Subject: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:42:57 -0400

The IESG is working with the Secretariat to come up with the first
public draft of the agenda.  We received requests for 14 more slots than
exist on the extended (through Friday at 1515) schedule.  We have an
agenda that gives each request one meeting slot.  However, 13 groups
requested two slots, and at this point, none are receiving a second slot.

The agenda will be posted on Thursday for your review and comment.  We
are behind schedule, but further coordination between the IESG and the
Secretariat is needed.  Please recognize that a lot of work has already
gone into the agenda, and there is little room for adjustment.  It is
quite a balancing act for this meeting.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation,
  Russ

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:50:26 -0400

> requested two slots, and at this point, none are receiving a second  

Russ - is that "14 more slots" _with_ the second slot requests, or  
without them ?

Regards
Marshall

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:56:22 -0400

Marshall:

14 more slots were requested than exist.  We have enough slots to make
sure that each group that requested a slot will get at least one.  Most
of the groups that requested more than one slot will only get one.

Russ

---

From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:31:00 -0400

Let the bidding begin at ...

---

From: Stig Venaas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:44:29 -0700

Hi

> of the groups that requested more than one slot will only get one.

pim wg requested 2 hours as usual, but I don't think we'll have much on
the agenda this time. Would it be helpful if we updated our request,
asking for just one?

Stig

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:48:19 +0300

> Would it be helpful if we updated our request,
> asking for just one?

I think it would be useful if we put some groups that don't need so much 
time into an one hour slot. (Or even increased the number of one hour 
slots.) This would increase the amount of time that we can give to 
high-volume high-priority groups (e.g., Behave).

But I don't know what would be the productive way to do that at this 
point. Letting the ADs know so that we can tell the secretary in one go 
what groups should downgrade their slot? Russ?

Jari

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:16:06 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Jari,
  I think Multimob definitely needs a 2-hour slot.

Regards,

Behcet 

----- Original Message ----
> From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
> To: Stig Venaas <[email-masked]>
> Cc: IETF WG Chairs <[email-masked]>; Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wed, June 23, 2010 1:48:19 PM
> Subject: Re: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda
> 
> 
> asking for just 
> one?

I think it would be useful if we put some groups that don't need so 
> much time into an one hour slot. (Or even increased the number of one hour 
> slots.) This would increase the amount of time that we can give to high-volume 
> high-priority groups (e.g., Behave).

But I don't know what would be the 
> productive way to do that at this point. Letting the ADs know so that we can 
> tell the secretary in one go what groups should downgrade their slot? 
> Russ?

Jari

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:16:05 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Jari,

Regards,

Behcet 

----- Original Message ----

Jari

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:52:20 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Russ,
  If this trend is expected to continue why not get rid of the social event? This would free up app. 2 hours and several more sessions can be accomodated. In fact this was what we had in Anaheim.

Regards,

Behcet

----- Original Message ----
> From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
> To: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
> Cc: IETF WG Chairs <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wed, June 23, 2010 10:56:22 AM

14 more slots were requested than exist.  We have enough 
> slots to make
sure that each group that requested a slot will get at least 
> one.  Most
of the groups that requested more than one slot will only get 
> one.

Russ

On 6/23/2010 9:50 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> Russ - is that "14 more 
> slots" _with_ the second slot requests, or
> without them ?
> 
> 
> Regards
> Marshall
> 
>> The agenda will be posted 
> on Thursday for your review and comment.  We
>> are behind 
> schedule, but further coordination between the IESG and the
>>

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:06:08 -0600

On 6/23/10 1:52 PM, Behcet Sarikaya wrote:
> Hi Russ, If this trend is expected to continue why not get rid of the
> social event? This would free up app. 2 hours and several more
> sessions can be accomodated. In fact this was what we had in
> Anaheim.

Relegate the social to a BoF and bring back the beer. :)

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:15:00 -0400

I passed the information the the Secretariat.  If there are others that
can do with less time than requested, please let us know.  I am
considering dividing one of the AM 2.5 hour slots into two shorter
slots.  This way a group that needs the whole time can be given adjacent
slots, but the we have more granularity to work with.

Russ

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:01:12 -0400

> slots, but the we have more granularity to work with.

I've long wondered why we don't do that as a regular thing.

-- Barry
chairing dkim, marf, morg, and vwrap

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:10:42 -0400

We're not making good use of the current set of shorter slots.  I  
don't see any evidence that more shorter slots would help.  The  
current schedule includes pairs of 1-1.5 hour meeting sessions on Tue,  
Wed and Fri.  Of the 48 available slots in those three (pairs) of  
sessions, I count that the current schedule assigns 28 back-to-back  
slots to a single WG (most of which asked for a 2 or 2.5 hour slot),  
effectively giving a ~2.5 hour slot.  Of the remaining 20 slots, 7 are  
still open now.  There is also a 1 hour session Thu at 1510, which  
can't be paired with another meeting slot.  7 out of 8 slots in that  
session are assigned.

We could make better use of the existing slots if we encouraged WGs to  
request shorter meeting times.  But until then, we won't gain anything  
from more short slots.

- Ralph

---

From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:40:02 -0700

> Relegate the social to a BoF and bring back the beer. :)

The two plenaries are 6 hours.

I sure liked the combined Plenary when we had it.  Why was that a failure, again?

-d

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:59:08 -0700 (PDT)

----- Original Message ----
> From: Dan Wing <[email-masked]>
> To: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>; Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
> Cc: IETF WG Chairs <[email-masked]>; Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>; Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wed, June 23, 2010 4:40:02 PM
> Subject: RE: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda
> 
> > Hi Russ, If this 
> trend is expected to continue why not get rid of the
> > social event? 
> This would free up app. 2 hours and several more
> > sessions can be 
> accomodated. In fact this was what we had in
> > Anaheim.
> 
> 

The two 
> plenaries are 6 hours.

I sure liked the combined Plenary when we had 
> it.  Why was that a failure, again?

+1 for one long plenary.

Behcet

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:59:09 -0700 (PDT)

----- Original Message ----

The two 

+1 for one long plenary.

