Subject: searching for a swap to move Lisp from Friday

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:46:45 +0300

We have an issue with the Lisp working group. Previously we knew that 
we'll lose one of the chairs due to the Friday slot, which was 
unfortunate but we could live with it. Now it turns out that most of the 
active contributors are not going to be there on Friday. We've been 
searching for a solution and it turns out that many of the possible 
swaps have similar issues (e.g., chairs have booked tickets home before 
Friday).

First, let me repeat that agendas are SUBJECT TO CHANGE and scheduling 
is already EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. Significant contributors and chairs are 
expected to be able to live with any scheduling choice and change, 
including movements to Friday. I know that sometimes many of us have 
colliding events and other mandatory things that prevent us from being 
there. That's why we have two chairs, co-authors, etc. So please do not 
cause any extra difficulties booking your tickets so that you cannot 
adapt to any choice of the day. Particularly before final agenda is 
published. I know that in this case it has been published yesterday, but 
it was still marked as something where the ADs can make changes.

(Apologies for the rant.)

I do, however, want to solve this particular issue, as obviously the 
concern is to enable productive meetings for everyone. With this in 
mind, here are the possible solutions that I could identify:

o  Swap with AUTOCONF on Wednesday. But one of the chairs is gone on Friday.

o  Give one hour from DNSEXT (thanks Andrew!) on Wednesday. But that's 
just one hour, and Lisp needs more. Or can we do some discussions here 
and then more on Friday? Note that DNSEXT cannot move to Friday 
afternoon because again one of the chairs is gone on Friday afternoon.

o  Swap with MEXT on Monday. I don't know about the effect to 
contributors and chairs in MEXT. And this would be inconvenient for me, 
as I would really like to be in SOFTWIRE as well. Oh well I guess I 
could alternate between LISP and SOFTWIRE just as well as with MEXT and 
SOFTWIRE.

o  Swap with TRILL on Monday. Don't know about the effect to the 
contributors and chairs. Would be perfect for me, because I'm already 
quite conflicted on the original LISP slot on Friday, and this slot 
would be easier for me.

o  Swap with MULTIMOB on Tuesday. Effect?

o  Swap with MIF on Thursday. Effect?

o  Swap with MEXT or PCP on Thursday. Effect?

o  Ask the Lisp team change their flights. (I have already asked how 
difficult it would be.)

Thoughts? Can the chairs of TRILL, MEXT, MULTIMOB, MIF, and PCP say 
whether the move to Friday afternoon would be possible for them? The 
LISP meeting is currently scheduled 13-15 and is against MIP4, V6OPS, 
ATOCA, RTGWG, KRB-WG,

Jari

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:10:48 +0700

One more option: cancel it.

Hope this helps.

 ~gwz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Jari Arkko
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:47 AM
> To: Working Group Chairs; IESG; [email-masked]
> Subject: searching for a swap to move Lisp from Friday
>

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:59:05 -0700

Friday is a regularly scheduled IETF meeting day. The rest of us are
expected to attend the working groups that we have scheduled on friday.

joel

---

From: Pasi Sarolahti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:01:19 +0300

Just a random thought looking at the usual scheduling pains...

Maybe some groups could volunteer to take an initiative to meet only every other IETF, and fill the gaps with teleconferences and other means modern technology has to offer. Perhaps that would ease the scheduling pressure a bit. For reward, a volunteer group could get its slot in the next meeting before Friday :-)

- Pasi

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:09:40 -0700

On 10/18/10 12:01 AM, Pasi Sarolahti wrote:
> Maybe some groups could volunteer to take an initiative to meet only
> every other IETF, and fill the gaps with teleconferences and other
> means modern technology has to offer. Perhaps that would ease the
> scheduling pressure a bit. For reward, a volunteer group could get
> its slot in the next meeting before Friday :-)

plenty of groups don't meet at every IETF, and plenty also have interim
virtual meetings. We schedule working group meeting from monday at 0900
through Friday at 15:15  the operative word being through.

