RE: IETF Attendance by continent

[Elwell, John]

Agreed. On several evening, the 20 minute walk into the city centre or back 
provided a refreshing opportunity to talk to somebody whom otherwise I might 
hardly have spoken to.

John
 

> -Original Message-
> From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Mark Nottingham
> Sent: 09 August 2010 01:42
> To: Michael StJohns
> Cc: Bob Hinden; IETF discussion list
> Subject: Re: IETF Attendance by continent
> 
> Just to give a counterpoint, Maastricht was incredibly 
> productive. Perhaps you didn't see clusters of people at the 
> conference centre, but there were plenty of groups going for 
> walks, going out to dinner, and having interesting discussions. 
> 
> I don't subscribe to the notion that shutting everyone into a 
> confererence centre-cum-campus with all amenities onsite (and 
> a corresponding dearth of other options, e.g. Minneapolis or 
> Anaheim) is going to lead to higher productivity. 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> On 09/08/2010, at 4:14 AM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> 
> > Hi Bob -
> > 
> > I appreciate and believe that this is your highest 
> priority, but I think we may differ on how to best accomplish 
> a successful meeting.  Maastricht for me was an example of 
> the low end of sort of successful sites and that's primarily 
> because of the conference center with hotels model rather 
> than the opposite model of a hotel with a conference center.   
> > 
> > In Maastricht, there wasn't a central hotel bar, no place 
> to happen upon 3 or 4 disjoint conversations on wide topics, 
> no 11pm discourse on how to fix the problem that came up in 
> the session earlier that day. No place to buttonhole Russ or 
> Olaf over a beer after dinner, etc (although they may 
> appreciate that).
> > 
> > A great portion of the IETFs success is due to cross 
> fertilization and serendipity and that has been fed in the 
> past by having a comfortable place with drinks and food that 
> you pretty much have to go by to get to your hotel room. 
> Typically, these have been the most successful (in terms of 
> new ideas and energy) meetings.
> > 
> > In Maastricht you had that big central room with 
> uncomfortable chairs and pretty much no reason to be there if 
> you weren't using the internet or weren't either going to or 
> coming from a WG session.  I saw few random gatherings (but I 
> admit, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them from 
> the non-random ones).  Compare and contrast this with Anaheim 
> for example.  So, Maastricht was probably fine if you were 
> narrowly focused on your WG(s), but not so great if you were 
> interested in how the various problems might interact or were 
> interested in learning about the IETF itself.
> > 
> > It's also possible that I'm waxing philosophical for a 
> portion of IETF culture than is no longer important to the 
> current crop of participants - but that's life I guess.
> > 
> > Mike
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > At 11:16 PM 8/7/2010, Bob Hinden wrote:
> >> Mike,
> >> 
> >> Just to be clear, the highest priority in venue selection 
> is to find a venue where we can have a successful meeting.  
> We won't go anywhere were we don't think we can get the work 
> done.  This discussion is where to have a meeting, but not at 
> the expense of the work itself.
> >> 
> >> Bob
> >> 
> >> On Aug 7, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Fred said this much more eloquently than I could.
> >>> 
> >>> On the IETF78 attendees list there's been a lot of 
> discussion about where to meet - with the primary 
> consideration seeming to be "pretty and small".I may be 
> in the minority, but I'd really rather the IETF go places 
> where the ability to  "get work done" is the primary consideration.  
> >>> 
> >>> So going forward, I hope the considerations for location 
> will give higher weight to meeting the needs of the folks 
> doing the work (my second list of folk) and the folks who 
> keep coming back (the first list) than to the single meeting 
> snap shots.  Its possible the demographics for my two lists 
> are similar to the raw demographics so my point may be moot - 
> but why guess when we have the data? 
> >>> 
> >>> Mike
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> At 12:34 AM 8/7/2010, Fred Baker wrote:
> >>> 
>  On Aug 7, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Bob Hinden wrote:
>  
> > I do note that it seems clear that registration is 
> related to where we meet.  That show up pretty clearly the 
> current data.  So judging where to have future meetings based 
> on past participation will tend to keep us where we used to 
> meet. Nomcom is, as you point out, 3 of 5 meetings.  WG chair 
> and authors might have a longer history.
>  
>  I agree with the "openness" principle, but I disagree 
> with this analysis. 
>  
>  "3..5" is another way of saying "people that attend 
> multiple times". As noted by others, first-time attendees 
> (who by definition haven't attended anywhere else and 
> therefore give us no guidance) and local-only 

RE: IETF Attendance by continent

[Glen Zorn]

Michael Richardson [mailto://m...@sandelman.ca] writes:

...

