Subject: [Mtgvenue] Non-objectives

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 11:53:34 -0500

There are two non-objectives listed in draft-sullivan-mtgvenue-decisions-00 that do not appear in Section 2 of draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-02: maximal attendance and geographic outreach (one roof is there too but is already being discussed on the list). I think both of these should appear in Section 2.

Alissa

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 09:18:02 -0800

> There are two non-objectives listed in draft-sullivan-mtgvenue-decisions-00 that do not appear in Section 2 of draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-02: maximal attendance and geographic…

oops.  sorry.

Added the attendance one in.

About outreach...

While I'm personally in agreement with the Sullivan draft text on this, 
It does not match the views of many IETF participants, and indeed, 
doesn't match at least one recent venue choice.

So I think that one needs debate and some basis for declaring agreement.

For reference, the Sullivan draft's text on this:

> 3.3.  Geographic outreach
>
>    The IETF moves its meetings around to ensure that those who can
>    participate in person at the meetings share the difficulty and cost
>    of travel.  The point of such moving is emphatically not to find new
>    or interesting places to visit, or to undertake outreach to new
>    communities who would not otherwise participate in the IETF.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

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From: Lou Berger <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 15:16:46 -0500

Alissa,

    Thank you for all the great comments.  Is there any chance you can
propose specific wording changes?  I sort of feel like we (authors) have
to guess at your intent when you have something already specific in mind. 

Thanks,

Lou

PS this request also applies to some of your other messages sent today.

On 11/7/2016 11:53 AM, Alissa Cooper wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Mtgvenue mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mtgvenue
>

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 16:04:51 -0500

> to guess at your intent when you have something already specific in mind. 

Alissa specifically referred to the draft she and I submitted before
the last meeting.  I think you can do more than guess at the right
text :)

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 16:05:51 -0500

On Mon, Nov 07, 2016 at 09:18:02AM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
> While I'm personally in agreement with the Sullivan draft text on this, It
> does not match the views of many IETF participants, and indeed, doesn't
> match at least one recent venue choice.

I am not actually sure that it does not match one recent venue choice,
so I'd like to know which one you mean.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 19:50:12 -0500

> On Nov 7, 2016, at 4:04 PM, Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Yes, feel free to crib from our draft.

Alissa

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 15:21:40 +1300

On 08/11/2016 06:18, Dave Crocker wrote:
> It does not match the views of many IETF participants, 

I would guess that's because it could be taken to imply that we are *against*
outreach, which I'm sure we are not. Perhaps it's a matter of phrasing, e.g.

"While the IETF is open and welcoming to participants from anywhere, geographic
outreach is not in itself a primary criterion for venue selection."

   Brian

> and indeed,

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 18:50:21 -0800

> so I'd like to know which one you mean.

BA.  That was specifically chosen for outreach.

(Color me confused that the reference wasn't obvious to everyone.)

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 23:18:02 -0500

> BA.  That was specifically chosen for outreach.

Then I think I disagree.

The Latin American community in the IETF worked diligently in advance
both of that selection and of the meeting to demonstrate serious and
ongoing engagement within the community, larger participation, and
also to note that our 1/1/1 approach seemed to imply a rather larger
Americas region than we seemed to visit.  Going to that part of the
world was no bigger a stretch than occasionally extending our reach in
Asia-Pacific to include Australia or NZ.

It was certainly true that the meeting was also treated as an
opportunity to extend more invitations to people within the sub-region
of the Americas.  But as it was presented to me, at least, it was not
selected purely as an outreach mechanism.

In any case, I think we're working on criteria for future venue
selection precisely because of differing views about what the goals
are, so even if it be true that it was selected on the basis of
outreach, we ought to decide whether that is or is not a good basis
for selection.

Best regards,

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 20:45:40 -0800

Andrew,

> Asia-Pacific to include Australia or NZ.

First, I think you have bits of the timeline mixed.  From it's first 
mention in the Meetings Committee (or perhaps while I was still on the 
IAOC) the focus was on going there as outreach.  The various, 
surrounding activities were produced in response to concern about the 
existing level of involvement and how to leverage the single visit.

