Subject: RE: Agenda is still incomplete

From: "Lars-Erik Jonsson (LU/EAB)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:45:29 +0100

> > > LEJ:
> > > Having the final* agenda out no later than 14 days before the
> > > meeting sounds reasonable, I think. However, I do not think we
> > > should not allow for sessions to be added after that, if there
> > > are empty slots and a WG suddenly finds out it needs more time.
> > > Of course, that should only happen in exceptional cases, but I
> > > do not think we should have a strict rule against it.
> >
> > JA:
> > I agree.
> 
> AB:
> I don't agree that it's okay to add meetings after the final 
> agenda is published.  This is extremely inconsiderate to people 
> who need to make travel plans or "external" meeting plans.

First of all, I do not think this is something that has and will
happen often, but still it is an important question as it clearly
puts us into two camps. If a chair finds out his WG would indeed
benefit from having more face2face time, and the current meeting
allocations allow for that, I believe we should not have any
rules that prevents us from adding a session. Of course there are
several aspects to consider, but if chair(s)/AD(s) believe the
WG would benefit from getting another session, they should always
be allowed to try to add one.

As I have said before, if we can easily simplify planning also for
non-whole-week-participants, I think we should do that. However, I
am not in favor of adjusting our working principles to be totally
"fair" to those participants, and I think we should continue to
assume that most people stay for the whole week, i.e. that they
are "IETF participants" and not just "WG participants". Further,
we must remember that what happens at an IETF meeting must always
be communicated on our official channels, our mailing lists, and
"decisions" taken at a face2face meeting must also always be
confirmed on the proper mailing list. Therefore, not being able
to participate in a WG session should never be a very big problem.

/L-E