On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david@fourkitchens.com> wrote:

phoebe ayers wrote:

> As a jury member, I do not remember any comments from you on this
> subject, David; perhaps I missed them. At any rate, what are you
> trying to accomplish by sending this message after the winner was
> announced, and not before when we were discussing the bids?

Other people raised these objections during the bidding process; I
didn't have to. Even if no one had brought the issue up, everyone on the
voting team should have been aware enough of the problems to them under
consideration without further prompting.

And they were considered, just not to your satisfaction.

I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Egypt's human rights record
would cripple the bid enough that it wouldn't win.

There were no foregone conclusions; if there were, we wouldn't have had to have the bidding process, now would we?

I *do* agree with you that we need to rethink weighting of the criteria, and have some criteria weighted more strongly than others in future. However, I do think the voting system is a great improvement on previous systems, and I continue to reiterate that community feedback is welcome. For many attendees I've talked to at the last three conferences, rotation was indeed by far the biggest concern for them; however the jury also chose to consider a holistic set of criteria.

Also please note I'm not speaking on behalf of the jury in any way, just myself; I think we'd all agree that feedback is a good thing however.

-- phoebe