Behcet

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:12:25 +0300

Hi,

> I sure liked the combined Plenary when we had it.  Why was that a failure, again?

I never understood that either. In the past, the IAB seemed to want a separate plenary to have sufficient time for their technical topic. I've floated the idea to some IAB folks that instead of having that talk during a plenary, they might want to ask Aaron to hold an IRTF open meeting sometime during the week, like our other area open meetings, and have that topic be covered there...

Lars

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:42:22 +0300

IIRC we went to the two plenary system at a time when the administration 
restructuring was at a critical stage, and we needed to ensure there's 
time for discussing that and the IAB plenary.

For a while now I have had the opinion that we should move back to a one 
plenary system. Maybe 3.5 hours (with a leg stretcher break) instead of 
2x2.5 hours.

Jari

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:45:16 +0300

If there are free 1-hour slots, is there a chance that some of the 
working groups who asked for 2x2hr slots would be satisfied with a 
1x2hr+1x1hr slot?

Jari

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:26:18 +0200

The utility of dividing 2.5 hour slots into multiple one hour slots depends on the group in question. If I have asked for two slots adding to four hours, giving me two slots adding to 2.5 hours as opposed to giving me a single 2.5 hours slot doesn't help. 

>> what groups should downgrade their slot? Russ?

http://www.ipinc.net/IPv4.GIF

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:27:22 +0200

On Jun 23, 2010, at 11:10 PM, Ralph Droms wrote:

> We could make better use of the existing slots if we encouraged WGs to request shorter meeting times. 

What happens if the working group really needs more than 15 minutes to meet?

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:28:48 +0200

On Jun 24, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:

> If there are free 1-hour slots, is there a chance that some of the working groups who asked for 2x2hr slots would be satisfied with a 1x2hr+1x1hr slot?

possibly. I wouldn't automatically impose that, though.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:34:31 +0300

Fred,

Yeah. But considering that the alternative might be receiving just one
2hr slot...

Jari

---

From: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:47:03 +0200

Actually the issue we have is not based on the count of plenaries but on
the count of WGs and as I assume because of the count of new WGs which
need additional discussion time.

Two questions come up:
Do we really need that many WGs which have only 1 or 2 action items on
their charter (e.g. 1 problem statement and 1 I-D)?
Or is it better to collect those (more or less) small issues in an area
specific WG (e.g. RAI area WG)?

Cheers,
Mehmet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of ext Lars Eggert
> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 8:12 AM
> To: Dan Wing
> Cc: 'IETF WG Chairs'; 'Behcet Sarikaya'; 'Russ Housley'
> Subject: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I never understood that either. In the past, the IAB seemed 
> to want a separate plenary to have sufficient time for their 
> technical topic. I've floated the idea to some IAB folks that 
> instead of having that talk during a plenary, they might want 
> to ask Aaron to hold an IRTF open meeting sometime during the 
> week, like our other area open meetings, and have that topic 
> be covered there...
> 
> Lars

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:12:51 -0400

> I never understood that either. In the past, the IAB seemed to want a
separate
> plenary to have sufficient time for their technical topic. I've
floated the idea
> to some IAB folks that instead of having that talk during a plenary,
they might
> want to ask Aaron to hold an IRTF open meeting sometime during the
week, like
> our other area open meetings, and have that topic be covered there...

Many people felt the five hour plenary session was too long.  The
organizers (especially Olaf and myself) were exhausted by the experience.

Aaron has been discussing the idea of an IRTF Open meeting with the
IRSG, but the idea has not received much excitement.

Russ

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:19:18 +0200

The use of IETF rooms by IRTF RGs is conditional on the rooms being available. This raises a question, probably to the IAOC; if the IETF is having a problem with meeting rooms for its own use, would it make sense to schedule requested IRTF meetings at a different time? Not to treat IRTF as a second sister, but to wonder about priorities.

I could imagine, for example, having RRG meetings on Cisco premises, with some lead time; we have facilities that could be used for such things.

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:27:17 -0400

The number of WG has been relatively steady over the last five years.
It stays between 110 and 121.

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:32:19 -0400

I think you misunderstood my point.  We have many requests for 1.5 hours
that are taking 2 hour slots.  If we divide a 2.5 hour slot into 1.25
hour slot, .25 hours to change rooms, and a 1 hour slot, then we can
deal better with the 1 and 1.5 hour slot requests.  Also, by assigning
bot slots to the same group, the result is 2.5 hours of meeting time.

We are looking at total meeting time requested, not number of slots.

Russ

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:36:11 +0200

On Jun 24, 2010, at 15:32, Russ Housley wrote:

> bot slots

This is starting to get scary :-)

My real question: Do we have any statistic that explains the underlying problem, apparently an uptick in slots requested?
Enquiring minds want to know.

Gruesse, Carsten

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:40:18 -0400

> possibly. I wouldn't automatically impose that, though.

Automatic?

To come up with a working strawman, every group was assigned a single
slot of something close to the longest requested time slot.  In the case
of v6ops the strawman has two back-to-back 1 hour slots plus the room
change time (2.25 hours).  The IESG is now working with the Secretariat
to assign the remaining slots and resolve conflicts.  The conflict
resolution is especially difficult with such a full agenda.

The draft agenda will be posted later today.

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:50:14 -0400

Fred:

Aaron is well aware that the IRTF RGs are assigned slots at a lower
priority that IETF WGs.  That said, there is value in mixing the
communities.  We want hallway discussions and probing questions from
each other.  So, as always, it is a balancing act.

I fully expect the IESG and IAOC to discuss this situation.  The first
question is, of course, whether this particular meeting is a spike or if
this is going to continue.  You may recall that the meeting was extended
from 1200 on Friday to 1515 on Friday to add 16 one-hour slots to the
agenda.  They are all being used this time!

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:53:03 -0400

> Enquiring minds want to know.

We have some information.  The same people that are working to sort out
this agenda have the data, and I have asked them to pull it together for
further study and discussion after the agenda gets posted today.

