| Internet Engineering Task Force | W. George |
| Internet-Draft | Time Warner Cable |
| Intended status: Informational | November 28, 2011 |
| Expires: May 29, 2012 |
IETF meeting attendees' Frequently Asked (travel) Questions
draft-george-travel-faq-00
This document attempts to provide a list of the common Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that IETF meeting attendees often ask regarding travel logisitics and local information. It is intended to assist those who are willing to provide local information, so that if they wish to pre-populate answers to some or all of these questions either in the IETF Wiki or a meeting-specific site, they have a reasonably complete list of ideas to draw from. It is not meant as a list of required information that the host or secretariat needs to provide, merely as a guideline.
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IETF attendees come from all over the world. The typical IETF meeting has representatives from in excess of 50 countries. As such, it is quite likely that a large portion of the participants in any given IETF are newcomers to the specific location where it is being held. It is also possible that this is their first trip to the country or region. As such, they are going to have questions regarding their own personal travel needs and logistics that may only be answerable by someone who has either been to the area before, someone who lives there, and/or someone who speaks the local language.
While the IETF, its secretariat, and any local host organizations responsible for the logistics of making IETF meetings happen are not travel agencies, there is a set of information that most travelers wish to have while they are planning their trip. This document attempts to cover the most commonly asked questions and categories for information. This document is not intended to provide answers to these questions for every possible location in which IETF meetings may be held. Rather, it is intended to provide a set of FAQs for use by the hosts and others who have experience with the area where the event is being held, so that the questions and answers can be handled more efficiently than waiting until someone sends an email to the XXattendees@ietf.org list in the days leading up to the meeting.
In reading this document, one may ask, "why would such a technologically advanced and internet-savvy organization need such help? Isn't that why search engines exist?" And the answer is that yes, we can sometimes find what we're looking for with search engines, but that results in hundreds of people spending their time searching, which is not very efficient. In addition, despite the widely held belief that if it is published on the Internet, it therefore must be true, sometimes the information that is available is either inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, so it may well be less reliable than firsthand info from someone that has been there. Also, no matter how good online translation is getting, some of the most informative sites may be difficult for non-native speakers to navigate and find information - navigation buttons, graphics, and other active content are typically not machine-translatable, and non-native speakers may not realize when machine translation is inaccurate in a critical way.
For some past IETF meetings, the hosting organization has set up a special website, usually containing "IETF" and the number of the meeting (e.g. ietf75.se [STOCKHOLM], ietf71.comcast.net [PHILLY], etc). This has been a source of much additional information about the location, and is always quite helpful. If the host decides to set up a site like this, the hope is that this document will provide guidance as to the sorts of information with which to populate such a site. However, it is by no means a requirement that the host set up an external website. Further, not every IETF meeting has a local host, or even a host at all. In these cases, the need for the same set of information is not lessened, but the IETF will be more reliant on the willingness of those with experience in the area where the meeting will be held to share the benefit of that experience with others. The IETF has provided a hosted Wiki [WIKI] which can simply be populated with the same sorts of information. This has the added benefit of having a single location where additional information can be provided by experienced travelers, locals, and host representatives alike. In the case where the IETF-hosted wiki is to be used, this document may serve as a framework of categories that could be pre-built when the site-specific page is set up, so that others can begin populating the information.
There are a number of general categories of information listed below. Some of it is necessary for travel, the rest can be considered nice-to-have at best. All of it has come from actual frequently asked questions from the attendees mailing lists.
Much of this information may already be available in another form online. Simply pointing to information already available in other locations is quite appropriate, but some validation and vetting of the provided information is greatly helpful so that information provided acheives the goal of avoiding outdated or inaccurate information.
It's generally helpful to note whether restaurants require/recommend reservations, if they have busy/rush times, etc.
While this is certainly not necessary information for the primary goal of an IETF attendee, many attendees earmark a day or two on either side of the conference for sightseeing, and this is an opportunity to highlight local attractions. Links to sites containing information about walking tours, local tourist attractions and the like are certainly appreciated.
Thanks to Dave Crocker, Simon Perreault, Joe Touch, and Lee Howard for feedback.
This memo includes no request to IANA.
This document is not a protocol specification and therefore contains no security considerations.
| [min_ref] | authSurName, authInitials, "Minimal Reference", 2006. |
| [I-D.barnes-healthy-food] | Barnes, M, "Healthy Food and Special Dietary Requirements for IETF meetings", Internet-Draft draft-barnes-healthy-food-04, October 2011. |
| [STOCKHOLM] | .se, "Internet Wayback Machine version of ietf75.se", 2009. |
| [PHILLY] | Comcast, "IETF 71 Philadelphia microsite", 2008. |
| [WIKI] | IETF, "IETF hosted meeting-specific Wiki pages", 2011. |
| [PLUGS] | electricaloutlet.org, "Reference site for plug types by location", 2011. |
| [CURRENCY] | Yahoo!, "Yahoo! Currency Converter", 2011. |