> > "Michael" == Michael StJohns  writes:
> Michael> Fred said this much more eloquently than I could.
> 
> Michael> On the IETF78 attendees list there's been a lot of
> Michael> discussion about where to meet - with the primary
> Michael> consideration seeming to be "pretty and small".  I may be
> Michael> in the minority, but I'd really rather the IETF go places
> Michael> where the ability to "get work done" is the primary
> Michael> consideration.
> 
> Yeah, I'm all for meeting in Europe once a year, but does it have to be
> in the peak of Summer?  Seriously.  As long as I'm in a hotel conference
> centre all day, I might as well be north of the Artic Circle in
> November.

You must be a lover of Minneapolis!  OTOH, there are those of us who aren't
(or would prefer not to be) stuck in a hotel conference center all day,
every day, for a week.  Europe in the height of summer holiday may not be
the optimum, but I'm told that Paris is lovely in the springtime...

...


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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Eliot Lear]

 Mark,

On 8/9/10 2:41 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
> I don't subscribe to the notion that shutting everyone into a confererence 
> centre-cum-campus with all amenities onsite (and a corresponding dearth of 
> other options, e.g. Minneapolis or Anaheim) is going to lead to higher 
> productivity. 

I would disagree with the characterization of Minneapolis having a
'corresponding dearth of other options'. There's a lot of stuff local to
the area, for those who step out, and there is an entire other Twin city
with lots of other stuff that is but a short cab ride away.

More importantly, even if that were true, I have now attended a
conference where I would say there as a lot of productivity precisely
because it was an "all in one" site.  People were easily accessible to
one another.  The meeting lasted two weeks, and required lots of face to
face time with many different pairs of individuals, literally running
from about 7:00am – 9:00pm daily.  A lot of work did get done in small
side meetings in small rooms.  The difference between this meeting and
the IETF is that most people don't have those side rooms.  There were
some other logistical differences.  For one, lunch was included in the
conference.  That can be sorted.  

This conference was similar in size to the IETF, and the meeting took
place in Hyderabad, India.

Eliot
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Yoav Nir]

I'm more in favor the 3-2-1 model. The stats clearly show that the largest 
group of "repeat offenders" comes from the US.

But either way, I also agree that Europe is the summer is not ideal. in the US 
there's much less of the "vacances" phenomenon.

So how about:
 - March in Europe
 - July in N America
 - November either in Asia or some other place (Africa, S America) or maybe 
sometimes in N America, depending on which model we pick.



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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Aug 9, 2010, at 2:48 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> Michael Richardson  writes:
> 
>>> "Michael" == Michael StJohns  writes:
>>Michael> Fred said this much more eloquently than I could.
>> 
>>Michael> On the IETF78 attendees list there's been a lot of
>>Michael> discussion about where to meet - with the primary
>>Michael> consideration seeming to be "pretty and small".  I may be
>>Michael> in the minority, but I'd really rather the IETF go places
>>Michael> where the ability to "get work done" is the primary
>>Michael> consideration.
>> 
>> Yeah, I'm all for meeting in Europe once a year, but does it have to be
>> in the peak of Summer?  Seriously.  As long as I'm in a hotel conference
>> centre all day, I might as well be north of the Artic Circle in November.
> 
> +1.  Peak of summer happens to be peak of vacation time for many
> europeans, and making room for an IETF conference during vacation
> periods can be difficult even if it is in the same continent.