Russ

---

From: "Elwell, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:53:16 +0200

Is it really not possible to compress each plenary to 2 hours, with the choice of one 4-hour plenary (and the added advantage of only one lot of room set-up) or two 2-hour plenaries (this latter option giving an extra 1 hour * 2 * number_of_rooms?

John

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Russ Housley
> Sent: 24 June 2010 14:13
> To: Lars Eggert
> Cc: 'IETF WG Chairs'; Dan Wing
> Subject: Re: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda)
> 
> 
> to want a

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:20:08 -0400

It should be kept in mind that some groups may want two sessions that
are separated by a day or more so they can have some informal
discussion in between them. If they had asked for two separated 2 or
2.5 hour sessions, they might be happier with two one hour sessions
than with one 2 or 2.5 hour session.

Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 155 Beaver Street
 Milford, MA 01757 USA
 [email-masked]

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:34:25 -0700

It certainly seems to me that we could do quite a bit of compression.
In particular,
I've long felt we could remove:

- Pretty much all the "reporting" stuff. These seem like the kinds of
reports that
  appear on the Web site and that people can ask about.
- The IRTF report. This is actually a trimmed down version of what used to be
  a talk from one of the IRTF WGs, but it's not clear to me why we couldn't
  get rid of it entirely.

My guesstimate is that this would reclaim order 60-90 minutes.

More radically, IMO the only really essential part of the plenary is
open mike, so
we should be doing cost/benefit analysis of each presentation to ask ourselves:
is this presentation worth an hour out of the lives of 1000 people? The counter
argument here is of course that people don't have to come, but of course
people aren't  entirely rational and there is a large inertia in favor
of coming to the whole
plenary.

-Ekr

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:39:35 -0400

On the general topic raised by Lars, I don't see how one plenary, if  
it has the same duration as the two put together, buys any additional  
slots. Conversely, if the plenary time can / should be shrunk, that  
could be done for 2 as well as for one.

> specific WG (e.g. RAI area WG)?

Wasn't DISPATCH set up precisely to create such single-issue WG ?  
(That was my understanding, but
I don't see it in the Charter.)

Regards
Marshall

---

From: JP Vasseur <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:48:26 +0200

Hi Russ,

Thanks for sharing information. ROLL really need a full 2h slot at  
least this time.
We had even requested two slots but understand the situation.

Thanks.

JP.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:57:48 -0500

Marshall,

> Wasn't DISPATCH set up precisely to create such single-issue WG ?  (That 
> was my understanding, but

Not speaking for the RAI ADs, but I have chaired two DISPATCHed working 
groups ...

No, DISPATCH goes the other way - it's where we work on charters/charter 
updates, and many of the charters result in singe-issue WGs.

I think the ADs at the time (Robert and Cullen) made the specific decision 
not to have actual protocol work in DISPATCH (not a RAI-AREA working group). 
It might make sense to have such a working group, but DISPATCH isn't it.

Spencer

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:27:34 -0400

On Jun 24, 2010, at 10:57 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> Not speaking for the RAI ADs, but I have chaired two DISPATCHed  
> working groups ...
>
> No, DISPATCH goes the other way - it's where we work on charters/ 
> charter updates, and many of the charters result in singe-issue WGs.
>

But that's my point - DISPATCH spawns single issue groups. That seems  
like a good idea, but there are costs (including a greater need for  
meeting slots).

Regards
Marshall

> I think the ADs at the time (Robert and Cullen) made the specific  
> decision not to have actual protocol work in DISPATCH (not a RAI- 
> AREA working group). It might make sense to have such a working  
> group, but DISPATCH isn't it.
>
> Spencer
>

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:00:06 -0400

If a WG requests two sessions so they have discussion space between
sessions, they shoul dmake that clear in the special requirements in
their request.
If two 1-hr sessions would work fine for you, you should let the
secretariat know immediately.

No guarantees you'll get them, but if they don't knwo that would work
for you, they probably won't do it by random chance.

dbh 

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Donald Eastlake
> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 10:20 AM
> To: Russ Housley
> Cc: IETF WG Chairs
> It should be kept in mind that some groups may want two 
> sessions that are separated by a day or more so they can have 
> some informal discussion in between them. If they had asked 
> for two separated 2 or
> 2.5 hour sessions, they might be happier with two one hour 
> sessions than with one 2 or 2.5 hour session.
> 
> Donald
> >>> If there are free 1-hour slots, is there a chance that 
> some of the working groups who asked for 2x2hr slots would be 
> satisfied with a 1x2hr+1x1hr slot?
> >>
> > slot of something close to the longest requested time slot.  In
the 
> > case of v6ops the strawman has two back-to-back 1 hour 
> slots plus the 
> > room change time (2.25 hours).  The IESG is now working with the 
> > Secretariat to assign the remaining slots and resolve 
> conflicts.  The 
> > conflict resolution is especially difficult with such a full
agenda.

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:08:55 -0400

Although this has been true for TRILL at some past meetings, it is not
the case for Maastricht where we have requested one slot. When it was
the case, we did not it in the special requirements for our request.

Donald

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:35:06 +0200

My understanding is that it is not the RAI requests from lots of groups spawned by DISPATCH that is causing the problem in this meeting. The overall level of RAI requests seems to be much the same as it has been before, using the approximation that if I allocate all the RAI sessions in sequence in a single stream, they essentially not quite fill the week - in the past there have been occurrences where they have been one or two sessions over for the week, and thwerefore some RAI sessions have been in parallel.

So DISPATCH has not made the situation worse for this meeting.

And yes, AVT requested its normal 2 slots, but will probably fall back to one. We've already had that discussion with the AD.

