Re: IETF 78 Annoucement

[Henk Uijterwaal <henk at ripe.net>]

Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> On Sun, 24 May 2009, Dave CROCKER wrote:
> > > It's rarely just a matter of "the hosts chosen location," but what is
> > > available at a given time and what is suitable for an IETF meeting in 
> > So, in this economy, you think that the choices were severely restricted 15
> > months from the time the contract was made?
>
> If you are talking about venues in the Netherlands, yes. The IETF is a 
> relatively BIG meeting, The Netherlands is a relatively SMALL country
> at least in terms of convention venue space (including hotels).

There are, I think, about 3 reasonable choices to hold an IETF meeting
in this country.  All 3 are quite popular even in the present economy,
if you want to be sure that you can have a meeting in a particular
week, you have to book >1 year in advance.

> > Starting with the assumption that it has to be the Netherlands -- no matter
> > how nice that country is -- is already a problematic constraint, if it
> > produces problematic choices.  Link host to venue -- at all -- and this is
> > what happens.
>
> It's not that it HAS to be The Netherlands, but that is where Drew 
> found a (number of) host sponsors in this particular case. 

The sponsor is an organization that focusses on the Dutch market only
and I seriously doubt that they would sponsor anything outside this
country.  Remove the money from the sponsors and the meeting fees
would have to go up.  At the one but last plenary, you (Dave) were
amongst the first persons to object against a potential increase from
$635 to $675.   And the amount this sponsor contributes is far more than
than $40x1,000 attendees.

Finally, in the present economy, finding sponsors isn't easy either.

Henk

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Henk Uijterwaal                           Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net
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