Second, note tidbits such as from:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/3QBP9abucJIpTIH12DTv35iaqmc

> The first part of this relates to whether having a single meeting in
> South America will increase IETF participation from that region and
> increase the diversity in the IETF.

and:

> The IAOC thinks that scheduling an IETF meeting in Beunos Aires and
> announcing a series of events will increase the participation from
> this region and may improve the IETF's cultural diversity.

Really, viewing that venue as outreach was not (small pun) a stretch.

d/

ps. Perhaps one thing to learn about going to venues that are outside 
the normal sequence is to make much more clear statements about the 
reason(s).

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 00:19:48 -0500

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 07, 2016 at 08:45:40PM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:

> mention in the Meetings Committee (or perhaps while I was still on
> the IAOC) the focus was on going there as outreach.

None of what you are saying in any way counters the main point I've

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 06:14:18 -0800

On 11/7/2016 9:19 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> so even if it be true that it was selected on the basis of

ack.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

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From: Corinne Cath <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 15:08:10 +0000

Hi,

Having more or less established that outreach is a basis for venue
selection, how do we define the parameters of what is a good basis for
venue selection?

Some back-and-forth debating on this was done here:
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/mtgvenue/current/msg00356.html

Perhaps middle-ground can be found. In much of the current discussion it
seems that people are worried about going to locations where the IETF does
not have any engagement with the local community solely for the purpose of
outreach. The arguments against this seem to fall along two lines: a.)
these places might not be ideally suited to the needs of the existing
cohort and reduce the effectiveness of the meeting, b.) we don't have any
metrics on whether this type of outreach even works.

But what if we say that outreach is a good basis for venue selection
provided that there is some substantial local engagement with the IETF
community (as defined by X,Y,Z indicators - like was the case in BA), and
state that outreach it is not a mandatory but whatever is a the bottom of
the ordered-list-of-priorities approach suggested in
draft-sullivan-mtgvenue-decision?

Best,

-- 
Corinne J.N. Cath
Ph.D. Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute & Alan Turing Institute

Web: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath
Email: [email-masked] & [email-masked]
Twitter: @C_Cath

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 07:35:16 +1300

On 09/11/2016 04:08, Corinne Cath wrote:
> selection, 

I don't think so; rather the opposite, IMHO.

> how do we define the parameters of what is a good basis for
> venue selection?
> 

I think we have plenty of evidence that lively technical communities don't
grow from the top down, so that standards-writing is one of the last activities
to start in a region that is already technically lively. It's actually building
an operational network that starts first, and the training that goes with it
(as the history of ISOC's outreach efforts shows pretty clearly).

> draft-sullivan-mtgvenue-decision?

As I said recently, it isn't a *primary* consideration.

   Brian

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 14:13:30 -0900

Hi, all:

Personally, I regard the question of whether or not we
intended to perform "outreach" in Buenos Aires largely
irrelevant to the question we're trying to answer, which
is what our policy ought to be around outreach.  My
sense of where things stood after the active discussions
in and shortly after Berlin is that while it can be a
wonderful by-product of meeting in a given location, we
do not choose locations with the goal of attracting new
participants.  This should not be construed as my saying
that this is where consensus lies - it's not, since we
haven't called consensus.  But I do think it's our starting
point at the moment and I think we do need to close this
question relatively soon, or risk spinning on it ad nauseam.

Another question to consider is whether or not this issue
belongs in the policy document rather than the process
documents.

Melinda

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 17:17:49 +0900

> is what our policy ought to be around outreach.  My

As an exercise in debating history, you are of course correct.  However, 
as a demonstration of the challenges in our having shared clarity about 
the reasons we make unusual choices, it's instructive.

On the average, decisions for IETF meetings, which involve variations 
from the established norms, are not made as a result of rigorous 
analysis and highly precise justification.  The process well-intentioned 
but typically more intuitive than analytic.  One might wish otherwise, 
but the fact of this dynamic isn't likely to change, given the pool of 
available candidates for IAOC and Meetings committee participation and 
the limited time that they have.

So specifications that are predicated on an overly demanding model for 
decision-making will have limited utility.

> question relatively soon, or risk spinning on it ad nauseam.

+1

> belongs in the policy document rather than the process

I'm confused by the question.  Stating this as a non-goal, within the 
basic policy document, struck me as exactly the right place for the 
point.  It's not merely implementation (which is what I assume 'process' 
is meant to be) but applies to the basic approach for making choice.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker