Subject: RE: IETF hotel selection mode and a proposal (was" Re: Hilton BA is Booked already?)

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 16:21:50 -0000

Hopefully "perk" is not quite the intended word, but "necessary convenience" might serve better.
Although...
How many IESG breakfasts were there in Prague?
And, as a member of NomCom I had breakfast meetings every day of the week in Yokohama, but no preferential treatment.

I agree that the I* needs to be around the meeting venue.
The Secretariat even more so.

But it wold be  useful thought experiment for them all to examine how their weeks would be different if they had a 20 minute walk each way each day.

Adrian

> First meeting for IAB/IESG members during IETF week is 8am, possibly earlier.
> 
> My first meeting I have to be at is 9am on some days of the week.
> 
> Sure, I might arrange a breakfast meeting etc. But there is a big
> difference between a meeting I arrange at my convenience where I
> expect four or five people to be at and one that is set by others and
> will have two dozen people discussing something that is complex and
> not necessarily my stuff.
> 
> I am all for greater openness and accountability in IETF. But the
> starting point for that would be recognizing that we do actually have
> a membership and officeholders should be accountable to it rather than
> petty attempts to strip officeholders of the only perk they get for
> doing the jobs.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 16:31:24 +0000

On 17/12/15 16:21, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> Hopefully "perk" is not quite the intended word, but "necessary
> convenience" might serve better. Although... How many IESG breakfasts
> were there in Prague?

I think 3 incl. Sunday, but with a bunch of ADs at another brekkie
thing one of the days (taking advantage of a cancelled IESG brekkie).

> And, as a member of NomCom I had breakfast meetings every day of the
> week in Yokohama, but no preferential treatment.

Yeah, that seemed unfairish to me too.

> I agree that the I* needs to be around the meeting venue. The
> Secretariat even more so.
> 
> But it wold be  useful thought experiment for them all to examine how
> their weeks would be different if they had a 20 minute walk each way
> each day.

Actually, the end of day in the meeting hotel is often more useful
I think for bumping into I* folks after dinner. Or maybe I just
hang around bars a lot:-)

S

>> expect four or five people to be at and one that is set by others
>> and will have two dozen people discussing something that is complex
>> and not necessarily my stuff.
>> 
>> starting point for that would be recognizing that we do actually
>> have a membership and officeholders should be accountable to it
>> rather than petty attempts to strip officeholders of the only perk
>> they get for doing the jobs.
> 
>

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:37:15 -0800

> But it wold be  useful thought experiment for them all to examine how their weeks would be different if they had a 20 minute walk each way each day.

Effort to get decision-makers to have better empathy for the
rank-and-file is certainly useful.  The challenge is to make the effort
practical and sufficient. By 'sufficient' I mean it has to cover enough
of the core issues in ways that work.

In this case, hotel choice is only part of the equation.  Travel time
and travel cost are two other major factors.  So are additional costs,
such as food in the main venue. (We had one main venue with reasonable
hotel room rate but US$ 25 hamburgers...)

To get better surveys, they need to be dramatically more carefully, in
terms of question formulation, respondent selection and response
analysis.  This is not a new or unmentioned issue within the IAOC and
meeting committee.  What we currently do produces results dominated by
well-funded, continuing participants who are highly experienced
travelers; in effect, we get a tourism response from folk who are
already likely to attend.

Choices like BA or Sydney inconvenience essentially all attendees, in
favor of goals other than getting work done.

To date, there has been little interest in making the necessary effort
to focus on requirements for being more inclusive.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 12:00:07 -0500

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 17, 2015, at 11:31 AM, Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 

I agree on this point.  I did try to stop at the bar areas in Prague to be available to chat... However, I really did enjoy my 20 minute walk each way.  This made sure that I saw the light of day and got a tiny bit of exercise.

For BA, my situation will be different and I plan to stay at the Hilton.  My reason is not meetings, but making sure my son-to-be will be able to eat.

We may want to think about preference and special requests that may be important for some attendees and give them a way to place advance requests if they have a special need for accommodations.

Best regards,
Kathleen

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 12:35:21 -0500

For me, it's a trade-off between getting sleep and having additional time
for meetings versus
getting fresh air, any exercise, and possibly seeing something of the city.