It sounds like you are suggesting not having a meeting during the summer at 
all, as opposed to
not having it in Europe during the summer. 

Regards
Marshall


> 
> /Simon
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Marshall Eubanks]

Dear Eliot;

On Aug 9, 2010, at 4:55 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

> Mark,
> 
> On 8/9/10 2:41 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>> I don't subscribe to the notion that shutting everyone into a confererence 
>> centre-cum-campus with all amenities onsite (and a corresponding dearth of 
>> other options, e.g. Minneapolis or Anaheim) is going to lead to higher 
>> productivity. 
> 
> I would disagree with the characterization of Minneapolis having a
> 'corresponding dearth of other options'. There's a lot of stuff local to
> the area, for those who step out, and there is an entire other Twin city
> with lots of other stuff that is but a short cab ride away.
> 
> More importantly, even if that were true, I have now attended a
> conference where I would say there as a lot of productivity precisely
> because it was an "all in one" site.  People were easily accessible to
> one another.  The meeting lasted two weeks, and required lots of face to
> face time with many different pairs of individuals, literally running
> from about 7:00am – 9:00pm daily.  A lot of work did get done in small
> side meetings in small rooms.  The difference between this meeting and
> the IETF is that most people don't have those side rooms.  There were
> some other logistical differences.  For one, lunch was included in the
> conference.  That can be sorted.  
> 
> This conference was similar in size to the IETF, and the meeting took
> place in Hyderabad, India.

Was this in the  Hyderabad International Convention Centre, 
http://www.hicc.com/ ?

Some years ago I looked at this center for the IAOC - a wonderful convention 
center, but at the time
there were not nearly enough hotels nearby for an IETF meeting. Has this 
changed (i.e., how big was this meeting, 
and how easy was it to stay close to the HICC) ? 

Marshall

> 
> Eliot
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Eliot Lear]

 Hi Marshall,

> Dear Eliot;
>
> Was this in the  Hyderabad International Convention Centre, 
> http://www.hicc.com/ ?

Yes.
> Some years ago I looked at this center for the IAOC - a wonderful convention 
> center, but at the time
> there were not nearly enough hotels nearby for an IETF meeting. Has this 
> changed (i.e., how big was this meeting, 
> and how easy was it to stay close to the HICC) ? 

This must have changed somewhat. There were around 1100 people in
attendance, as I understand it. And so it's close.  There were at least
two large hotels, the Novotel and a Westin within close distance, with
shuttles running back and forth.  There may have been others, but I had
mine, so...

Eliot
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Joel Jaeggli]

On 8/8/10 11:48 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Yeah, I'm all for meeting in Europe once a year, but does it have to be
>> in the peak of Summer?  Seriously.  As long as I'm in a hotel conference
>> centre all day, I might as well be north of the Artic Circle in November.
> 
> +1.  Peak of summer happens to be peak of vacation time for many
> europeans, and making room for an IETF conference during vacation
> periods can be difficult even if it is in the same continent.

it also means conference facilities have availability, just a small
detail of course. notwitstadning the fact that if you've got 3 evening
spaced meetings per year one of them is going to fall in that period.

> /Simon
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Aug 9, 2010, at 9:13 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

> Hi Marshall,
> 
>> Dear Eliot;
>> 
>> Was this in the  Hyderabad International Convention Centre, 
>> http://www.hicc.com/ ?
> 
> Yes.
>> Some years ago I looked at this center for the IAOC - a wonderful convention 
>> center, but at the time
>> there were not nearly enough hotels nearby for an IETF meeting. Has this 
>> changed (i.e., how big was this meeting, 
>> and how easy was it to stay close to the HICC) ? 
> 
> This must have changed somewhat. There were around 1100 people in
> attendance, as I understand it. And so it's close.  There were at least
> two large hotels, the Novotel and a Westin within close distance, with
> shuttles running back and forth.  There may have been others, but I had
> mine, so...
> 

When I was there, there was only the Novotel, and the Westin was an open field.

