Subject: Re: All these discussions about meeting venues

From: Alfred Hönes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:44:26 +0200 (MESZ)

Dave Crocker wrote in one of his abundant messages today:

> ps. Some of us, including Ole and me, have expressed our views
> overly much and overly strongly. ...

I agree.

>                              ... The question, then,
> is where the rest of the community lands on this issue?

Here we go!
(Full disclaimer: somehow "active" in the IETF since several years,
 2 meetings attended so far, Dublin and Maastricht)

In another message today, Dave Crocker wrote:

> On 9/14/2010 10:28 AM, Michael Dillon wrote:
>
>       Virtually no attendee had a vehicle at either of those venues
>       (or many others.)
>
>    People willing to ride on a bus or pay for a taxi are "those
>    with vehicles".
>
> Sorry, no.
>
> Waiting for these and paying for these is not convenient or
> reasonable for 1000 people, just to get to daily resources.
>
> d/

Firstly, as Ole repeated, the bus system in Maastricht was for *free*
during IETF, on showing your IETF badge.  And experience showed that
not all attendees need transportation at the same time with the same
source and destination address.   :-)

Secondly, the Netherlands are well known as the land of bicycles.
My room rate in a small B&B in Maastricht included free use of one
of the bikes they held at the disposal of their guests.  (And I knew
from the reservation service that the larger hotels provided bike
rental as well, yet not all at no additional cost.)
That turned out to be even faster and much more convenient than
using a bus/car in Maastricht: there were lots of bike tracks on
roads and otherwise (e.g. alongside the river); almost all traffic
restrictions (recall the overwhelming number of one-way roads!) were
"except cyclists"; at major road crossings, the traffic lights had
sensor-driven priority phases for cyclists; and they had abundant
parking areas for bikes all over the inner city, and at the MECC
as well -- all at no cost.

I guess that if all attendees physically capable of using a bike
would have done so, the remainder would have had no problems to
use the bus system (almost) all at once.  :-)

[ Note that this experience should perhaps not be extrapolated to Bejing
  -- I have been told by our friends located near the registration desk
  that riding bikes in Bejing has become _very_ dangerous now! ]

Back to the general topical question:

I'd strongly argue against (almost) fixed locations for IETF meetings.
New venues will attract various new attendees with all kind of travel
restrictions and will thus allow them to work better and more
efficiently in the IETF subsequently.
Spreading meeting venues all over the world to where such potential
attendees can be expected (and maybe very occasionally even in regions
with -- so far -- very poor participation) will help the IETF to
continually "refresh its blood" and maintain, in the long term, active
participation at a high level.

This argument does not invalidate all the other important points made
in the past -- foremost generally good infrastructure, availability
of the venue, and reducing total costs for attendees!
However, "good accessability" should not be confused with "located in
the vicinity of a major international air traffic hub", in particular
because such vicinity seems to correlate pretty well with generally
higher costs.

Kind regards,
  Alfred Hönes.

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