[dns-operations] Extended Submissions Deadline: 33rd DNS-OARC Workshop, Paris, France, May 09 - 10th 2020

[Keith Mitchell]

As per the statement at:

  https://indico.dns-oarc.net/event/34/page/93-covid-19-situation

OARC has been tracking the Covid-19 situation, and exploring
contingencies should we not be able to proceed as planned with OARC33.
At this point in time, we are still working to our plans to have the
workshop in Paris on 9/10 May, but the situation is very fluid, and a
lot could change in the 9 weeks between now and then.

OARC33 is being co-located with, and hosted by ICANN, in conjunction
with their IDD, RoW and IDS events. So whether ICANN proceeds with these
will be a strong determinator of whether OARC33 goes ahead in Paris or
not. Clearly ICANN will have a well-informed view of the practicalities
of running remote-only meetings after ICANN67 has taken place remotely
this week, and we will be consulting and meeting with them on their
plans for GDD/IDS once that has completed.

We've looked at a number of fallback contingencies, and while there are
some other options, it looks like the most feasible are:

- to cancel OARC33 in Paris in May, and move the submitted content to
  OARC34 in Milan in October.

- to conduct a remote-only meeting.

The state of recent OARC Board discussions on this is tending towards
the first option, but we have reviewed internally and confirmed that we
could conduct a remote workshop with the resources available to us,
given 2-3 weeks notice and preparation, if the community feels there is
value in doing so.

Either way it makes sense to continue to solicit content for OARC33.

We expect that ICANN will be working with the local authorities in
Paris, the venue, and professional sources of advice; and it is our
intention to work closely with them in deciding whether OARC33 proceeds
 there as planned. Once again, we are grateful for ICANN's support of
our workshops.

We believe an appropriate point to make a go/no-go decision on a
physical workshop for OARC33, so people can plan or cancel travel etc,
is no later than 5 weeks before, i.e. around the 1st April, and the OARC
Board has scheduled a meeting shortly before that to make this decision,
should events not overtake matters meantime. We will communicate that
decision no later than 2nd April.

We'd be grateful for input from workshop participants' preferences on
the options available, but in the meantime if folks could refrain from
engaging in "armchair epidemiology" threads on this list I think
everyone would appreciate it :-)

Keith
OARC President


On 2020-03-09 14:50, Shumon Huque wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 2:41 PM Paul Vixie <paul at redbarn.org> wrote:
> 
>     On Monday, 9 March 2020 14:44:09 UTC Shumon Huque wrote:
>     > ** We have extended the submissions deadline for the 33rd DNS-OARC
>     > ** workshop to March 19th 2020 (midnight CEST).
>     >
>     > The 33rd DNS-OARC Workshop will take place at the Marriott Rive Gauche
>     > Hotel & Conference Center in Paris, France on May 9th and 10th
>     2020. 
> 
>     Early May is going to be a very bad time:
> 
>     https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
> 
>     i suggest ICANN and DNSOARC be ready to convert to virtual for this.
> 
> Yeah, I'm aware that contingencies are being actively discussed. But
> I'll defer to OARC and ICANN staff to officially comment.