Marshall


> Eliot
> 

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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 02:14:56PM -0400, Michael StJohns wrote:
> In Maastricht you had that big central room with uncomfortable
> chairs and pretty much no reason to be there if you weren't using
> the internet or weren't either going to or coming from a WG session.
> I saw few random gatherings (but I admit, I probably wouldn't have
> been able to tell them from the non-random ones).  Compare and
> contrast this with Anaheim for example.  

Since we're providing anecdotal data, I'll mention that for me the big
central room in Maastrict turned out to provide far greater
cross-fertilization than I got in Anaheim.  

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
a...@shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Fred Baker]

On Aug 8, 2010, at 11:48 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> +1.  Peak of summer happens to be peak of vacation time for many europeans, 
> and making room for an IETF conference during vacation periods can be 
> difficult even if it is in the same continent.

Peak of summer is when Americans with children are on vacation too. What is 
your intention here - to skip the summer meeting?

http://www.ipinc.net/IPv4.GIF

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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 07:27:23AM +0300, Yoav Nir wrote:
> Asia is big. Some parts of Asia (the middle east and the eastern
> parts of Russia) are closer to Europe than to China, Japan or Korea,
> at least as far as traveling goes.

North America is big, too.  Travelling to Anaheim was not a great deal
more convenient for me than was travelling to Maastricht.  (I live in
south-central Ontario, Canada.) 

Or put this another way: if you live in Montreal, the difference
between direct flights to LHR and LAX is at most an hour, according to
OAG.

A

-- 
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a...@shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Ray Bellis]

On 9 Aug 2010, at 16:12, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

Since we're providing anecdotal data, I'll mention that for me the big
central room in Maastrict turned out to provide far greater
cross-fertilization than I got in Anaheim.

+1

I actually thought the Anaheim venue was really poor for this, and liked having 
that large _seated_ communal area full of IETFers at the MECC.

Ray

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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[David Morris]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> On 8/8/10 11:48 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> it also means conference facilities have availability, just a small
> detail of course. notwitstadning the fact that if you've got 3 evening
> spaced meetings per year one of them is going to fall in that period.

Actually, Jan, May, Sept ... provides 3 evenly spaced meetings per
year avoiding Jun,Jul,Aug ... Of course, there are probably good
arguments for not having a Jan meeting after the holidays or
Sept meeting immediately following vacations, but the schedule
does avoid the prime vacation interval.
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Re: Why not use on-line tool to track each working group's attendees?

[Martin Rex]

Joel Jaeggli wrote:
> 
> Depending on the popularity of your working group and the extent to
> which the meeting itself is timeshifted from the vantage point of the
> bulk of the remote participants, as much as 10% of of the partficipants
> might be remote, generally less, almost never more.

There is a difference in the effectiveness of remote vs. on-premise
participation.  In some WGs in the Security Area on-premise participants
join jabber, facilitating remote participation of the WG Meeting through
jabber (while listening to the audio stream) much easier.  I've been
doing this for most of the past 10 years.  Personally, I dislike WebEx.


Unfortunately, for IETF78, I was blocked from the audiostream, because
it was served through a port _other_ than 80/443, so it was unaccessible
through our company firewall.  I would appreciate if the audio streams
would be served through port 80 again on future meetings.


-Martin
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Re: Why not use on-line tool to track each working group's attendees?

[Joel Jaeggli]

On 8/9/10 9:51 AM, Martin Rex wrote:
> Unfortunately, for IETF78, I was blocked from the audiostream, because
> it was served through a port _other_ than 80/443, so it was unaccessible
> through our company firewall.  I would appreciate if the audio streams
> would be served through port 80 again on future meetings.

It's been served on port 8000 for every meeting since ietf 62... That is
the default port for icecast and or quicktime streaming service.

> 
> -Martin
> 

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Re: Why not use on-line tool to track each working group's attendees?

[David Conrad]

On Aug 9, 2010, at 6:51 AM, Martin Rex wrote:
> Joel Jaeggli wrote:
>> 
>> as much as 10% of of the partficipants might be remote, generally less, 
>> almost never more.
> There is a difference in the effectiveness of remote vs. on-premise 
> participation.  