But I do support that WG chairs need to be better at getting their requests right in the first place. Having not been able to programme all the work I need in my WG in the sessions allocated, it is disappointing to turn up to a 2 hour session of some other group in the same meeting where 60 minutes is then allocated to "miscellaneous discussion", or "future directions" (and I mean a slot like that with no preparation work, guiding slides or anything).

regards

Keith

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks
> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 4:28 PM
> To: Spencer Dawkins
> Cc: IETF WG Chairs; Behcet Sarikaya; Russ Housley; Dan Wing
> But that's my point - DISPATCH spawns single issue groups. 
> That seems like a good idea, but there are costs (including a 
> greater need for meeting slots).
> 
> Regards
> Marshall
> 
> > decision not to have actual protocol work in DISPATCH (not 
> a RAI- AREA 
> > working group). It might make sense to have such a working 
> group, but 
> > DISPATCH isn't it.
> >
> > Spencer
> >
> 
>

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:41:04 -0400

According to Russ, the number of WGs is not the reason for the  

- Ralph

On Jun 24, 2010, at 11:27 AM 6/24/10, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

> But that's my point - DISPATCH spawns single issue groups. That  
> seems like a good idea, but there are costs (including a greater  
> need for meeting slots).
>
> Regards
> Marshall
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:41:34 -0500

Hi, Keith,

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear - my point for Marshall was that DISPATCH isn't 
a candidate for single-draft working groups to collect into one meeting 
slot.

I didn't mean to say more than that about IETF 78, because I don't know any 
more than that to say.

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
To: "Marshall Eubanks" <[email-masked]>; "Spencer Dawkins" 
<[email-masked]>
Cc: "IETF WG Chairs" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 11:35 AM
Subject: RE: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda)

My understanding is that it is not the RAI requests from lots of groups 
spawned by DISPATCH that is causing the problem in this meeting. The overall 
level of RAI requests seems to be much the same as it has been before, using 
the approximation that if I allocate all the RAI sessions in sequence in a 
single stream, they essentially not quite fill the week - in the past there 
have been occurrences where they have been one or two sessions over for the 
week, and thwerefore some RAI sessions have been in parallel.

---

From: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:42:22 +0200

> It might make sense to have such a working group, but 

Agree, I think it would make sense to have a RAI area WG,
which handles homeless single issues and avoids a new WG
just for one I-D.

Mehmet

---

From: Bernie Hoeneisen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:02:58 +0200 (CEST)

In general I support the idea of shortening the plenaries in favor 
of more time for WG slots.

>  a talk from one of the IRTF WGs, but it's not clear to me why we couldn't

You want to get rid of the most interesting stuff...
Other agenda points appeared to be more boring to me...

Has there ever been a survey on the plenaries, where each agenda item 
could be assessed wrt. usefulness, novelty, interestingness, and so on?

just my 0.02 cents...

cheers,
  Bernie

--

http://ucom.ch/
Tech Consulting for Internet Standardization

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:13:58 -0700

removing the boring administrative detail from the plenary is the path 
to tyranny...

joel

On 2010-06-24 10:02, Bernie Hoeneisen wrote:
>
> In general I support the idea of shortening the plenaries in favor of
> more time for WG slots.
>

---

From: "Polk, William T." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:30:30 -0400

I think that two plenaries takes away too many meeting slots.  The work needs to take priority, and I don't see a lot of that in the plenary.   Let's give the working groups the time they need and combine the plenaries.

I also agree that a mammoth 5 hour plenary is overkill.  A single 3.5 hour plenary ought to be enough.  If we limit it to 3.5 hours (which still seems too long to me), perhaps that will also limit the pain for the organizers.

Tim

On 6/24/10 2:42 AM, "Jari Arkko" <[email-masked]> wrote:

Jari

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:35:43 -0400

Hi.

While it will be interesting to see whatever estimates can be
made to differentiate between "spike" and "trend", I think there
is a long-term trend that is at least correlated with
Parkinson's Law.  

Other things may be going on as well.  What I see is entirely
anecdotal, but my sense is that the number of WGs who are doing
most of their work in meetings (rather than on mailing lists)
has been steadily rising for several years.   That has to add
pressure for more meeting time.

But, if the Parkinson's Law hypothesis (for anyone who doesn't
know, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its
completion"") and its obvious corollaries are even partially
applicable, then fine-tuning  --whether adding slots Friday
afternoon, diddling slot lengths, trying to adjust the
plenaries, or even moving, long-term, toward more parallel
sessions-- merely postpones the inevitable point at which we are
going to have to get serious about prioritizing and limiting
what we try to do, at least in parallel, using evaluation
criteria more stringent that "some group of people came to the
IETF and wanted to do this here".

For the longer term, I urge the IESG and IAOC to address that
question, not just how to eke a few extra slots out of meetings.

Or, of course, we expand on the perceived success of the Friday
afternoon experiment by expanding meetings to two weeks.  :-(

    john

---

From: Sean Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:35:57 -0400

+1

Polk, William T. wrote:
> I think that two plenaries takes away too many meeting slots.  The work 
> needs to take priority, and I don’t see a lot of that in the plenary. 
>   Let’s give the working groups the time they need and combine the 
> plenaries.
> 
> I also agree that a mammoth 5 hour plenary is overkill.  A single 3.5 
> hour plenary ought to be enough.  If we limit it to 3.5 hours (which 
> still seems too long to me), perhaps that will also limit the pain for 
> the organizers.
> 
> Tim
> 
>

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:00:51 -0400

It will be posted today.  The IESG and the Secretariat had a very long
teleconference to compile the first draft agenda.

Russ

On 6/24/2010 12:11 PM, Tobias Gondrom wrote:
> Hi, sorry slightly off-topic: is the preliminary agenda ready already. It should have been published for comments yesterday, but I didn't see/receive/find any?
> Tobias
> 
> 
> Tobias Gondrom
> Sloan Fellow 2009
> London Business School
> Phone: +44 7521003005
> email: [email-masked]
> 
> On 24 Jun 2010, at 18:08, Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:53:08 -0500

Hi Mehmet,

The reason RAI introduced this model for DISPATCH was based on past
experience in RAI with the SIPPING working group which was the home
for all these smaller work items, etc.  It was very difficult to
prioritize work and keep WG attention focused on what needed to be
done. The list was incredibly busy.  And, we always needed at least
two timeslots (a total of 4.5 hours) and often 2-3 adhocs during an
IETF meeting week to work through issues with all the ongoing topics
and discuss newer topics (which were almost always handled with
adhocs).  SIP WG often had the same situation.  It was difficult for
anyone to get any new work accepted due to the backlog and many
chartered work items languished.

