Subject: [Mtgvenue] Comment on Section 4: "Transparency"

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 11:01:40 -0500

Section 4 of the current draft calls out the fact that certain classes 
of information are to be considered confidential, and gives meeting 
venue contracts as an example of such information.

I think we should more clearly spell out that *certain* *aspects* of the 
contract are confidential, while others may be made public. In fact, I 
think there are certain aspects that should, as a matter of practice, be 
made public.

Flash back to IETF 86 in Orlando. Late Sunday, the venue hotel -- which 
had apparently overbooked quite severely -- began displacing attendees 
with valid reservations to a nearby, and significantly cheaper, hotel:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/86attendees/m_udMZ-e75GxfW_qe45c8E6ZanU

The thing is, the IAOC and/or ISOC had taken steps to make sure that 
overbooking was handled in a certain way; and the provisions that the 
hotel had agreed to in writing were far superior to what actually 
happened. But because the impacted attendees didn't know about these 
provisions, and because (absent any challenge) the hotel had no 
incentive to proactively honor them, people had a thoroughly crappy 
experience.

After things started to go sideways, Ray posted the relevant contract 
provisions 
(https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/86all/iuQ4Q3xC4BgEPHuUUix7nrk4BXs), 
which actually look pretty good. Kudos to whomever set this up on our 
side. It's a shame that such nicely crafted accommodations went to waste.

This kind of contractual information -- attendees' negotiated rights 
when hotels overbook -- should be in the hands of people before they 
arrive at the hotel. Had such been the case in Orlando, displaced 
attendees could have insisted that the hotel honor their agreement. Far 
from being confidential, these provisions should be published quite 
prominently.

For this draft, I think the action is to change the example so that it 
doesn't indicate "venue contracts" as a class of information that is 
implied to be confidential in its entirety. Instead, it should call out 
specific kinds of information (which may appear in contracts) that are 
considered confidential.

/a