject: RE: Meetings in other regions

From: "Burger, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:06:53 -0400

I would offer the following:

Rather than look at extremes (e.g., Fred's "What about Kabul?"), let's
look at other "second tier" options, like Bangkok, Prague, Cairo (well,
maybe off the radar for the next few months), or Mexico City, to pick
well-connected, well-airported, rather inexpensive, cities on every
continent.

Let me relate my *EXPERIENCE* with some interim meetings (lemonade).  [I
suppose data is the closest we have to 'working code.']  Meeting held in
Dallas: 9 participants.  Meeting held in Vancouver: 10 participants.
Meeting held in London: 14 participants.  Meeting held in Beijing: 21
participants.

Worst Internet connectivity: London.

Best Internet connectivity: tied between Vancouver and Beijing.

Best participation by people (well, person) who absolutely refuse to
travel: Vancouver.

Second best participation by people who have difficulty to travel:
London.

Most new document authors and reviewers netted from meeting: Beijing.

Our interim meetings always have strong remote participation, as some
people in our work group cannot travel at all.  We do a lot of Jabber,
iChat, and conference bridges with access numbers local or toll-free for
most of the participants.  The biggest problem with the Beijing meeting
was the 12-15 hour differential for U.S. remote participants.  The
biggest benefit was expanding the protein. 

-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 11:53 PM
To: Brian E Carpenter; [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions

--On Saturday, July 15, 2006 6:36 PM +0200 Brian E Carpenter 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Patrick,
>
> It may have got lost in this thread, but Fred has got the nub
> of
> the argument here: the IETF's goal is to do its work as
> efficiently
> as possible, and that means assembling at locations that are
> (on some sort of average) convenient for our active
> participants.
> In practical terms, that means assembling in countries or
> regions
> with a good number of current participants.

It also means such things as:

    * picking places within those countries or regions that have
    good airports with easy (and multiple) international
    connections.  Even San Diego is a little marginal in that
    regard.  Based on experience in the last year or so, I'd
    suggest that Cape Town and Marrakech (suggested in another
    posting) should be utterly disqualified (although J-berg and
    Casablanca are more plausible on this dimension).

    * picking places where we can be assured of adequate, and
    rock-solid, connectivity at both the meeting site and, if
    different, the hotel(s).  That ought to be easy, but we
    aren't there yet.  When I was in Marrakech (at an ICANN
    meeting) a few weeks ago, we lost the network multiple times
    due to difficulties with the international link and
    insufficient backup/ alternate path bandwidth (see below).
    There were also some problems that, in principle (but not in
    practice) could have been fixed or avoided locally, but an
    international link outage from a remote location can easily
    be a showstopper.  Similarly, while last week's meeting was
    superb in many respects, the condition of the network in the
    Delta was effective at preventing many of us from working
    overnight... whether to catch up on day job activities or to
    work on drafts, the impact is reduced productivity and, to
    some degree, an incentive to stay home rather than attend
    meetings.

My own view, even if it is not politically correct, is that IETF 
should leave the outreach to exotic places to ISOC, ICANN, and 
others.  I'm very much in favor of our continuing to meet in 
some proportionate way in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific -- and 
other places if we have adequate participation.  But let's stick 
to the places from which we have adequate participation and 
where we can run an efficient meeting with efficient transport 
to and from the location.  The theory that we should go to 
places to stimulate participation from those places really does 
not work: our real work requires extensive read-in, not just 
skimming a few documents and going to a newcomer's orientation 
(if that).  The people from remote places whom we want to have 
participate in person should already be participating via 
mailing lists.

The model underlying the pie chart is a little weak in that 
regard, since it shows meeting attendance rather than 
participation.  Perhaps we should be looking to ways to measure 
participation that counts effective mailing list participants so 
as to increase the priority of the places from which they come. 
But going to a place that is difficult for most participants to 
get to, with network performance and availability that is hard 
to predict in advance, in the hope of getting more useful 
participation from that area, strikes me as yet another way to 
shoot ourselves in the foot.

> Outreach is important, and welcoming new active contributors
> is important, but the dominant consideration is a location that
> is convenient and effective for our current active
> contributors

Yes, and that brings me to....

> Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

>> The place where we had the ICANN meeting in Marrakech
>> provided fast connectivity, very good mobile phone coverage
>> and all you would need for a productive meeting, despite the
>> fact that it was located  in Africa.