The number of morning meetings vary - for the IESG it's usually 2.   For
the IAB it's
usually 2.  For the overlap, that's usually 4 - though not all needed
liaisons in Yokohama.
If I have meetings after dinner, those usually go until late and are quite
useful.  However,
that varies by IETF.

I also got to see absolutely nothing in Yokohama except the hotel and
adjacent mall.
Walking or taking a taxi to/from the conference venue would encourage
seeing more and
I'd appreciate not getting stuck at the hotel for quite so many meals.
However, the
trade-off is not being as available or getting as much sleep.

This probably sounds similar to many other attendees who want to be in the
conference
hotel.  Certainly, before I became an AD, it was quite busy but not usually
quite the same
level of nearly constant intensity.  I generally have preferred to be in
the conference hotel,
because of a bad experience where I had an asthma attack and couldn't do
the walk and
because I've brought along all three of my children when they were babies
and having them
close made feeding them much much easier and meant I actually saw them.  On
the other
hand, in Berlin, I stayed at a different hotel because 5 in a room was
complicated and I really
enjoyed the 15 minute walk through the park twice a day.

One factor that may be causing issues is the idea of a "peak-night" when
all those booking
early reservations don't know the agenda and thus need to book for the
whole week.

I certainly don't think of staying at the main venue as a "perk" but I do
find it useful to help
me be more rested and easier to interact with.  It does also reduce the
stress factor of
figuring out a new city - though that means that if I don't find time to
get out of the hotel
on Sunday, I'm much less likely to get out.

Regards,
Alia

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]> wrote:

> convenience" might serve better.
> Although...
> And, as a member of NomCom I had breakfast meetings every day of the week
> in Yokohama, but no preferential treatment.
>
> their weeks would be different if they had a 20 minute walk each way each
> day.
>
> Adrian
>

---

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 10:40:41 -0800

On Thursday, December 17, 2015 9:35 AM, Alia Atlas wrote:

> The number of morning meetings vary - for the IESG it's usually 2.   For the IAB it's
> usually 2.  For the overlap, that's usually 4 - though not all needed liaisons in Yokohama.
> If I have meetings after dinner, those usually go until late and are quite useful.  However,
> that varies by IETF.

Another data point: Nomcom volunteers had similar meeting times and workload in Yokohama. We did not have priority booking, many of us ended up in overflow hotels, yet apparently we managed just fine.

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:53:53 -0500

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Another data point: Nomcom volunteers had similar meeting times and
> workload in Yokohama. We did not have priority booking, many of us ended up
> in overflow hotels, yet apparently we managed just fine.
>

Absolutely true for Nomcom and similarly there are folks pulling together
BoFs who find they have similar types of schedules.  The only difference is
that this is a schedule that happens every IETF and that IETF is usually
1-1.5 days longer.

I didn't become an AD expecting this pre-reserved hotel block and I can
certainly manage without it.
I do think it makes me more effective so I take advantage of it - but I'd
also be fine taking luck of the
draw.

Regards,
Alia

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 14:27:04 -0500

--On Thursday, December 17, 2015 08:37 -0800 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> But it wold be  useful thought experiment for them all to
>> examine how their weeks would be different if they had a 20
>> minute walk each way each day.
> 
> 
> rank-and-file is certainly useful.  The challenge is to make
> the effort practical and sufficient. By 'sufficient' I mean it
> has to cover enough of the core issues in ways that work.
> 
> In this case, hotel choice is only part of the equation.
> Travel time and travel cost are two other major factors.  So
> are additional costs, such as food in the main venue. (We had
> one main venue with reasonable hotel room rate but US$ 25
> hamburgers...)

Hi.  Having proposed this particular experiment, I agree with
Dave.  It is only part of the issue, perhaps even the most
important part. but has the advantage that pain-sharing is
relatively easy to test and perhaps symbolically important.

Because several of the responses have been from IESG members,
let me be clear that, as a sometime IESG and IAB member, I found
it a huge advantage, one that I think improved IETF efficiency,
to be able to stagger into a 7AM meeting (especially the second
or third of the week) by getting into an elevator rather than
walking down the street, even more so if it followed an evening
meeting or bar BOF than ran past midnight.  

