Subject: [Venue-selection] potential venues in China

From: Joe Hildebrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 15:10:10 -0600

I understand that you are soliciting opinions about the potential meetings in Hong Kong or Macau.

I'm unlikely to attend meetings in either of those locations, and would require extraordinary justification for any of the engineers in my organization who might want to attend.  I have more concerns than just the difficulty of acquiring visas; our previous Beijing meeting (which I attended, trying to keep an open mind) was overshadowed by what we all assumed to be representatives of the state security apparatus inserting themselves into the meeting venue, some of whom were invasive in taking pictures of participants or lurking about in a way that seemed intended to dissuade participation.  I do not wish to repeat that experience, nor subject my employees to it.

— 
Joe Hildebrand