Subject: [Manycouches] deliverables and status slides from IETF110 meeting

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 17:44:45 -0400

I am watching the video.
{at 1.75x speed, the hour sure flies by fast...}

   draft-richardson-shmoo-how-many-fine-dinners got two revisions
in November based upon feedback from a few people.
Your slide says no update.

My observation is that my opinion that the time zone pain should be shared is
not shared by this WG and the community.   If there was, then there would be
more complaints about the planning of the four virtual meetings.

I feel that I've been the only one complaining that we continuously are
accomodating only european time zones in for virtual meetings.
(IETF109 is a very good example where California could have had it easy,
at the cost of making Europeans get up early)

The need for 9 tracks and even more conflicts for IETF110 tells me that we
(as a community) do not intend to push back on demand for IETF meeting-week
session time.

In my opinion we can't have
       short-days
   AND opportunities for hallway interaction
   AND cross-area review
   AND 250+ hours of session time.

We probably can't have even two of them.

My document is therefore in the rough, and I have declined to continue
working on it.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide

---

From: Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 23:13:32 +0100

Le 14/03/2021 à 22:44, Michael Richardson a écrit :
> 
> I am watching the video. {at 1.75x speed, the hour sure flies by 
> fast...}
> 
> draft-richardson-shmoo-how-many-fine-dinners got two revisions in 
> November based upon feedback from a few people. Your slide says no 
> update.
> 
> My observation is that my opinion that the time zone pain should be 
> shared is not shared by this WG and the community.   If there was, 
> then there would be more complaints about the planning of the four 
> virtual meetings.
> 
> I feel that I've been the only one complaining that we continuously 
> are accomodating only european time zones in for virtual meetings. 
> (IETF109 is a very good example where California could have had it 
> easy, at the cost of making Europeans get up early)
> 
> The need for 9 tracks and even more conflicts for IETF110 tells me 
> that we (as a community) do not intend to push back on demand for 
> IETF meeting-week session time.
> 
> In my opinion we can't have short-days AND opportunities for hallway
>  interaction AND cross-area review AND 250+ hours of session time.
> 
> My document is therefore in the rough, and I have declined to 
> continue working on it.

I think this list was created prior to the covid situation.  It had no
work formalized.  Then covid arrived and two drafts were somehow
mandated and so it became a WG.  There was no BoF for it, a strange
situation first.

I am not sure what is happening.

'Many fine dinners' is a great analogy in naming to 'many couches', and
it has a suggestion of meaning; it means to strive to bring back the
in-person meetings to benefit from many fine dinners, socializing.

But one has to understand first what 'many couches' means.  Worse, one
has to not be French to understand 'many couches' because 'couches' is a
false friend - it means something very specific and different than the
English meaning.  It could be like many 'layers' in a communication
stack, when not worse.

I think that 'many couches' means that each person is at home on her
sofa ('couch') and thus the meeting is entirely online.  I could
understand this recently when I saw people on their sofa in gather.town
webcam.  I might be wrong though.

I think then the WG was created but with the name SHMOO (Stay Home Meet
Online Only).  This name is different than 'manycouches'.  We end up
with a different name for the mailing list than the WG name.  This is a
common problem at IETF.  It happens in many WGs.  But it does not mean
that because it happens routinely is a good thing.  Actually this
difference between WG name and email list name is a barrier for
understanding to newcomers.  One cant just be told to go to SHMOO email
list, because there is no [email-masked].

To come back to the topic of the draft 'many fine dinners' I do think it
addresses important problems, but the meeting planners might have not
asked for that draft.

For my part, I really dont know how the meeting planners plan the agenda.

I do agree that the timezone discussion, the grouping of all WGs in one
week 3 times a year discussion - are important.

People say to write here what we think about this agenda planning, in
the hope that someone might read and take it into account.  So be it.

Alex

> 
> -- Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT 
> consulting ) Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Manycouches mailing 
> list [email-masked] 
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 09:03:40 +1300

> more complaints about the planning of the four virtual meetings.

Well, people for whom that meeting was around 3 a.m. weren't there to agree
with you - the time zone pain should be shared and that means active rotation
of meeting times around the clock. However, that does create a new problem:
when picking co-chairs, diversity of time zones becomes an important
constraint.
 
> We probably can't have even two of them.

We can't. But we're dealing with a major psychological barrier here. Why do
we have literally hundreds of drafts submitted in the 48 hours before the
I-D cutoff? Because we are *absurdly* and *illogically* deadline-driven,
and we have conditioned ourselves to believe that the three I-D cutoffs
per year are The Most Important Deadlines in the Known Universe.
Once meetings go completely on line, this is absurd, illogical and
ritualistic behaviour.

The fix for this requires a brain adjustment. There is no need to have
an IETF meeting week at all if it isn't face to face.

> My document is therefore in the rough, and I have declined to continue

If I have a critcism of draft-richardson-shmoo-how-many-fine-dinners-02,
it's that it simply doesn't go far enough. If, for example, we converged
on having one plenary f2f IETF per year, we could simply have most of
the other 51 weeks available for rotating-time-zone WG (and BOF) sessions.

    Brian