My objection isn't really to making those "hold back"
arrangements, it is to the combination of enough regular
controversies about hotels and meeting locations with having the
decisions made out of community view and with no apparent
accountability.    I think it would be entirely reasonable for
the IESG to say to the community "we need to be on-site
because... and believe that IETF efficiency would suffer if we
weren't".  Personally, I'd probably support that position.   But
these discussions have gone on long enough that it is probably
time for the community to decide whether the value of that
improved efficiently is worth lowering the chances of other
participants who want to be in the conference hotel doing so by
whatever part of 28% the IESG involves.  I'd like to believe
that, it the community said "it is more important for you folks
to share the pain" that the IESG would respect that decision and
that, if the community believed that having the IESG in the
meeting hotel was important, some of the whining would stop.
But there is no way to know without asking and the current
system avoids asking.

I'm not certain the same argument about the importance to the
community of being in the main hotel can be made for all of the
members of the IAOC.  If they need that consideration, let them
explain why to the community and then ask.   Personally, I
believe that a great deal of the source of these regular
disconnects and complaints is a perception about lack of
accountability and responsiveness of the IAOC and Meetings
Committee.  With "3 years" and "confidential business
arrangements" figuring prominently in the situation (whether
actually justified or not), this is not a good community to tell
things that amount to "we have your best interests in mind and
are not going to explain further".  I note that some IAOC and
Meetings Committee members have tried really hard to be good
about this, but the overall record does not appear to me to be
so good and I consider it a bad sign that we keep having the
same discussions over and over again without discernable change
or real community conclusions.

Similarly, I have no doubt that having some secretariat staff in
the main hotel is absolutely necessary.   My impression is that
AMS has been hyper-careful to not abuse that requirement and I
trust them to continue to exercise good judgment about it.  But
a bit of explanation of who (by either role or name) needs to be
in the conference hotel and why, would, OMO, do a lot to build
general confidence.

FWIW, 28% of only 400+ rooms feels like a rather big number.
Had Ray said "5%", it wouldn't have occurred to ma to propose
that particular exercise.

best,
    john

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:24:25 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 17 Dec 2015, Dave Crocker wrote:

> rank-and-file is certainly useful.  The challenge is to make the 
> effort practical and sufficient. By 'sufficient' I mean it has to 
> cover enough of the core issues in ways that work.
> 
> In this case, hotel choice is only part of the equation.  Travel 
> time and travel cost are two other major factors.  So are additional 
> costs, such as food in the main venue. (We had one main venue with 
> reasonable hotel room rate but US$ 25 hamburgers...)

***OLE: I assuming you are referring to Yokohama, correct me if I am 
wrong. If you are: places to eat outside of the main venue were 
literally 3 minutes away with a huge array of options and prices. The 
same can be said about hotels, maybe by adding another 10 minutes to 
the most outlying properties, all well below $100 US per night. This 
is exactly the kind of venue that the community has repeatedly 
expressed a strong preference for, and while we would have liked the 
room blocks (and indeed the HQ hotels themselves) to be bigger, we 
heard lots of comments of the form "let's meet here again!"

> 
> To get better surveys, they need to be dramatically more carefully, 
> in terms of question formulation, respondent selection and response 
> analysis.  This is not a new or unmentioned issue within the IAOC 
> and meeting committee.  What we currently do produces results 
> dominated by well-funded, continuing participants who are highly 
> experienced travelers; in effect, we get a tourism response from 
> folk who are already likely to attend.

***OLE: At the end of the day it comes down to selecting a venue which 
will accomodate our MEETING requirements, we use A LOT of rooms for 
our meetings which makes that particularly challenging. This is 
driving us more and more towards convention centers which further 
dictates what the HQ hotel(s) are. The choice of city-centers with a 
range of neaby facilities, as preferred by our community, does not 
always produce the most perfect and most inexpensive outcome, but I 
disagree that it (by design) favors only the well-funded. It's 
certainly a trade off, and yes, we could do better, but I hope you 
realize that this would ultimately lead us to having MANY meetings in 
Las Vegas.