>> Friday is a regularly scheduled IETF meeting day. The rest of us
>> are expected to attend the working groups that we have scheduled on
>> friday.
>> 
>> joel
>> 
>>>> -----Original Message----- From: [email-masked]
>>>> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Jari Arkko 
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:47 AM To: Working Group
>>>> Chairs; IESG; [email-masked] Subject: searching for
>>>> a swap to move Lisp from Friday
>>>> 
>>>> We have an issue with the Lisp working group. Previously we
>>>> knew that we'll lose one of the chairs due to the Friday slot,
>>>> which was unfortunate but we could live with it. Now it turns
>>>> out that most of the active contributors are not going to be
>>>> there on Friday. We've been searching for a solution and it
>>>> turns out that many of the possible swaps have similar issues
>>>> (e.g., chairs have booked tickets home before Friday).
>>>> 
>>>> First, let me repeat that agendas are SUBJECT TO CHANGE and
>>>> scheduling is already EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. Significant
>>>> contributors and chairs are expected to be able to live with
>>>> any scheduling choice and change, including movements to
>>>> Friday. I know that sometimes many of us have colliding events
>>>> and other mandatory things that prevent us from being there.
>>>> That's why we have two chairs, co-authors, etc. So please do
>>>> not cause any extra difficulties booking your tickets so that
>>>> you cannot adapt to any choice of the day. Particularly before
>>>> final agenda is published. I know that in this case it has been
>>>> published yesterday, but it was still marked as something where
>>>> the ADs can make changes.
>>>> 
>>>> I do, however, want to solve this particular issue, as
>>>> obviously the concern is to enable productive meetings for
>>>> everyone. With this in mind, here are the possible solutions
>>>> that I could identify:
>>>> 
>>>> o  Give one hour from DNSEXT (thanks Andrew!) on Wednesday. But
>>>> that's just one hour, and Lisp needs more. Or can we do some
>>>> discussions here and then more on Friday? Note that DNSEXT
>>>> cannot move to Friday afternoon because again one of the chairs
>>>> is gone on Friday afternoon.
>>>> 
>>>> contributors and chairs in MEXT. And this would be inconvenient
>>>> for me, as I would really like to be in SOFTWIRE as well. Oh
>>>> well I guess I could alternate between LISP and SOFTWIRE just
>>>> as well as with MEXT and SOFTWIRE.
>>>> 
>>>> o  Swap with TRILL on Monday. Don't know about the effect to
>>>> the contributors and chairs. Would be perfect for me, because
>>>> I'm already quite conflicted on the original LISP slot on
>>>> Friday, and this slot would be easier for me.
>>>> 
>>>> o  Ask the Lisp team change their flights. (I have already
>>>> asked how difficult it would be.)
>>>> 
>>>> Thoughts? Can the chairs of TRILL, MEXT, MULTIMOB, MIF, and PCP
>>>> say whether the move to Friday afternoon would be possible for
>>>> them? The LISP meeting is currently scheduled 13-15 and is
>>>> against MIP4, V6OPS, ATOCA, RTGWG, KRB-WG,
>>>> 
>>>> Jari
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
>

---

From: Hui Deng <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:11:33 +0800

Swap MIF with LISP will have effect on V6OPS, since there are lots of
people who are working on BBF are interested in both.
 
It also may influence people who may book early departure flight.
 
-Hui
 
> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:46:45 +0300
> From: [email-masked]
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:24:44 -0400

Hi,

As Joel points out, Friday is a regularly scheduled IETF meeting day. 
The members of LISP and every other WG should have scheduled their
flights to be able to handle being scheduled on Fridays, even being
swapped onto Fridays late in the scheduling process.

As an IESG member, I would strongly oppose making "meeting before
Friday" some type of a reward.

David Harrington
Director, IETF Transport Area
[email-masked] (preferred for ietf)
[email-masked]
+1 603 828 1401 (cell)

> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Pasi Sarolahti
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 3:01 AM
> To: Joel Jaeggli
> Cc: 'Working Group Chairs'; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: searching for a swap to move Lisp from Friday
> 
> Maybe some groups could volunteer to take an initiative to 
> meet only every other IETF, and fill the gaps with 
> teleconferences and other means modern technology has to 
> offer. Perhaps that would ease the scheduling pressure a bit. 
> For reward, a volunteer group could get its slot in the next 
> meeting before Friday :-)
> 
> - Pasi
> 
> 
are
> obviously the
> >>> o  Swap with AUTOCONF on Wednesday. But one of the chairs 
> is gone on
> >>> Friday.
> >>>

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:20:03 -0400

My take on scheduling:
- currently, final schedule is released pretty near the meeting.
- buying cheaper flight tickets and also scheduling other trips 
before/after IETF means that you have to buy the tickets in advance of 
the final schedule, "blindly".
- there are good reasons that some of us can not necessarily attend the 
whole week.

Therefore, it would be useful if the final schedule is released at least 
2 weeks early.

Marc.

