Subject: draft minutes of WEIRD BOF

From: Burke Chris-CCB007 <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 16:20:44 -0600

Big thanks to Piet Barber for recording the raw minutes!

The minutes below for incorporation in the proceedings, leave out a lot of
the blow-by-blow discussion but capture the flavor and direction (I hope).
Any last-minute comments on these appreciated as well.

Chris Burke
mailto:[email-masked]

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                Minutes of the
                Web Evangelism of Internet-Related Developments BOF
                IETF - Minneapolis, MN - March, 1999

recorded by Chris Burke / Piet Barber

The Web Evangelism of Internet-Related Developments (WEIRD) BOF met
to gauge the level of interest in forming an IETF working group to
develop web-based content, including a combination of less-technical
language, formatted text, and graphics, to better inform people of
IETF activities and the relationships among various IETF activities.

User Services A-D April Marine described background discussions over
the past year that led up to the BOF, and BOF chair Chris Burke
presented a draft charter. Chris then opened the floor to charter
bashing and scope discussion.

Discussion gravitated toward two issues: selection of a target audience,
and identification of kinds of info useful to that audience that the IETF
could produce responsibly and without undue speculation.

The strawman target audience was internet users, but consensus
developed around a target audience of internet generalists such as ISPs,
book authors, and people new to the IETF.

A structured discussion on roughly 15 distinct content types followed,
with the group classifying each type either in scope or out of scope.
Content types specifically in scope include: current IETF WG and BOF
activities, BOF historical information, IAB / IESG / Secretariat
issues and topics of interest and their impact. Content types
specifically out of scope include: information interpreting trends
in internet engineering and standards; IETF-related information that
is editorial in nature.

There was rough consensus that it was worth forming a working group
to develop an IETF web site to address this audience and serve this
content. Many open issues remain, not the least of which are defining
specific milestones and that the WG does not produce a "document" in
the traditional IETF sense.

Charter and milestone discussion will continue on the WEIRD discussion
list (mailto:[email-masked], mailto:[email-masked] to
subscribe) , with the objective of revising the proposed charter by end of
April, 1999.