While it might seem silly to create a separate WG that has a single
deliverable, it is *much* easier to manage and only folks that are
interested in that topic need to subscribe to the ML, attend the WG
session, etc. This has also allowed the RAI area to spread out the
management work which helps reduce the workload for the chairs (the
workload for SIP and SIPPING WGs was extremely high) and allows
additional contributors to take on leadership positions - it spreads
out the ownership of the work overall.  It is also far easier to see
whether a work item really has the momentum to get completed - when
you have 200+ people in a session, it's virtually impossible to
accurately garner consensus.  The idea behind these smaller WGs is
that they have aggressive deliverables and if the work is not
completed in a timely manner, the WG is shutdown.

Regards,
Mary
-- who is *much* happier chairing DISPATCH than she was SIPPING

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:40:31 -0400

--On Thursday, 24 June, 2010 10:30 -0400 "Polk, William T."
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I think that two plenaries takes away too many meeting slots.
> The work needs to take priority, and I don't see a lot of that
> in the plenary.   Let's give the working groups the time they
> need and combine the plenaries.
>...

Tim,

Let me turn your comment around, just as another perspective.
We've decided repeatedly that the reasons to not shift toward
multiple separate area meetings, to push strongly for people
being at IETF all week, etc., is cross-fertilization and review
from a wide variety of perspectives.  If plenary time is used
well, it serves two functions.  One is to promote and encourage
exactly that type of review and broaden everyone's perspectives
about subjects --and ways of thinking about things-- they might
not otherwise consider relevant.  And the other, as Joel
indirectly suggested, is to keep dialog open between the various
"leadership" and management bodies and the community -- the
openness, transparency, and bottom-up stuff we talk about so
often.

I certainly agree with others that we could use plenary time
more efficiently and maybe shorten them as a consequence.  I'd
personally be very happy if the groups who usually do reports
were held accountable for getting the reports and supporting
information posted a few weeks before the meeting so that the
report session could then become "everyone has read the report
right?  anyone who has read it and who has questions or
comments, please come to the microphone". That is nothing more
that a slightly extreme version of what, in principle, we
encourage WGs to do.  If it permitted shortening the plenaries,
or spending a higher proportion of each plenary on substantive
issues, I think that would be great. 

I'd even suggest that it would be in the IETF's interest to make
the time to do something we tried to do many years back -- pick
on a WG or two at each IETF whose work was controversial and
seemed to have broad implications and make them explain what
they were doing to the community.  That would argue for
expanding plenary time, or getting much more efficient about the
time we have already, not discarding plenaries.

But "lets start dropping plenaries just to get a few more
meeting slots" doesn't work for me.  If I'm correct that the
long-term trend will continued to be pressure for more slots
than there is time (presumably we would have had the present
crisis some meetings ago had it not been for the decision to
expand to Friday afternoon), then opening up five or so (or even
ten or so if they are one hour) slots by killing off a plenary
won't even buy us much in the long run, precisely because it
will likely have as bad an effect on the quality of our work

best,
    john

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:54:18 -0600

> which handles homeless single issues and avoids a new WG

Many of this singles protocol draft working groups use a ton of time and have very active discussions. Have a look at the Martini for example. Spencer, how many interims has MARTINI had in 2010? Number of revs of the main draft? And lots of email discussion. My bet is that WG could productively use 4 hours of face to face time at the next IETF (of course they won't get that much). My point being the number of drafts in a WG does not correlate well with the amount of work happening or the amount of face to face discussion needed. 

The RAI area used to have some WG with a huge number of drafts in it - for example sipping. It was often a gong show - drafts would get 10 to 13 minutes of agenda time which was not enough time to decide anything. And at the next several meetings the discussion would be the same. The RAI area ran a BOF on how to reorganize the area and get more productive about getting work done. There were a bunch of suggestions and a bunch of the parts that had consensus slowly got put into practice in the RAI. A big part of that was a recognition that doing a ton of things in parallel in catch all working groups like sipping was resulting in things getting stuck in an endless loop where the draft was briefly discussed in the WG meeting, no decisions where made, and not making much progress. The area wanted to move to having well focused WGs that could make real progress in a timely matter on topics that a bunch of people cared about - and stuff where only a few people wanted to talk about the same draft over and over and over again would hopefully get less priority. 

Anyway, different area have success different ways. I'm always impressed with what the app area can get done in a "catch all wg" but for some other things, the transport area comes to mind, I have the feeling that focused WG with a bunch of people actually participating might be a a more productive approach. It's hard to get a strong degree of critical mass with everyone pushing the draft forward in a catch all wg. The pendulum in RAI is currently swinging from a few WG with lots of topics to more WG with more focused topics - I'm sure opinions vary but I think this is helping get the work people care about done. 

One of the thing that I think RAI is bad at is saying "no" to work. It's a rare day when someone walks up to the microphone when discussing new work and says "this all sounds fine but I think there are much more important things and this will take time away from them so we should not charter this new group".  I do worry the pendulum will swing too far the other direction without some level of damping on the number of new WG RAI is looking at creating. 

Which reminds me, I need to go read the LC for the three new RAI WGs on next weeks IESG call.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:17:26 -0500

Hi, Cullen,

MARTINI has had five interims (three after being chartered in late December, 
and two more since Anaheim. We canceled a fourth interim before Anaheim 
because several of the principal contributors had to focus on the working 
groups they are also chairing, and we talked about having a third interim 
before IETF 78, but the numbers didn't make sense (third meeting at the 
minimum distance from IETF 78, during high vacation season, with everyone 
trying to take vacation because they'll be at the IETF in late July/August).

I think we're on -04 of the GIN draft as a WG draft, plus 3 revisions as an 
individual draft, starting in February.

