| Internet Engineering Task Force | W. George |
| Internet-Draft | Time Warner Cable |
| Intended status: Informational | January 10, 2012 |
| Expires: July 11, 2012 |
IETF meeting attendees' Frequently Asked (travel) Questions
draft-george-travel-faq-02
This document attempts to provide a list of the common Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that IETF meeting attendees often ask regarding travel logistics 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, even if an IETF meeting has been held in the same location in the past. 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 who 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. Lastly, while the companies which serve as hosts for IETF meetings often have participants at IETF, it is not always the same folks who are responsible for handling the details of hosting an IETF. Therefore, this document is intended to be something that cam be provided to host event organizers who may not have much familiarity with the IETF, so that they have a better sense of the information that attendees will find helpful.
As stated in the introduction, the format of this document was chosen so that it captures the Frequently Asked Questions, but usually not their answers. This is because IETF RFCs are typically static and infrequently updated, which does not make them a particularly suitable format to contain location-specific information. The questions found in this document are a result of informal survey of multiple past meeting attendees mailing lists and the feedback of many individuals, and are believed to be reasonably static from one meeting to the next. This document is not necessarily all-inclusive, but should serve as a reasonable baseline such that a static format like an RFC is appropriate. It is likely that the RFC will need to be revised periodically - a clue that this is necessary will be when multiple additional questions on the attendees list that are not covered by this document start becoming frequently asked questions over the course of multiple meetings.
The answers to this document's questions are expected to be stored in a location which is more easily updated by multiple parties, so that site-specific information can be refined and updated as often as necessary, thereby creating a living document. There are several options as to where to store the location-specific living document. 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, and is therefore not completely reliant on the host. 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 the needed information may already be available in another form online. There is no need to reproduce information that can be found on external websites, so simply providing pointers to information already available in other locations is quite appropriate. However, it is very helpful if some validation and vetting of the provided information is performed in order to avoid outdated or inaccurate information. Additionally, because this is a static and location-agnostic document, it's quite likely that some questions are either irrelevant or confusing for some locations. Therefore, "not really relevant here" and "we don't know" may be valid answers to some of these questions. In those cases, it's better to say this explicitly than to simply omit the section, as this will confirm that the information was not simply omitted. The main thing to remember when providing information in these categories is that those traveling to the event have not been there before, and so one should not assume a high level of background knowledge about the area, its customs, etc.
Information in this section is especially critical if the airport is significantly distant from the venue or use of a taxi is otherwise impractical or not recommended (e.g. if attendees must use a train or long-distance bus to get to the venue locale from the airport)
navigating an unfamiliar mass transit system can be challenging. Things that seem obvious to the locals may not be as obvious to out-of-town travelers.
The same info relevant for airport transit will likely be relevant here.
Additional items:
The nature of IETF's schedule means that food and drink provide both a welcome break as well as a venue to continue discussions with colleagues, either related to IETF work, other shop talk, or "anything but shop talk." During IETF's lunch break, somewhere approaching 1000 people are simultaneously looking for reasonably priced lunch options, with timeframes ranging from "grab and go" for a working lunch to 75 minutes for a sit-down meal. When meetings are done for the day, because of the wide variety of attendees, people are looking for all types of food, all price ranges, and atmosphere ranging for someplace suitable for an in-depth conversation to "table at the bar." The more information is available about the food and drink options nearby, the better.
It's generally helpful to note whether restaurants require/recommend reservations, if they have busy/rush times that should be avoided or planned for, etc.
It's helpful for Restaurants to be categorized by:
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.
Additionally, many attendees choose to purchase souvenirs as gifts or for personal use. In addition to the standard "tourist-trap" items such as t-shirts and knick-knacks, many attendees are looking for items that are locally crafted, local specialties, or otherwise significant to the local area and culture. This is another area where the local area can be highlighted in the information provided to attendees.
Thanks to the following folks (and probably others the author has unintentionally forgotten) for their valuable feedback.
Dave Crocker, Simon Perreault, Joe Touch, Lee Howard, Jonathan Lennox, Tony Hansen, Vishnu Ram, Paul Kyzivat, Karen Seo, Randy Bush, Mary Barnes, John Klensin.
This memo includes no request to IANA.
This document is not a protocol specification and therefore contains no protocol security considerations. However, some of the above items refer to the physical security of IETF participants and their property. This document is not intended to be a comprehensive discussion of physical security matters for IETF attendees.
| [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. |
| [WEATHER] | Weather Underground, "Weather Underground", 2011. |