Subject: Call for comments: Proposals for exploratory IETF meetings

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2020 21:53:37 -0400

RFC 8719 states that IETF meetings should rotate between North America, Europe, and Asia, according to the “1-1-1-*” policy. The “*” denotes an exploratory meeting outside of these three regions. The RFC also states that:

"Someone who is interested in pursuing an exploratory venue proposes it on the IETF discussion list or on a future discussion list expressly set up and announced for this purpose. The community gets to comment on the venue and offer their opinions. If the IETF chair determines that there is community consensus to pursue the venue further, the venue will be put up for discussion on the venue-selection mailing list <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/venue-selection>.”

There have recently been proposals [1][2] from members of the community to consider three exploratory venues:

Australia
New Zealand
Egypt

To establish whether there is community consensus to pursue any of these venues further, I am opening a call for comments on these venues. Please send your comments about whether the IETF should consider these venues for exploratory meetings to [email-masked] no later than September 18, 2020. Those who wish to send private feedback can address their comments to [email-masked] instead. Comments that have already been sent to the list since the first proposal was made on August 24 do not need to be repeated and will be factored into the determination of consensus.

Note that this is merely the first step in a long process of meeting venue selection for an exploratory meeting, should consensus emerge. IETF meeting venues are typically booked up to four years in advance, and therefore the opportunity to schedule an exploratory meeting even if there is consensus to do so may not occur until several years from now. RFC 8718 has more details.

Thanks,
Alissa Cooper
IETF Chair

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/4khe-SkMn7yq673h-VmYDYkr2KQ/
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/EUiU1rZNUYCVgcPPBNUVItfN8Dk/