Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Krishnan
Request for Comments: 8719 Kaloom
BCP: 226 February 2020
Category: Best Current Practice
ISSN: 2070-1721
High-Level Guidance for the Meeting Policy of the IETF
Abstract
This document describes a meeting location policy for the IETF and
the various stakeholders required to realize this policy.
Status of This Memo
This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8719.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The 1-1-1-* Meeting Policy
3. Implementation of the Policy
4. Procedure for Initiating Proposals for Exploratory Meetings
5. Re-evaluation and Changes to This Policy
6. References
6.1. Normative References
6.2. Informative References
Acknowledgments
Author's Address
1. Introduction
The work of the IETF is primarily conducted on working group (WG)
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 where the goal is to
distribute the meetings equally between North America, Europe, and
Asia (see "Meeting Location Distribution" (slides 14 and 15) of
[IETFMEET] for details). These are the locations from which most of
the IETF participants have come 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 been neither defined precisely nor
documented in an IETF consensus document until now. This BCP RFC is
meant to serve as a consensus-backed statement of this policy.
2. The 1-1-1-* Meeting Policy
Given that the majority of the current meeting participants come from
North America, Europe, and Asia [CONT-DIST], the IETF policy is that
the meetings should primarily be held in those regions. That is, the
meeting policy (let's call this the "1-1-1" policy) is that meetings
should rotate between North America, Europe, and Asia. Note that the
boundaries between those regions have 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 rebalance the distribution, if
possible.
While this meeting rotation caters to the current set of IETF
participants, it is important 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. Therefore, 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 with an "*"). Exploratory meetings can be used to
experiment with exceptional meetings without extensively impacting
the regular meetings. For example, these exploratory meetings can
include meetings in other geographical regions, virtual meetings, and
additional meetings beyond the three regular meetings in a calendar
year.
The timing and frequency of future exploratory meetings will be based
on IETF consensus as determined by the IETF chair. Once a meeting
proposal is initiated, the IESG will make a decision in consultation
with the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) [RFC8711] 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 meetings that would
| qualify as exploratory meetings under the 1-1-1 policy (with
| IETF 95 in Buenos Aires and IETF 47 in Adelaide being the
| exceptional instances). IETF 27 (Amsterdam) and IETF 54
| (Yokohama) were earlier examples of exploratory meetings that
| pioneered Europe and Asia as regular IETF destinations.
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 [RFC8718].
As mentioned in [RFC8718], the IASA will also be responsible for the
following:
* assisting the community in the development of detailed meeting
criteria that are feasible and implementable, and
* providing 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 [RFC8718] (including potentially trading-off the
geographical region to meet other criteria and notifying the
community if the geographical region requirement cannot be met).
4. Procedure for Initiating Proposals for Exploratory Meetings
Someone who is interested in pursuing an exploratory venue proposes
it on the IETF discussion list or on a future discussion list
expressly set up and announced for this purpose. The community gets
to comment on the venue and offer their opinions. If the IETF chair
determines that there is community consensus to pursue the venue
further, the venue will be put up for discussion on the venue-
selection mailing list <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/venue-
selection>. This would allow the interested party(ies) to refine
their proposal based on insightful feedback regarding the logistics
of the venue from those tasked with evaluating it. Once the venue
selection process takes place, the final decision will be
communicated back to the community to ensure that there is adequate
opportunity to comment.
5. Re-evaluation and Changes to This Policy
Given the dynamic nature of participant distribution in the IETF, it
is expected that this policy will need 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).
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC8711] Haberman, B., Hall, J., and J. Livingood, "Structure of
the IETF Administrative Support Activity, Version 2.0",
BCP 101, RFC 8711, DOI 10.17487/RFC8711, February 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8711>.
6.2. Informative References
[CONT-DIST]
IETF, "Number of attendees per continent across meetings",
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/stats/meeting/continent/>.
[IETFMEET] Hinden, B. and R. Pelletier, "IAOC Report IETF79",
November 2010,
<https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/slides/plenaryw-
3.pdf>.
[RFC8718] Lear, E., Ed., "IETF Plenary Meeting Venue Selection
Process", BCP 226, RFC 8718, DOI 10.17487/RFC8718,
February 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8718>.
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, Lloyd Wood, Alvaro Retana, and
Martin Vigoureux for their ideas and comments to improve this
document.
Author's Address
Suresh Krishnan
Kaloom