Subject: RE: Agenda is still incomplete

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 09:20:41 -0800

At 11:45 PM 11/1/2004, Lars-Erik Jonsson (LU/EAB) wrote:
>> > > 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

                     ^^^^^

This is okay -- a WG/BOF adds another meeting slot because
they need it and the slot becomes available.  IMO, it is not
okay if the WG members are told the WG will not meet at
the IETF and then a session gets added at the last minute.

>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,

Is this concept of an "IETF participant" documented somewhere?
Does it say in any of the new process specs that a participant
is expected to be available for WG meetings the entire week
of an IETF conference, and that's why it's acceptable that the
schedule isn't finalized until the last minute? ;-)

>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.

There is benefit in a stable schedule even for people
who attend all week.  

<solution-space>
I would be happy with a partially stable schedule.
Each time a draft agenda is posted, there will be
a list of WG/BOF acronyms that have requested at
least one timeslot, and each WG/BOF will
have a status field, (e.g., rmonmib:draft).  For
WGs requesting more than one slot, the slot number
is added (e.g., rmonmib-2:reserved)

Status is one of:
   draft: slot assigned, subject to change
   reserved: slot approved, not yet assigned
   locked: slot assigned, not subject to change

I don't know how much extra work this would be,
but it would improve visibility for attendees
without changing the scheduling deadlines.  But if
the status 'locked' is never used this doesn't 
really help.
</solution-space>

>/L-E

Andy

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 13:32:16 -0500

>>>>> "Andy" == Andy Bierman <[email-masked]> writes:

    Andy> Is this concept of an "IETF participant" documented
    Andy> somewhere?  Does it say in any of the new process specs that
    Andy> a participant is expected to be available for WG meetings
    Andy> the entire week of an IETF conference, and that's why it's
    Andy> acceptable that the schedule isn't finalized until the last
    Andy> minute? ;-)

If it doesn't say in the newcomer's orientation and in documents you
can easily point to when making travel justifications that IETF
participants should be there for the whole week, we should fix our
documents.

I hope we can all agree that we want to make it easy for people to
justify to their travel offices that they should be there for the
whole week.  Similarly we can hopefully agree that it is desirable for
people who are able to be there for the whole week.

--Sam

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 15:18:46 -0500

Hi,

As a person whose job involved decding who was justified in attending
such week-long meetings, recruiting personnel to get actively involved
in standards organizations, and a long-time participant myself, I'd
ike to play devil's advocate to your assertion.

Why is it beneficial for a newcomer, who is focused on one and only
one protocol effort, and who doesn't know anybody in the IETF to have
umpteen  hallways meetings with, to spend a whole week in an IETF
meeting? To do so for their first IETF meeting generally does nothing
except bombard them with information overload. After they've attended
a few day-sessions and sampled some WGs other than those they are
directly interested in, have built up some contacts, and begun to
understand the Tao of the IETF and the Internet architectures, then it
makes more sense for them to attend week-long meetings. 

As a long-time "IETF participant" I see lots and lots of people who I
wish didn't bother to stay the whole week, since they merely take up
space in meetings where they sit and read their email, don't come
prepared for discussions, ignore the discussions that do occur, can't
tell the important from the unimportant issues, and then they still
raise their hands to vote on issues they don't even understand. How
exactly does that benefit the IETF?

Even as a long-time IETF participant, I have often thought I could be
more productive doing IETF work at home than sitting is session after
session of dumbed-down status reports for all those casual observers
who come to the IETF all week and contribute nothing.

I'm a strong believer we should have "status report sessions" on the
Sunday, and then send all the non-participants home so the actual IETF
engineers can do some real work face-to-face.

dbh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Sam Hartman
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 1:32 PM
> To: Andy Bierman
> Cc: [email-masked]; Jari Arkko (JO/LMF)
> Subject: Re: Agenda is still incomplete
> 
> If it doesn't say in the newcomer's orientation and in 
> documents you can easily point to when making travel 
> justifications that IETF participants should be there for the 
> whole week, we should fix our documents.
> 
> 
> I hope we can all agree that we want to make it easy for 
> people to justify to their travel offices that they should be 
> there for the whole week.  Similarly we can hopefully agree 
> that it is desirable for people who are able to be there for 
> the whole week.
> 
> --Sam
> 
> 
>