Oh, wait. I now understand the crazed expression on Adam Roach's face... :D

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cullen Jennings" <[email-masked]>
To: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>; "ext Spencer 
Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "IETF WG Chairs" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 10:54 PM
Subject: Re: Single Issue WGs WAS:RE: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 
Agenda)

> which handles homeless single issues and avoids a new WG

Many of this singles protocol draft working groups use a ton of time and 
have very active discussions. Have a look at the Martini for example. 
Spencer, how many interims has MARTINI had in 2010? Number of revs of the 
main draft? And lots of email discussion. My bet is that WG could 
productively use 4 hours of face to face time at the next IETF (of course 
they won't get that much). My point being the number of drafts in a WG does 
not correlate well with the amount of work happening or the amount of face 
to face discussion needed.

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:24:38 -0600

> removing the boring administrative detail from the plenary is the path to tyranny...

Hmm ... I think the path to avoid tyranny is to spend as much time as people want on the open microphone discussing real issues that impact all of us.  Many of the open mic session having close to nothing of any real importance - but when there is something where the IESG or IAB really does need to realize that they are not acting in way consistent with the community consensus, open mic is the place to fix that. 

I'm perfectly happy for people to ask questions at the open microphone about the administrative reports that had been previously post to the list and have the appropriate representative for that report answer the question.  But I don't see much point in most the administrative reporting unless there is an anomaly that is going to impact everyone. To be blunt, if the network worked fine all week, I don't care. If the network failed all week, I want to know who to blame, uh, I mean why it did not work. 

+1 to the one plenary idea - as long as it has plenty of open mike time for both IAB and IESG.

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:33:06 -0700

Left  to their own devices what is do you think the probability is that the participants will be well informed enough to have the rational basis for consensus necessary for our governance to work?

I'm not convinced a 3 hour plenary is sufficient but it's a baseline.

Joel

Joel's iPad

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:48:30 -0500

OK, right. Just as a data point...

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/77/plenaryt.html doesn't even include 
minutes. I'm hoping that's because no one asked any questions at the mikes - 
I know that the IAB had no questions at Open Mike time.

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/76/plenaryt.html had five questioners - one 
on NATs, the others on IPv6 and transparency (I'm not sure these weren't 
both the same topic).

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/75/plenaryt.html had two or three 
questioners, all following up on the plenary talk about net neutrality.

So, I'm not sure that the IAB, at the end of the second plenary, is getting 
a lot of open mike questions, at least in the past year. I'm certainly not 
sure that we're getting enough open mike questions to justify a tech plenary 
where IAB open mike time happens...

I'm not sure whether we SHOULD be getting lots of open mike questions - 
that's a different conversation.

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cullen Jennings" <[email-masked]>
To: "IETF WG Chairs" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 Agenda)

> removing the boring administrative detail from the plenary is the path to 

+1 to the one plenary idea - as long as it has plenty of open mike time for 
both IAB and IESG.

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:54:59 -0400

--On Thursday, June 24, 2010 10:24:38 PM -0600 Cullen Jennings 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> But I don't see much point in most the administrative
> reporting

Me either.  "Presentations" of material I could read online are a waste of 
everyone's time.  I've tried pretty hard for several years to avoid 
allowing such presentations in my WG meetings, except in specific cases 
like someone proposing that the WG take on new work.  I think the IETF and 
IAB chairs should do likewise, and limit the plenaries to interesting 
content (i.e. a talk is OK, but "reports" and sales pitches are not) and 
_discussion_.

> unless there is an anomaly that is going to impact everyone. To
> be blunt, if the network worked fine all week, I don't care. If the
> network failed all week, I want to know who to blame, uh, I mean why it
> did not work.

If the network failed "all week", I'd rather the people maintaining it have 
time to try to fix it than have to explain why it's still broken.  Once 
everything is better (and some beer has been consumed), they can send mail 
to a mailing list explaining what went wrong, why, and if appropriate, how 
we might avoid the problem in the future, either at the IETF or on our own 
networks.

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:08:06 -0600

> we might avoid the problem in the future, either at the IETF or on our own
 
Good point. + 1

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:09:02 -0400

> One of the thing that I think RAI is bad at is saying "no" to work. It's a rare day when someone walks up to the microphone when discussing new work and says "this all sounds fine but I think there…

I agree about not saying "no".
But a consequence of saying yes too much is now that we get more WGs and 
can't schedule enough time for them all at a meeting. So that may have a 
throttling effect in the future.

Are requests for new WGs rejected due to lack of meeting room space for 
them all to meet?

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:32:06 +0200

Hi,

I understand that the RAI area ADs want to reduce the workload in the
area and per WG.
I also understand that the situation in the SIP and SIPPING WGs was not
sustainable so that another solution became necessary.

On the other hand single-issue-WGs don't scale. I think they waste IETF
as well as personal resources.
I can imagine people in RAI area have something against to subscribe to
24+ maillists or many overlapping RAI sessions during the IETF meeting.

I think it would be beneficial to package 2-3 of small issues into one
WG.
I also see a huge benefit in having an area specific WG which can handle
single issues without a home.

The magic word is balancing. I think we should avoid huge and overloaded
WGs as well as very small WGs with 1-2 WG items.

Cheers,
Mehmet

> From: ext Paul Kyzivat [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 2010 3:09 PM
> To: Cullen Jennings
> Cc: Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich); ext Spencer Dawkins; 
> IETF WG Chairs
> Subject: Re: Single Issue WGs WAS:RE: one plenary (was Re: 
> Very Full IETF 78 Agenda)
> 
> 
> 
> Cullen Jennings wrote:
> 
> > One of the thing that I think RAI is bad at is saying "no" 
> to work. It's a rare day when someone walks up to the 
> microphone when discussing new work and says "this all sounds 
> fine but I think there are much more important things and 
> this will take time away from them so we should not charter 
> this new group".  I do worry the pendulum will swing too far 
> the other direction without some level of damping on the 
> number of new WG RAI is looking at creating. 
>

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:45:00 -0400

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Are requests for new WGs rejected due to lack of meeting room space for them
> all to meet?

I don't think that's the right approach.  I think we should be
changing the model to focus more on work on the mailing lists and less
on the need to meet at every face-to-face meeting.  Some WGs will
clearly need to meet a lot (it sounds like martini is one), but many
-- probably more than are doing it now -- can skip a meeting here and
there without affecting their progress.  We, as chairs, can push on
the mailing lists and get the progress made there, and make judgments
about when the WG can miss a meeting.

