[diversity] Poorer regions travel and so on...

Hi,

Since you are looking at diversity in general, and reason for why
people do not participate more, some real life issues preventing from
actually going to the meeting can be many.

Those are just some examples that are concrete issues preventing
people from attending.

Basically:
1. Money
2. Papers
3. Legal discrimination

This first one is about the simple case of money.
Costs were not mentioned too much.
The cost of a RIPE meeting ticket, is a monthly salary or more in many
countries within the RIPE region and that is without factoring in
travel and accommodation.

So even if we were to have the meetings inside some of the poorer
countries to save them the cost of travelling and accommodation, it
would still set them back a lot in just the meeting costs.

So the costs itself is a barrier to entry and physical participation
regardless of location, just sometimes absurdly too expensive when the
meeting ends up in London for example.


Second point for the travel papers.
Ease of visa requests (if any needed), some countries are easier than
other on issuing visas, the Schengen block is actually not the most
friendly place on earth to have international conference and receive
people from all over the globe, visa applications can be very
cumbersome for some countries, even for countries from within the RIPE
Region requiring visas to come and visit Schengen block countries.

Many will be discourage from applying when you have to hand over your
passport for a couple of weeks or months to an embassy that sometimes
happen to even be located in another country than your own with no
guarantees of success on your application and a lot of humiliation in
the process.

This third one is the local laws.

Some countries may actually not allowing you to be there at all, no
visa to be rejected as you simply should not consider it, you are just
not welcome just for who you are.

Local laws are sometimes themselves prohibiting people from even
considering any physical participation.
UAE laws are a good example.
They do not let people with HIV into the country, let alone let them
take their medicines with them.
You may be refused entry based on your country of origin or sexual
orientation and identification.

Those things are known in advance, and people should always read upon
where they are going anyways.


However, having physical meeting in the various regions even the ones
with restrictions is needed to reach out and encompass as much people
as possible and invite them to become active members of the community.

I do like the dilemma it poses right there, reaching out to certain
communities automatically shuts out people from other communities,
nice conundrum with no real way out of it.


Good luck!
Good initiative, lots of headaches :D

David Hilario

IP Manager

Larus Cloud Service Limited

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