Internet Engineering Task Force                              S. Krishnan
Internet-Draft                                                    Kaloom
Intended status: Best Current Practice                  December 4, 2017
Expires: June 7, 2018


         High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
                 draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy-02

Abstract

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

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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  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   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 that 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 pain for the existing IETF
   participants who physically attend meetings and for distributing the
   timezone pain for those who participate remotely.  This policy has
   neither been defined precisely nor documented in an IETF consensus
   document.  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.  It is important to
   note that such rotation and any effects to distributing travel pain
   should be considered from a long-term perspective.  While the typical
   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 mandate such a cycle, as long as the
   distribution to these regions over multiple years is roughy equal.
   There are many reasons why meetings might be distributed differently
   in a given year, and that is fine as long as the distribution in
   subsequent years balances out the disruptions.

   BACKGROUND NOTE:The IETF recognizes that we have not always been
   successful in following this policy over the past few years.  In
   fact, at the time of writing, going back 6 years the meeting



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   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.
   How often we intend to do such meetings in the future should also be
   an open topic for discussion within the community.

3.  Implementation of the policy

   Once this meeting policy has been agreed upon, the policy will be
   provided to the IASA as high level guidance.  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].

   The IASA will also be responsible




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   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.

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 to initiate a revision need to be agreed
   upon by the community prior to the publication 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, and Charles Eckel 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>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [CONT-DIST]
              arkko.com, "Distribution of authors by continent", 2016,
              <http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/contdistr.html>.

   [I-D.ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process]
              Lear, E., "IETF Plenary Meeting Venue Selection Process",
              draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-10 (work
              in progress), October 2017.






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   [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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