Of the WGs I chair, dkim didn't meet in Anaheim, and vwrap won't meet
in Maastricht.  And we're having an ftpext2 BOF in Maastricht that
might result in a WG that essentially has no plans to do face-to-face
meetings, and to get all of its work done on the mailing list.

Barry

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:59:39 -0400

--On Friday, June 25, 2010 09:09 -0400 Paul Kyzivat
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Cullen Jennings wrote:
> 
>> One of the thing that I think RAI is bad at is saying "no" to
>> work. It's a rare day when someone walks up to the microphone
>> when discussing new work and says "this all sounds fine but I
>> think there are much more important things and this will take
>> time away from them so we should not charter this new group".
>> I do worry the pendulum will swing too far the other
>> direction without some level of damping on the number of new
>> WG RAI is looking at creating. 
> 
> But a consequence of saying yes too much is now that we get
> more WGs and can't schedule enough time for them all at a
> meeting. So that may have a throttling effect in the future.
> 
> Are requests for new WGs rejected due to lack of meeting room
> space for them all to meet?

As a general policy, no.  Nor, in general, are requests for new
WGs rejected because an area is up to two ADs already and those
ADs simply do not have sufficient bandwidth to properly manage
more WGs and/or their output.   The community has noticed the
problem before (see, e.g.,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huston-ietf-pact/ and the
reactive
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-overload/ from
2002) but there has never been sufficient consensus to make the
IESG comfortable about pushing back on something that people
want to do, especially if requirements are clear, to reject WGs
on the basis of management bandwidth or meeting slot
availability.

   john

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:03:31 -0400

> meetings, and to get all of its work done on the mailing list.

Maybe that's so. But ISTM that people have an expectation that their WG 
can meet at each meeting, and then forgo that if circumstances dictate. 
(Such as inability of critical mass to attend a meeting.)

If we are moving into a situation where some groups are likely to be 
"bumped" due to "overbooking" then that should be made clear in advance, 
and fair policies for bumping should be established. (Perhaps some 
groups should get "priority status" and/or there should be an incentive 
for volunteering to be bumped - such as a free first class ticket on a 
future flight.)

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:08:55 -0400

Then I'll ask the flip side of that question:

Is the number of WGs taken into account when booking meetings, to ensure 
there are enough slots for the meetings those WGs require?

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:31:53 -0500

On 6/25/10 08:09, Jun 25, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>
>
> Cullen Jennings wrote:
>
>> One of the thing that I think RAI is bad at is saying "no" to work. 
>> It's a rare day when someone walks up to the microphone when 
>> discussing new work and says "this all sounds fine but I think there 
>> are much more important things and this will take time away from them 
>> so we should not charter this new group".  I do worry the pendulum 
>> will swing too far the other direction without some level of damping 
>> on the number of new WG RAI is looking at creating. 
>
> But a consequence of saying yes too much is now that we get more WGs 
> and can't schedule enough time for them all at a meeting. So that may 
> have a throttling effect in the future.

Except, as has been pointed out, RAI doesn't have an exceptionally high 
number of groups meeting this time.

/a

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:06:51 -0500

Spencer,

There were questions at Open Mike time at IETF-77 as I recall. In
particular, I recall  you being one of the folks at the microphone ;)
There was also discussion around the day pass (and impact on nomcom
eligibility).

Mary.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 11:48 PM, Spencer Dawkins
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cullen Jennings" <[email-masked]>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:14:38 -0400

--On Friday, June 25, 2010 10:08 -0400 Paul Kyzivat
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Is the number of WGs taken into account when booking meetings,
> to ensure there are enough slots for the meetings those WGs
> require?

Short answer:  No.

Longer answer: Remember that hotel / meeting location contracts
are negotiated long in advance.  If everything is going well,
"long" should be measured in years.  So knowing how many slots
WGs will need, or even which WGs will exist and be asking for
slots, might be beyond even the capabilities of the all-seeing
and all-knowing IAOC.

   john

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:22:50 -0400

> There was also discussion around the day pass (and impact on nomcom

One trouble with 1 plenary and the open mike is, do you have 1 open  
mike (at the end),
or two (say, one after the IAOC/IASA/Trust part, and one after the IAB).

Here is a hyptothetical, but very possible, case.

Suppose that the IAOC plans to present a report on the day pass, and the
IAB has arranged a very topical report on (say) legal requirements for  
Internet filtering being imposed by various
countries.

Both topics are likely to engender a line at the mike.

If there is 1 plenary, and let's say the IAOC goes first, then

- either there is an open mike after the IASA discussion, in which  
case it will have to be cut off if it runs long
(as the IAB presentation cannot be delayed indefinitely)

OR

- there is one open mike at the end, which will inevitably cut down on  
questions on the IASA presentation (which
report was 2 or even 3 hours before).

My sense is that separating the plenaries makes sense, and that this
is entirely separate from the amount of time that is
appropriate for each.

Regards
Marshall

>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cullen Jennings" <[email-masked] 
>> >
>>> removing the boring administrative detail from the plenary is the  
>>> path to
>>> tyranny...
>>

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:44:41 -0400

Yes and no.  We book a meeting venue well in advance of the meeting.  We
try to have a contract more than a year before the meeting.  In
selecting a venue, we look a trends and such, but we cannot know the
exact number of meeting slots that will be requested at the time we sign
a contract with a venue.

Russ

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:50:14 -0500

Hi, Mary,

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about this.

I was talking specifically about the Thursday plenaries ("plenaryt") in my 
note below. The IESG and IAOC usually get questions on Wednesday night, but 
I was remembering, and the minutes I referenced seem to confirm, we ask more 
open mike questions tend on Wednesday night, and fewer questions on 
Thursday.

Thanks,

Spencer

>>> to

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:27:24 -0600

> I think it would be beneficial to package 2-3 of small issues into one

I 100% agree with you that the right balance is needed. I've got an experiment to help see if we are close to the right balance. Why don't you pick two RAI WGs you think could be merged and we can go ask them if that would help or what the pro/s cons of making them one WG would be. I'm not really proposing we merge them, just that we go look at what we might have merged and use that to guide creation of future WGs. 