-- 
=========
IPv6 book: Migrating to IPv6, Wiley. http://www.ipv6book.ca
Stun/Turn server for VoIP NAT-FW traversal: http://numb.viagenie.ca
DTN news service: http://reeves.viagenie.ca
NAT64-DNS64 Opensource: http://ecdysis.viagenie.ca

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:42:54 +0700

> the final schedule, "blindly".

As Joel & others have pointed out, there's really nothing "blind" about it:
the meeting is Monday-Friday.  That seems clear to me.

> - there are good reasons that some of us can not necessarily attend the

While I'm sure it _is_ clear lasts all week, it may be inconvenient for
some; however is rearranging the entire schedule to pander to a few.  If you
have better things to do on Friday (or Monday, or Tuesday...) then by all
means do them but please don't expect the rest of us to declare an emergency
because of it.

...

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:51:49 -0400

+1

If the active contributors think their work is not important enough to
justify attending on a Friday, then maybe we should just cancel the
session (and if the work is that unimportant, maybe the WG should be
closed?)

Friday is part of IETF week. period.

dbh 

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Glen Zorn
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 1:11 AM
> To: 'Jari Arkko'; 'Working Group Chairs'; 'IESG'; 
> [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: searching for a swap to move Lisp from Friday
> 
> knew that
> scheduling
> > o  Swap with AUTOCONF on Wednesday. But one of the chairs is gone
on
> > Thoughts? Can the chairs of TRILL, MEXT, MULTIMOB, MIF, and PCP
say

---

From: Benoit Claise <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:50:14 +0200

I agree with Marc.

Regards, Benoit.
> - there are good reasons that some of us can not necessarily attend 
> the whole week.
>
> Therefore, it would be useful if the final schedule is released at 
> least 2 weeks early.
>
> Marc.
>

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:25:13 -0400

> the meeting is Monday-Friday.  That seems clear to me.

And yet we whinge all the time about participation levels in the IETF.

In a past life, I thought I was going to have a career as an academic.
Meetings much larger than the IETF (I'm thinking in particular of the
Canadian Learned Societies and the US Americal Philosophical
Association, of which I had personal knowledge), and at least as
complicated, managed to get their timetables sorted many more weeks in
advance than the IETF does.  I cannot believe that there is any reason
we can't do that.

If we can't, then we're going to have to live with the fact that some
people are going to make bets about when the meeting ends, and arrange
their travel accordingly.

Many potential participants simply cannot afford to give up two full
weekends plus the entire work week to the IETF.  If we are not willing
to bend to that reality, then I think we'll see the continuation of
the trend where participation comes increasingly from professional
standardizers.  One way to bend is to set a firm schedule more than a
month in advance, so that people can make their travel plans when air
fare is still affordable.  Late finalization of the schedule was
reasonable when the IETF was made up your 200 closest friends and
colleagues, almost all of them from the US.  Those days are gone, and
we have to get over it.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:39:20 +0300

Just for the record: before everyone jumps on the cancel-their-meeting 
bandwagon, I wanted to point out two things. Sometimes people do have 
real conflicts and issues either in their work or private life, and this 
is at least partially the case in this situation. Secondly, the IETF is 
in the business of enabling people to meet, not in the business of 
preventing people from meeting. So we are trying to find a solution that 
involves satisfying as many constraints as possible, including trying to 
find another slot for LISP. But of course, I don't want to do this at 
any cost (particularly if the other possible WGs would bear similar 
consequences to those that LISP is now suffering from).

I *do* want to emphasize that getting all constraints known well in 
advance is very important. This issue would have been a non-issue if we 
knew about it some weeks earlier. Now its almost an impossible request.

Jari

---

From: Roni Even <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:33:20 +0200

I agree with Andrew view about finalizing the agenda earlier but most of the
complains have to do with having a session on Friday. Friday should be like
any other meeting day and if this is not accepted maybe we should go back
and shorten the meeting. 
Roni Even

> Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 3:25 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:52:31 -0400

--On Monday, October 18, 2010 9:25 AM -0400 Andrew Sullivan
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> As Joel & others have pointed out, there's really nothing
>> "blind" about it: the meeting is Monday-Friday.  That seems
>> clear to me.
> 

> If we can't, then we're going to have to live with the fact
> that some people are going to make bets about when the meeting
> ends, and arrange their travel accordingly.
> 
> Many potential participants simply cannot afford to give up
> two full weekends plus the entire work week to the IETF.  If
> we are not willing to bend to that reality, then I think we'll
> see the continuation of the trend where participation comes
> increasingly from professional standardizers.  One way to bend
> is to set a firm schedule more than a month in advance, so
> that people can make their travel plans when air fare is still
> affordable.  Late finalization of the schedule was reasonable
> when the IETF was made up your 200 closest friends and
> colleagues, almost all of them from the US.  Those days are
> gone, and we have to get over it.

