Subject: RE: "LAST Call for Input to the 58th IETF Meeting Proceedings"

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 15:43:20 +0200

Hi Bert,

> > > Ninety-seven (97) working groups and BoFs met at IETF 58.
> > > As of today 7 have not yet submitted any materials,
> 
> So that is not so good. I think we as ADs should speak to the WG
> chairs who failed to submit minutes and see what we can do to
> not let it occur again next time.

In Margaret's follow-up mail, it seemed that several of the WGs
were chaired by IESG or IAB members.  Who will talk to them ;)

> > > 7 have submitted minutes but no slides,
> 
> Some WGs have no (useful) slides to submit.
> In other cases, the "presenters" may not have given them to
> the wg chairs.

If you review the proceedings, you'll notice that many WGs that
submitted slides did not even submit 50% of the slides which were
shown at the meeting.  This is quite poor.

As a comment on this, I think that proceedings with good minutes
and presentations are important to the IETF, and should be considered
part of a chair's responsiblity.  Travel budgets are still tight &
visa requirements (to the US, for example) are even tighter.  Many active 
mailing list IETF 'members' find it impossible to attend IETF meetings.
They should at least have the ability to see what was discussed &
agreed upon. Please don't suggest that they should view multicast, 
some enterprises (& countries) block multicast, so this is not an
option.

There has been discussion on the Problem / Solution mailing lists about
what concensus means in the IETF.  If we cannot document what was
discussed and what consensus there was during meetings, how can
we realistically expect to progress?

br,
John

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 08:56:27 -0500

On Monday, December 22, 2003, at 08:43 AM, [email-masked] 
wrote:
> what concensus means in the IETF.

It's my impression that it's increasingly likely for there to be
dissent from wg (and other) decisions, and for dissenters to be
willing to go along with decisions with which they don't agree (the
inability to compromise is interfering rather badly with consensus
process in some cases).  That means that it's increasingly important
for there to be a public record of decisions that we've made and
the input that went into making them.

That said, it's a little dismaying to see meetings being used as
the places where decisions are made, even as meeting attendance is
off, as you describe.  Having good minutes can help get decisions
made on mailing lists to ratify (or not) polls, etc., that were taken
in meetings.

Melinda