Hi Vesna,
I agree with you here and we will probably have to kinda balance the pros and cons to various groups.
There are some countries which imo we should absolutely not host RIPE meetings in, such as those without a functioning democracy and those with governments that are actively hostile towards LGBTQ+ people.
Serbia is kinda on the edge here, but is certainly far from the worst and might be acceptable.
One thing that stands out to me though is that from looking at the attendee list, at the time of writing this, not a single person from Serbia has registered so far it seems.[1] (as in where the country is "RS")
If we can't get a single person from Serbia to register for a RIPE meeting in Serbia then I feel like the downsides of hosting it in Serbia outweigh the benefits as a lot of the benefits go away in my opinion.
Of course we didn't know this before scheduling it in Serbia but it still makes me think that we should possibly reconsider the pros and cons a bit better for the future.
Creating a list like Hank suggested might be a good idea to try to evaluate the best options for future meetings.
Also given how I think a lot of people are paid by their employers to attend and how any location is likely going to be semi-expensive for people who don't live there, I feel like the economic parts should have much less weight than the other factors.
People not being able to travel because it costs money is sad, but people not being able to travel because they feel unsafe or blocked from entering due to being LGBTQ+ or just being the "wrong" nationality is way worse imo.
The summary of my take is: We should consider all of these factors but we need to figure out how important they are, and also figure out where the red lines are. (as in what the total deal breakers are that simply can't be accepted regardless of whatever pros there are in other ways)
-Cynthia