Andrew, while I agree, I draw a slightly different conclusion.
Not only was it "200 of your closest friends and colleagues",
but we were wrapping up the heavily-scheduled part of the
meeting early enough for most people to get home on Friday
(hence avoiding the two-weekends effect).

The IESG concluded that there was community consensus, first to
treat Friday morning as a time for full/normal meeting slots
and, a few years later, that there was consensus for meeting all
day Friday.  I think we are seeing people voting with their
feet, both to avoid having their meetings scheduled on Friday
(especially Friday afternoon) in the first place, then to resist
shifts to Friday, and sometimes to just leave anyway.  I don't
doubt the consensus determination, but the symptoms lead me to
suspect that the community's apparent decision may be wrong in
practice.

I believe that IETF growth, Parkinson's Law, and other factors
predict that, over time, we will always have be able to fill
whatever slots are available.  Squeezing things into five days
without people trying to leave early is a problem; squeezing
things into four days would be a problem too (and was).  I
believe that, either way, we are going to need to prioritize WGs
in terms of who gets to meet and for how long.   That is going
to be hard.  The IESG cannot do it without strong community
support.  I think the real "consensus" so far is that the
community doesn't support serious, painful, prioritization
strongly enough for the IESG to be able to make those decisions.

Part of that is one of the key differences between many of the
large and complex professional meeting and the IETF (I haven't
been to, or paid attention to, the Philosophical Society ones,
but have been involved in a lot of others).  Most of them deal
with complexity by organizing things around "sections" or
"tracks", with each subgroup knowing how many slots it will have
long before the actual schedule comes together.  For many
organizations, those section/track slots don't even vary from
one year to the next: the job of the section or track leadership
is to figure out what gets to go into them (and what loses out
and becomes, e.g., a "poster session" or a real ad hoc BoF or
equivalent (fwiw, I think we would help our scheduling
psychology if we stopped calling highly organized and scheduled
pre-WG or WG-forming meetings "BOFs")).

Our equivalent would be to allocate certain slots to each Area
before scheduling starts, probably doing so by making sure we
can have enough parallel sessions to let each Area have a
meeting during each time slot, and let the ADs sort things out.
As long as we continue to believe in cross-area review and
cross-fertilization, we can't do that even though it makes
things more complex.

While the late schedule changes aggravate the problem, I believe
that there are a lot of people in the community who, if we told
them months in advance that the WGs they were interested in met
Monday and Friday, with nothing in between, we'd still see a lot
of missed sessions, pleas to reschedule because some critical
person would be gone, etc.   We can decide that IETF meetings
last five full days but we cannot compel any individual to be
there that long.  And I think the practical message is clear:
however the consensus for five full days of meetings is
measured, there are a significant number of people, some of them
in leadership positions, who won't play.

If we could get back to four days of "normal" meetings, with
Fridays reserved for special circumstances (a second long slot
for WGs who need to work in meetings rather than on mailing
lists, various Research and other groups, all of whom could know
_their_ plans long in advance), then it would be lots easier and
more effective to tell folks that they needed to be around all 4
(or 4 1/2 if Sunday evening is counted) days.

But, until the community has, and expresses, the will to do
that, I think we all keep whining and needing to try to
accommodate those who simply will not go along with what they
and their families see as a nine-day meeting (five days of
sessions, both weekends of travel or pre- and post-meeting
activities).

     john

---

From: Tobias Gondrom <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:05:28 +0100

I support the notion of Friday as a regular day (with no excuses)
although I fully recognise that the majority seems to vote with their
feet otherwise (speaking as a chair who had the "fun" in Maastricht of a
Friday meeting :-( ).
Two thoughts we might want to consider:
1. (some people are probably gonna hate me for that comment....) at the
moment some seem to put low prio/low interest meetings on Fridays,
making Friday attendance even lower. If we want to make Friday an equal
day, maybe we should consider to really do that, putting some top-level
meetings on the day as well (e.g. area sessions, etc.) thus encouraging
people to stay? Or we follow John's notion of Friday for WG second
meeting slots, like the idea.
2. I also book my flights long time in advance (for cost reasons) - and
if all my meetings are from Monday to Friday I am absolutely fine with
it. But frequently, I end up with no meeting to attend on Friday or only
one in the early morning and could take a flight during the day. In that
case I can imagine it would be helpful for people to know this earlier
than we do with our allocation process today. So if we could work on the
agenda two weeks earlier than we do at the moment, that might be quite
beneficial for flight costs. (E.g. this time I booked my flight long in
advance for the whole week. By the time the agenda was finalised, flight
prices were already up a couple hundred, so that I saved money although
I could not optimise meeting duration costs (hotel), by taking one day
less if possible.)

