Subject: [Manycouches] implementability aspect of criteria in draft-ietf-shmoo-cancel-meeting-00

From: Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:53:17 +0100

Hi,

I have read again the criteria evoked in draft-ietf-shmoo-cancel-meeting-00.

These criteria are supposedly used by a decision maker in order to
cancel a meeting.

The operation of cancelling a meeting is a one-time operation, not a
decision with long term effects.

The following criteria are being listed, and then are my comments on the
implementability:

> *  Local safety guidelines allow the venue and hotels to host a 
> meeting with the expected number of participants and staff.

Put yourself in the driving seat :-)

It would be difficult for the decision maker to understand what are the
'local' safety guidelines.

To help that, this is my understanding: these local safety guidelines
might be the safety guidelines issued by the City Mayor of that city, or
the region, or the state government.  Maybe also the guidelines issued
by the Fire Department.

They would not be the guidelines issued by a Country, neither by a
federal gov't (USA), neither the Commission's (EU).  Because they are
'local'.

I think that is a long list of authorities to check.

I think also that the search is difficult, because one is looking for
absence of negative advice.  In normal times, such negative advice is
very rare.  In dire times, when time is short, such negative advice
might appear but in a very small number of places.  These places might
be very far away from the meeting place.

Because of these reasons, it is difficult to find local safety
guidelines that advice against holding a meeting.

> Local health and public safety infrastructure should expect to have 
> adequate capacity to support an influx of visitors during the
> meeting week.

I think there are two things that are referred to here: the hotel's
security setting and the City's Fire Department.  Maybe also the
capacities of the Hospitals in that City to acquire a few exceptional
health cases.

> *  There are no US [USSTATE], UK [UKFO], or local authority travel 
> advisories for the location of the meeting.

I agree with the intention: check Foreign Office advice.

However, I doubt the early advices from Foreign Offices are specific
enough such as to apply to holding an IETF meeting or not.

This criterion requires to check for absence of negative advice.  This
is hard to implement: it comes down to asking each of these Foreign
Offices whether they advice against holding a meeting.  In the initial
phases they will not say so - they will not take the responsibility to
saying so.

> *  Air travel is assessed as safe by the relevent health and safety 
> authorities.

This comes down to checking the WHO (World HEalth Organisation) and FAA
whether or not they assess air travel safe.  That again, when asked in
times of beginning of crisis, they will never say they dont assess
travel to be safe.  They do not take the responsibility of doing so.

> *  There is no quarantine or self-isolation requirement at the 
> location.

Implementable.

> *  Other similar international meetings (conferences) are going ahead
> at a similar time to IETF.

Implementable if it said 'similar time and place' not just 'similar time'.

However, it is hard to find a directory on the web which lists the
particular conferences and meetings at a particular place.

Other than these criteria, there are others that would need to be checked:

- natural disaster (spectacular) events  - they are seen first on data
   servers.  For volcano erruption, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes -
   there is live data and some times there is confident forecast.

- there are many other events that might lead to exceptional
   cancellation of an IETF meeting, but they should be treated
   separately.

- Some of these events might be needed to be dealt with on
   an even shorter notice than 2 weeks.  Suppose rioting starts 1 day
   before the meeting around that Hotel?

- some of the events that might provoke a need to cancel extraordinarily
   one IETF meeting might give enough time to try to reach consensus
   about a decision.  An event in January might let space enough to reach
   consensus for November of that year.

- there is a need of extraordinary cancellation criteria, but there is
   also a need to define criteria of extraordinary re-start of the IETF
   f2f.

Alex

---

From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:42:35 +1300

Some responses:

> On 24/03/2021, at 5:53 AM, Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> *  Local safety guidelines allow the venue and hotels to host a meeting with the expected number of participants and staff.
> 

I disagree.  One of the excellent things about the IETF is the breadth of the community and the community support that goes into each meeting booking.  In the past we’ve relied on local contacts to update us on the local situation and I expect that to continue.  I’m fine if that needs to be encoded into the draft.

>> Local health and public safety infrastructure should expect to have adequate capacity to support an influx of visitors during the
>> meeting week.
> 
>> *  There are no US [USSTATE], UK [UKFO], or local authority travel advisories for the location of the meeting.
> 

That’s not the case. Both of the offices given in the text provide a simple public 3/4 point scale that goes from "no problem" to "travel not recommended".  Local authority travel advisories may not be so explicit but then again the local contacts are invaluable.

> 
>> *  Air travel is assessed as safe by the relevent health and safety authorities.
> 

I don’t think we can extrapolate from the pandemic to all future events - if anything, people tend to learn from mistakes.

> 
>> *  There is no quarantine or self-isolation requirement at the location.
> 
> Implementable.
> 

I gave Martin some recent feedback about the difference between an emergency situation and a non-emergency situation.

Jay

> 
> Alex
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Manycouches mailing list
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches
> 

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>