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. I show a pie chart
at every plenary (a tradition started by my predecessors) that
gives a pretty strong indication of what those countries or regions
are. You saw the version of that pie chart from IETF65 in the
ISOC Board meeting in Marrakech. The IETF66 version is in the
Wednesday plenary proceedings from this week.
(temporary location:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=66 )
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.
Regards
Brian
Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
Fred Baker said the following on 13/07/2006 13:38:
My point is that it is not about the price of the hotel, nor is it
about taking the Internet gospel to those who haven't been able to
participate in its development [...]
It's about having productive meetings in an atmosphere conducive to
them
Fred,
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.
This is a counter example to what your are trying to demonstrate. 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.
In terms of image, I tend to think that it would indeed help the IETF to
have meetings outside the Northern America and European regions. It is
not so much about spreading the Internet gospel - others do it better -
although it would help. It is more in terms of interacting with the
local community to find out what they expect to come out of a
standardization process. 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.
Best,
Patrick Vande Walle
ISOC Luxembourg
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