> favor of goals other than getting work done.

***OLE: Just to be clear, the IAOC did not choose Buenos Aires, the
IESG in dialog with the community did. 

> to focus on requirements for being more inclusive.

***OLE: It's a complicated issue and it's getting more complicated
as attendance grows, the economy expands (prices go up) and so on.
It would certainly be *possible* to go back to meeting at some 
University campus...

Ole

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 16:42:19 -0800

> ***OLE: I assuming you are referring to Yokohama, correct me if I am 

I meant a hotel we were at in Europe, I believe, some years ago and
possibly again recently.  The city itself was not generally insanely
expensive.  But food in that hotel was.

And yes, Japanese major hotels have crazy prices.  It was my first
encounter with US$10 coffe, 20 years ago, while street-level outside
food is better and a fraction the cost. In terms of inside food prices,
I believe there is no choice in Japan, but there's plenty of choice in
North America and Europe.

> our meetings which makes that particularly challenging.

Sorry, no.  While yes, it limits our choices, we've have found a number
of places over the years that handle us quite nicely.

What actually is challenging is regularly having to find /new/ places.
That's a very different problem.

> IESG in dialog with the community did. 

The initiative was from the IAOC.  And the 'dialog with the community'
is a good example of the problematic survey methodology I was citing.

This has been well-hashed before, so I won't review the details.

> It would certainly be *possible* to go back to meeting at some 

It is made particularly complicated by the introduction of social and
marketing requirements that appear to be laudable but actually are
entirely outside the requirements that we claim are primary for our
meetings.  They also tend to have no operational foundation for
efficacy.  Think of it as outreach theater...

d/

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Dec 2015 02:35:21 -0000

>North America and Europe.

The staff cafeteria on the top floor of the convention center wasn't
too overpriced but you're right, the hotel food was very expensive.
On the other hand, the malls across the street had an impressive array
of reasonably priced restauarants.

R's,
John

---

From: Christian Hopps <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 22:01:41 -0500

Perhaps if a perfect I* block is around 100 (95 this time?), and the
target block size is 600 rooms, then the I* block should be 1/6 of whatever we
actually get?  Certainly that would be fair share the pain. Then
again, maybe these I* folks deserve the rooms regardless given the
availability and workload expectations. :)

Thanks,
Chris.

---

From: "MAISONNEUVE, JULIEN (JULIEN)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:20:07 +0000

Another crucial aspect is clustering : the issue is completely different when the overflow hotels are across the street (as one in Yokohama) and in Buenos Aires (where the nearest overflow hotel is 1.7km away).
If selecting locations that can host everyone in one hotel is hard, surely it is easier to find places with a cluster of reasonably close (walking distance) hotels to a large-enough conference center.
I think this could take a higher priority in the selection process, for the future.
All the best,
Julien.

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 08:01:37 -0800 (PST)

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015, MAISONNEUVE, JULIEN (JULIEN) wrote:

> Another crucial aspect is clustering : the issue is completely 
> different when the overflow hotels are across the street (as one in 
> Yokohama) and in Buenos Aires (where the nearest overflow hotel is 
> 1.7km away).

***OLE: According to other messages posted on this list, there are
other hotels as close as 600m, but I take your point.

> If selecting locations that can host everyone in one 
> hotel is hard, surely it is easier to find places with a cluster of 
> reasonably close (walking distance) hotels to a large-enough 
> conference center.

***OLE: The problem is that so many conference centers are "new"
and typcially NOT in a city center. This creates problems with
respect to access to shops, restaurants and even alternative
lower cost accomodation. Take at look at the RAI in Amsterdam
for example. The IETF met there in 1993.

> I think this could take a higher priority in the 
> selection process, for the future. All the best, Julien.
> 
> 

Ole

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:27:35 -0600

> availability and workload expectations. :)

Yes, the target block size should be at least 600 not 300.
Yes, alternative hotels should be around 600m not 1.7km.

I hope IOAC is listening.

Behcet

---

From: Lou Berger <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:58:47 -0500

> I hope IOAC is listening.

Yes.  Absolutely!

Lou
(IAOC, since March...)