I don't think anyone disputes this (or even intended on raising it as an 
issue).  My understanding of the blue sheets were that they were deemed useful 
as they provide an indication of attendance at working group meetings for 
various (e.g., room sizing, legal, etc.) purposes.  With increased remote 
participation (even if it isn't as good as on-premises), I'd assume including 
remote participants in the attendees list would be valuable/appropriate.  While 
Jabber logs probably contain this information, centralized/standardized 
participation lists might be an additional justification to try online 
attendance tools.  

Regards,
-drc

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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[David Kessens]

Jari,

On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 12:31:02AM +0300, Jari Arkko wrote:
> 
> I think we should not over-analyze the selection process too much. I
> support 1-1-1 because its a simple model, it feels right, and
> because I believe general IETF participation is headed towards the
> 1-1-1 model even if we are not there by all measures yet.

I think all these models that are based on where we are from are really
beside the point as where we are from really doesn't necessarily have any
connection with where we like to go.

My preference is to pick meeting sides that have the right capacity for the
IETF meeting and the right infrastructure for a good meeting, are relatively
easy to get to and allow for reasonable attendance cost for my employer.

It is totally fine by me if that means that we end up more often in Asia if
it happens to be easier to get larger venues at a decent price. Quite
frankly, whether my air travel is a few hours more or less is really not
that important in the grander scheme of things especially if the resulting
venue is an excellent and cost effective location with a supportive local
organization team.

At the same time, I expect that the IAOC is made up of intelligent people
and that they wouldn't go completely overboard and have each and every
meeting in only one part of the world. Do we really need these kind of
rigid rules ?

David Kessens
---
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Michael Richardson]

> "Yoav" == Yoav Nir  writes:
Yoav> I'm more in favor the 3-2-1 model. The stats clearly show that the 
largest group of "repeat offenders" comes from the US.

Yoav> But either way, I also agree that Europe is the summer is not ideal. 
in the US there's much less of the "vacances" phenomenon.

Yoav> So how about:
Yoav> - March in Europe
Yoav> - July in N America
Yoav> - November either in Asia or some other place (Africa, S America) or 
maybe sometimes in N America, depending on which model we pick.

Gosh, looks like the 2011 schedule to me :-)

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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Simon Josefsson]

Fred Baker  writes:

> On Aug 8, 2010, at 11:48 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>
>> +1.  Peak of summer happens to be peak of vacation time for many europeans, 
>> and making room for an IETF conference during vacation periods can be 
>> difficult even if it is in the same continent.
>
> Peak of summer is when Americans with children are on vacation
> too. What is your intention here - to skip the summer meeting?

My point is that Europe doesn't have to be over-represented as the
summer continent.

For the last 15 years, 7 out of 11 of the July meetings has been in
Europe.  I can only find three non-July EU meetings in the last 15
years, and two of them were held in early August.

This timing has made it difficult for me to attend the meetings.

j...@mocca:~$ elinks -dump http://www.ietf.org/meeting/past.html|grep July|head 
-11
  July 25-30, 2010; Maastricht,
  July 26-31, 2009; Stockholm,
  July 27-August 1, 2008; Dublin,
  July 22-27, 2007; Chicago, IL, USA;
  July 9-14, 2006; Montreal, Quebec,
  July 31-August 5, 2005; Paris,
  July 13-18, 2003; Vienna, Austria;
  July 14-19, 2002; Yokohama, Japan;
  July 31-August 4, 2000; Pittsburgh,
  July 11-16, 1999; Oslo, Norway;
  July 17-21, 1995; Stockholm,
j...@mocca:~$ 

/Simon
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Re: IETF Attendance by continent

[Jari Arkko]

FWIW, I do think that choice of July as the meeting time is not the best 
in terms of avoiding collisions with people's vacations. Say, early June 
or September would probably have less conflicts with family vacations, 
daycare shutdown periods, and the like. It would probably make it 
possible for more people to join the meeting. Of course, any change in 
the meeting dates would be slow. The current meeting calendar goes to 
November 2017...


Jari

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