Which two would you propose?

---

From: Gonzalo Camarillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:57:30 +0300

Hi,

yes, now that we have some experience with the new process, there are
things that are working fine and things that need improvement (as
usual). Input on both is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Gonzalo

On 25/06/2010 6:54 AM, Cullen Jennings wrote:
> The RAI area used to have some WG with a huge number of drafts in it - for example sipping. It was often a gong show - drafts would get 10 to 13 minutes of agenda time which was not enough time to decide anything. And at the next several meetings the discussion would be the same. The RAI area ran a BOF on how to reorganize the area and get more productive about getting work done. There were a bunch of suggestions and a bunch of the parts that had consensus slowly got put into practice in the RAI. A big part of that was a recognition that doing a ton of things in parallel in catch all working groups like sipping was resulting in things getting stuck in an endless loop where the draft was briefly discussed in the WG meeting, no decisions where made, and not making much progress. The area wanted to move to having well focused WGs that could make real progress in a timely matter on topics that a bunch of people cared about - and stuff where only a few people wanted to talk abo
ut the same draft over and over and over again would hopefully get less priority.

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:29:49 -0500

Hi, Cullen,

I am remembering that part of the reason for mini-working groups (a term 
that everyone used, even though it didn't appear in the RAI change process 
document) was to throw more management talent at protocol work - so you 
didn't have three chairs trying to shepherd all of SIPPING, for example.

So, if I could suggest a small change to your experiment, could it be 
helpful to ask if there are two RAI working groups that could merge into a 
single meeting slot?

I'm thinking that if we can't find two working groups that can share the 
same slot, sharing the same chairs, mailing list, charter pages etc. will be 
even less likely to work - but if they can share the same slot, we would 
have an easier time scheduling slots...

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cullen Jennings" <[email-masked]>
To: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Paul Kyzivat (pkyzivat)" <[email-masked]>; "ext Spencer Dawkins" 
<[email-masked]>; "IETF WG Chairs" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2010 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: Single Issue WGs WAS:RE: one plenary (was Re: Very Full IETF 78 
Agenda)

> I think it would be beneficial to package 2-3 of small issues into one

I 100% agree with you that the right balance is needed. I've got an 
experiment to help see if we are close to the right balance. Why don't you 
pick two RAI WGs you think could be merged and we can go ask them if that 
would help or what the pro/s cons of making them one WG would be. I'm not 
really proposing we merge them, just that we go look at what we might have 
merged and use that to guide creation of future WGs.

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:59:39 -0400

> helpful to ask if there are two RAI working groups that could merge into a

Hm.  This makes me think of another way in which we have more schedule
conflicts than we might: the idea that there needs to be an AD in each
session, and that the "responsible AD" must be present.  For areas
where the ADs do that, that means that there are arbitrary conflicts
that might not otherwise exist -- if the xyzzy and plugh working
groups have nothing in common other than that they're managed by the
same AD, they automatically become a first-level conflict.  It also
means that it's never possible to have three working groups from the
same area meeting at the same time.

While I appreciate that the ADs want to follow what's happening in the
working groups, I suggest that...
1) if there's nothing controversial expected, and there's otherwise no
obvious specific need for an AD to be present in a particular working
group meeting, there's not really a reason to jam up the schedule just
for that purpose, and
2) that's why the ADs "hire" working group chairs; they should trust
the chairs to run the sessions and to report back and keep the ADs
posted on what's happening.

Even when there's enough meeting *time* to fit everything in, there's
often scheduling difficulty caused by which WGs happen to be pegged to
which AD, and we could ease those situations by re-thinking this.

Barry

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From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:12:43 -0700

That all sounds fine and there are plenty of examples of when various WG conflicts meant the responsible AD for the WG could not be there so I think the "running code" is AD don't feel they "must" be there and they do trust the chairs. But we are not even close to the 2 ADs being the problem for scheduling a WG. For the most the time slots, there is only one WG from a give area meeting so I really doubt that this is the problem. I'll point out that none of the conflicts on the current schedule look like something that could be resolved by double booking an AD. 

On the topic of could two RAI wg merge into a single meeting slot ...  Well for the WGs I am following the WG chairs would be rolling around on the ground laughing about the idea they could get the work done in 25 minutes or so I sort of doubt it. But hey, if any WG think they only need half a slot, now would be a great time to speak up. Even thought all the WGs I follow need a bunch of time I'm just sure some of the WG I don't participate in must be using up much more time than they need ;-) 

I will note that in the past a few times we took one of the slots and split it across two WG. The agenda just showed it as two WG meeting in the same room at the same time and we clarified what was going on on the WG mail lists. So we can put two WG in one slot if that is the motivation for suggesting some WG should be merged. 

> which AD, and we could ease those situations by re-thinking this.

Cullen Jennings
For corporate legal information go to:
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/index.html

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From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:58:52 -0700

In the preliminary agenda opsec has a 2 hour slot. it could probably do 
just fine with a 90 minute, or even hour at this point and if assigned 
I'll stick to it.

joel

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From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:17:09 -0700

On 2010-06-23 23:12, Lars Eggert wrote:
> separate plenary to have sufficient time for their technical topic.
> I've floated the idea to some IAB folks that instead of having that
> talk during a plenary, they might want to ask Aaron to hold an IRTF
> open meeting sometime during the week, like our other area open
> meetings, and have that topic be covered there...

Sadly, my attempt to get the IETF chair arrested for tresspass during 
the lengthy plenary in yokohama which substantially over-ran the 
contracted hours for the venue was subverted by the inherent 
graciousness of the the hotel staff many of whom missed their last train 
home as a result.

The looooooooooong plenary if it were to exist again really needs to be 
before dinner.

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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:02:16 -0400

Barry:

I know many situations where on AD has had another "cover" for them in a
WG session to handle exactly the situation that you describe.  While
every AD would rather have first hand knowledge, it is well understood
that the AD cannot cover everything themselves.

Russ