Re: PROPOSED GUIDELINE: balance

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

Only a data point, but last Fall I was asked to assit with US Visa
invitation letter production, then being able to meet the requirements
imposed by the US Counselate in Beijing with slightly greater alacrity
than the ICANN and IETF Secretariates.

Between the US (yes, it has _surprising_ issues with visa applicants from
the PRC) and the PRC (yes, it considered post-911 travel to the US a risk
for its citizens), the initial pool of participants yeilded only 4 and 1
actual attendees, out of 6 and 11 applicatants, respectively.

This may be a transient, but meetings _in_ the US result in non-attendence
by some ID authors, for policy as well as the distance/cost reasons which
Thomas points out.

One quibble with the premise:

	For most US IETF participants, our participation would drop
	significantly if most of the meetings were held outside of the
	US.

I don't think this would be the case if meetings in North America were in
Mexico or Canada.

Eric