High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy-06

Internet Engineering Task Force                              S. Krishnan
Internet-Draft                                                    Kaloom
Intended status: Best Current Practice                      May 14, 2018
Expires: November 15, 2018

         High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
                 draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy-06

Abstract

   This document describes a meeting location policy for the IETF and
   the various stakeholders for realizing such a policy.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 15, 2018.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  The 1-1-1-* meeting policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Implementation of the policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Re-evaluation and changes to this policy  . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5

1.  Introduction

   The work of the IETF is primarily conducted on the working group
   mailing lists, while face-to-face WG meetings mainly provide a high
   bandwidth mechanism for working out unresolved issues.  The IETF
   currently strives to have a 1-1-1-* meeting policy [IETFMEET] where
   the goal is to distribute the meetings equally between North America,
   Europe, and Asia.  These are the locations most of the IETF
   participants have come from in the recent past.  This meeting
   rotation is mainly aimed at distributing the travel effort for the
   existing IETF participants who physically attend meetings and for
   distributing the timezone difficulty for those who participate
   remotely.  This policy has neither been defined precisely nor
   documented in an IETF consensus document until now.  This document is
   meant to serve as a consensus-backed statement of this policy
   published as a BCP.

2.  The 1-1-1-* meeting policy

   Given that the majority of the current participants come from North
   America, Europe, and Asia [CONT-DIST], the IETF policy is that our
   meetings should primarily be in those regions. i.e., the meeting
   policy (let's call this the "1-1-1" policy) is that meetings should
   rotate between North America, Europe, and Asia.  Please note that the
   boundaries between those regions has been purposefully left
   undefined.  It is important to note that such rotation and any
   effects to distributing travel pain should be considered from a long-
   term perspective.  While a potential cycle in an IETF year may be a
   meeting in North America in March, a meeting in Europe in July, and a
   meeting in Asia on November, the 1-1-1 policy does not imply such a
   cycle, as long as the distribution to these regions over multiple
   years is roughly equal.  There are many reasons why meetings might be
   distributed differently in a given year.  Meeting locations in
   subsequent years should seek to re-balance the distribution if
   possible.

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   BACKGROUND NOTE: The IETF recognizes that we have not achieved a
   1-1-1 distribution over the past few years.  At the time of writing,
   going back 6 years the meeting locations resemble more the previous
   3-2-1 policy (9 Americas, 6 Europe and 3 Asia).  This is attributable
   to two reasons:

   o  We plan meetings 3 years ahead (meaning meetings for 3 of the 6
      years had already been planned when the new policy was set)

   o  There were some logistical issues (venue availability, cost etc.).

   While this meeting rotation caters to the current set of IETF
   participants, we need to recognize that due to the dynamic and
   evolving nature of participation, there may be significant changes to
   the regions that provide a major share of participants in the future.
   The 1-1-1-* meeting policy is a slightly modified version of the
   aforementioned 1-1-1 meeting policy that allows for additional
   flexibility in the form of an exploratory meeting denoted as a "*".
   This exploratory meeting can be used to experiment with exceptional
   meetings without extensively impacting the regular meetings. e.g.
   these exploratory meetings can include meetings in other geographical
   regions, virtual meetings and additional meetings past the three
   regular meetings in a calendar year.

   The exploratory meeting proposals will be initiated based on
   community consent.  After such a proposal is initiated the IESG will
   make a decision in consultation with the Internet Administrative
   Support Activity (IASA) to ensure that the proposal can be
   realistically implemented.  The final decision will be communicated
   back to the community to ensure that there is adequate opportunity to
   comment.

   NOTE: There have not been a large number of such exploratory meetings
   under the current 1-1-1-* policy (with IETF95 in Buenos Aires and
   IETF47 in Adelaide being the exceptional instances).  IETF27
   (Amsterdam) and IETF54(Yokohama) were earlier examples of exploratory
   meetings that pioneered Europe and Asia as regular IETF destinations.
   The timing and frequency of future exploratory meetings will be based
   on IETF consensus as determined by the IETF chair.

3.  Implementation of the policy

   IASA should understand the policy written in this document to be the
   aspiration of the IETF community.  Similarly, any exploratory meeting
   decisions will also be communicated to the IASA to be implemented.
   The actual selection of the venue would be performed by the IASA
   following the process described in
   [I-D.ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process].

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   As mentioned in [I-D.ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process], the
   IASA will also be responsible

   o  to assist the community in the development of detailed meeting
      criteria that are feasible and implementable, and

   o  to provide sufficient transparency in a timely manner concerning
      planned meetings so that community feedback can be collected and
      acted upon.

   Given that the geographical location of the venue has a significant
   influence on the venue selection process, it needs to be considered
   at the same level as the other Important Criteria specified in
   Section 3.2 of [I-D.ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process]
   (including potentially trading off the geographical region to meet
   other criteria, and notifying the community if the geographical
   region requirement cannot be met)

4.  Re-evaluation and changes to this policy

   Given the dynamic nature of participant distribution in the IETF, it
   is expected that this policy needs to be periodically evaluated and
   revised to ensure that the stated goals continue to be met.  The
   criteria that are to be met need to be agreed upon by the community
   prior to initiating a revision of this document (e.g. try to mirror
   draft author distribution over the preceding five years).

5.  Acknowledgments

   The author would like to thank Jari Arkko, Alia Atlas, Fred Baker,
   Brian Carpenter, Alissa Cooper, Dave Crocker, Spencer Dawkins,
   Stephen Farrell, Tobias Gondrom, Eric Gray, Bob Hinden, Ole Jacobsen,
   Olaf Kolkman, Eliot Lear, Andrew Malis, Yoav Nir, Ray Pelletier,
   Melinda Shore, John Klensin, Charles Eckel, Russ Housley, Andrew
   Sullivan, Eric Rescorla, Richard Barnes, Cullen Jennings, Ted Lemon,
   Lou Berger, John Levine, Adam Roach, Mark Nottingham, Tom Petch,
   Randy Bush, Roni Even, Julien Meuric and Lloyd Wood for their ideas
   and comments to improve this document.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [RFC4071]  Austein, R., Ed. and B. Wijnen, Ed., "Structure of the
              IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA)", BCP 101,
              RFC 4071, DOI 10.17487/RFC4071, April 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4071>.

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6.2.  Informative References

   [CONT-DIST]
              IETF, "Number of attendees per continent across meetings",
              2016,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/stats/meeting/continent/>.

   [I-D.ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process]
              Lear, E., "IETF Plenary Meeting Venue Selection Process",
              draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-15 (work
              in progress), May 2018.

   [IETFMEET]
              IAOC Plenary Presentation, "IETF 1-1-1 Meeting Policy",
              2010, <https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/slides/
              plenaryw-3.pdf>.

Author's Address

   Suresh Krishnan
   Kaloom

   Email: suresh@kaloom.com

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