Interesting.  We either have different criteria or were at 
different meetings.  Let's ignore the 802.11 network, which 
frequently became unusable apparently due to causes one could 
have experienced anywhere.  I saw the audio stream to outside 
locations collapse several times, the international links suffer 
outages that took some time to resolve, and so on.   Until ICANN 
staff managed to cut the hotel network over into the meeting 
network, the hotel network and its provisioning arrangements 
were completely swamped by ICANN participants (and that type of 
cutover arrangement can't always be worked out on short notice) 
I don't have hard data, but my subjective impression from 
listening to people complain is that the meeting may have set a 
record for lost luggage in recent years. I'd love to go back 
there on vacation, but it is not a place I can recommend holding 
a meeting that is strongly dependent on good quality Internet 
connections with 100% uptime.

>>  This is a counter
>> example to what your are trying to demonstrate.

Unfortunately, it is an example, not a counter-example.

>> There are
>> many places places in Africa, Asia-Pacific  and Latin America
>> where you could have a productive meeting. One only needs to
>> look for them.

Sure.  But if one needs the types of facilities and connectivity 
that IETF needs, I think you are underestimating the 
difficulties of the search... and of being sure one has the 
right place and facilities once one finds them.

>> It is more in terms of interacting with the local
>> community  to find out  what they expect to come out  of a
>> standardization process.

But changing that requires a level of outreach to which the IETF 
has not aspired.  See my comments about existing participants 
above.  Think about how much "interacting with the local 
community" we did in Montreal.  Remember the comments made in 
Marrakech that ICANN wasn't doing main sessions in French or 
Arabic and contemplate the costs, delays, and difficulty of 
parallel translation of IETF materials.

>>  The hypothesis by which whatever is
>> good for the Northern hemisphere is automatically fine for
>> the rest of the world seems slightly colonialist to me.

Such a hypothesis would be very unattractive if anyone had it or 
offered it.  But, in the time I've been around the IETF, I have 
never heard such a thing suggested in seriousness.

And, to save writing an extra note just for this...
--On Saturday, July 15, 2006 6:00 AM -0400 JORDI PALET MARTINEZ 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Definitively there are several countries: Spain, Mexico,
> Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama.

Ok, this discussion just passed over into the unreal.  I assume 
that one reason we have been meeting increasingly in Canada 
(Vancouver last fall, Montreal now) is because it is getting 
harder for some active participants to get visa to come to the 
US.  So let's site a meeting in a place where it is illegal for 
those holding US passports to travel and in which it might be 
illegal to bring in the equipment needed to run the meeting. 
Remember that percentage of draft authors from another posting? 
Want the IESG to attend?   Some of the other countries on that 
list are plausible if the right city is chosen.  Others... well, 
see my comments  about connectivity above.   Those work if our 
purpose is to show that we hold meetings in such places.  If the 
purpose is to get work done, no possible way.

best,
     john

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 06:53:59 -0700

> Best Internet connectivity: tied between Vancouver and Beijing.

Small nit-pick, on trying to generalize from your data:

1. Since we know that The London metropolitan area has excellent Internet
connectivity and bandwidth, the problems you experienced must have been due to
the particular meeting site and not the region.

2. For a region that is not obviously able to give excellent service, the key is
the commitment by local staff (and government) to make sure it is excellent.
They cannot do anything about the lack of fat pipes to the outside world, but
they can do quite a bit about fat pipes within the venue and their reliability.

3. Within the constraints of that basic connectivity to the outside world, most
major cities are now able to deliver excellent service... given the commitment
to do so.

d/

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:54:04 +0100

> the particular meeting site and not the region.
Indeed. The meeting site had confused "Full Internet Access" with 
"Braindead HTTP proxy web access". I can't remember if the proxy 
supported CONNECT or not. The bandwidth itself was fine and fast, I 
believe. I certainly couldn't recommend the venue for the IETF.

Of course, being good little Lemonade folk, many of us continued on 
GPRS et al quite happily, which was really quite fitting. I seem to 
remember that at one point, Randall Gellens was actually providing 
the entire room with unblemished, albeit slow, internet access over 
his mobile. In some respects, it focused discussions beneficially, by 
forcing us into using the kinds of connectivity and network we were 
trying to address.

It was one of the first times I'd intensively used my own MUA over 
that kind of bandwidth for anything more than quick mailchecks and 
testing, so I recall it with almost nostalgic pleasure.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade