Re: PROPOSED GUIDELINE: balance

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Matt Holdrege <matt.holdrege@verizon.net> writes:

> Well a great many of us American's fly to the foreign locations for IETF's 
> so I don't know why others can't fly here.

For most US IETF participants, our participation would drop
significantly if most of the meetings were held outside of the US. Not
for *all*, but for most. So perhaps *you* would still be able to go to
all the meetings, but a good chunk of US folks that currently do would
no longer. Correspondingly, we'd see an increase in relative
participation from folks outside the US. In other words, the notion
that those that go to IETF meetings now would go no matter where the
meetings were held is just plain naive.

Point of fact. We've had non-US I* members miss meetings in recent
years for some meetings because they couldn't get travel
authorization/funding. I suspect that the distance/cost of the travel
just might have been a factor.

Thomas