IETF Plenary Meeting Venue Selection Process
draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-16

Thank you for this document.

I am wondering what is the relationship between the section "2.1.  Core Values" and Section 3? I don't think all of core values are expressed as requirements. Is section 2 (and 2.1) Informative?

(1) The term "participant" is used in several places, sometimes with different modifiers; for example: active, IETF and regular.  Some of the phrases seem to want to differentiate between them, but that distinction is not clear (for example): "in order to spread the difficulty and cost of travel among active participants, balancing travel time and expense across the regions in which IETF participants are based."  What is the difference between active and IETF participants?

Note that "attendee" is also used, in my interpretation, to also mean "participant".  Is that the intent, or is there a difference?  

Clarifying and being consistent would help.  I don't think that a terminology section is needed -- I just want to probe whether the terms were differentiated on purpose, and, if so, to understand what that differentiation may be.


(2) From §2.2 (Venue Selection Non-Objectives)

Maximal attendance:
     While the IETF strives to be as inclusive as possible both online
     and in person, maximal meeting attendance in and of itself is not
     a goal.  It would defeat a key goal of meeting if active
     contributors with differing points of view did not have the
     opportunity to resolve their disagreements, no matter how full the
     rooms.

Should maximal attendance by "active contributors" be listed as an objective?  Measuring what that means will not be easy...but that seems to be corollary: the text above sounds like it says "it doesn't matter how many people show up, as long as active contributors are there".

BTW, following up on my first point, what's the relationship between "contributor" and "participant"?  Is there a difference between an "active contributor" and an "active participant"?


(3) §3.2 (Important Criteria) says that "when a particular requirement in this section cannot be met...it may be appropriate for the IASA to assist those who, as a result, have been inconvenienced in some way."

What does the IASA providing assistance mean?  Looking at the criteria, would (for example) a high cost be considered an inconvenience?  Knowing that the intent is to spread the burden "over the course of multiple years", who determines that inconvenience?  How could the IASA assist?  Maybe there's some other purpose for that sentence for which I'm missing context.


(4) §3.2.5 (Food and Beverage)

   It is said that an army travels on its stomach.  So too does the
   IETF.  The following criteria relate to food and beverage.

Personal opinion: unfortunate quote and comparison.

   ...
   o  A range of attendee's health-related and religion-related dietary
      requirements can be satisfied with robust and flexible onsite
      service or through access to an adequate grocery.

   o  The Facility environs include grocery shopping that will
      accommodate a wide range of dietary requirements, within a
      reasonable walking distance, or conveniently accessible by a short
      taxi, bus, or subway ride, from the Facility and IETF Hotels.

These last two bullets sound almost the same: the difference seems to be in calling for "robust and flexible onsite service" in the first one.  Maybe they can be merged.


(5) I think that the reference to rfc3935 should be a Normative reference given that it defines why we meet (§2.1).


(6) Is the intent for this document and draft-ietf-mtgvenue-meeting-policy to be part of the same BCP?  I would think so, but I didn't see that mentioned an the writeups.

I agree with Adam about removing "around".

All my comments after the first are purely editorial.

Section 2.1

   Inclusiveness:
      We would like to facilitate the onsite or remote participation of
      anyone who wants to be involved.

Snarkily, "trolls included?"  That is to say, (productive) participation is
not truly unlimited, in that we have mechanisms to restrict abusive and
harmful behavior.  But I do not have any suggestions for better text -- it's
unclear that "productive participation" is a good change to make, for example.

On "Inclusiveness", does the point (2) about laws want to have the
"or failing that" clause present in point (1)?

Section 3.3

   o  It is desirable for Overflow Hotels provide reasonable, reliable,
      unfiltered Internet service for the public areas and guest rooms;
      this service is included in the cost of the room.

There seems to be a jarring mismatch of statement of
desire and statement of fact between the two clauses of this
sentence.

Section 4

   Therefore, the IASA SHALL publicly document and keep
   current both a list of roles and responsibilities relating to IETF
   meetings, as well as the selection processes they use in order to
   fulfill the requirements of the community.

Are the first two (roles and responsibilities)
qualitatively different from the process used, in terms of
visibility requirements?  It may make sense to just list all three
together, without an "as well as".

Section 7

   The requirements in this memo are intended to provide for some
   limited protections that attendees can apply.

This reads oddly to me -- we provide for limited
privacy protections that attendees can choose to apply but are not
universally applied without explicit action?  What are they?
The text would read more naturally to me as "to provide for some
limited protections that apply to attendees", though that does of
course have a different meaning.