Tobias

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:19:14 -0700

> meeting slots, like the idea.

RTGWG, V6OPS and LISP are scheduled for friday afternoon. I am
reasonably certain that v6ops will be fairly well attended.

> I could not optimise meeting duration costs (hotel), by taking one day

as noted if one makes travel plans based on the prelimanry agenda, which
you certainly good do, you may well end up being hosed. resolving the
conflict list is hard as you can tell since it's still ongoing.
ultimately meaking the scehdule available earlier means pushing dates
back which is going to make the whole process less flexible.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:21:44 +0300

John,

Thanks for your thoughtful note. I agree on many points, but I did want 
to respond on one small but important issue:

> meeting during each time slot, and let the ADs sort things out

I'm not sure that alone helps. On INT, for instance, with one exception 
we fulfill all slots in the agenda with 1, 2, or in several cases even 3 
working group meetings. My co-AD and I are almost never in the same room 
during the week, both of us miss several meetings due to having to be in 
two places at one time, and we still stretch the meeting from Monday to 
Friday.

If you want to change this, we're talking about smaller number of WGs, 
shorter slots for some of the groups (that might be a reasonable 
solution, IMO), more ADs, or less AD involvement. And our area keeps 
shedding groups to RTG and TSV on a regular basis, so its not like we 
are hoarding WGs :-)

Jari

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:48:06 +0300

An update. Here's my current analysis:

o  Swap with AUTOCONF on Wednesday. Damage: one chair lost, unknown 
number of participants.

o  Give one hour from DNSEXT (thanks Andrew!) on Wednesday. Damage: none 
(but not enough time for LISP).

o  Apparently there is a free slot Monday morning, put LISP there. 
Damage: me, Joel, maybe others would like to visit Softwire, and I'd 
need to be both in MEXT and LISP at the same time.

o  Swap with TRILL on Monday. Damage: lose both chairs (and it would be 
hard to reschedule due to family events and out-of-own-pocket tickets).

o  Swap with MULTIMOB on Tuesday. Damage: Terry can't make it.

o  Swap with MIF on Thursday. Damage: Joel can't make it. MIF would 
collide with V6OPS, with lots of joint participation.

o  Swap with MEXT on Thursday. Damage: ?

o  Swap with PCP on Thursday. Damage: Joel can't make it.

o  Ask the Cisco Lisp team change their flights. We will lose at least 
Joel and Dino, and Vince/Dmm/Darrel/Gregg would lose non-refundable 
tickets (in one case out of own pocket). I think there would be risk 
that some or all of the latter group would not show up. But I think it 
would be fairer to ask Cisco to pay more for a small number of tickets 
than for us to ask someone else, say AUTOCONF or TRILL chairs to buy new 
tickets.

o  Put the LISP meeting on a lunch slot on Wednesday or Thursday. Damage: ?

My conclusion is that its really hard to do any of the WG swaps. I would 
look at using part of the DNSEXT slot + a lunch slot, say, on Thursday. 
Or if that fails the Monday free slot. If none of those work, then we 
should ask the Lisp team to try to come anyway on Friday, despite losing 
several paid-for tickets, more inconvenient flights etc.

Comments?

Jari

---

From: "David A. Bryan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:53:40 -0400

This also doesn't 100% help because we have certain technology areas
scattered across IETF areas.

My primary area, for example, is Peer-to-Peer. We have what are very
clearly P2P groups in RAI (P2PSIP), Apps (DECADE and ALTO) and TSV
(LEDBAT and PPSP). I'm sure P2P as an interest isn't unique in this,
so the current "track" system won't really help in many cases...

David

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Jari Arkko <[email-masked]> wrote:
> John,
>
> Thanks for your thoughtful note. I agree on many points, but I did want to
> respond on one small but important issue:
>
> I'm not sure that alone helps. On INT, for instance, with one exception we
> fulfill all slots in the agenda with 1, 2, or in several cases even 3
> during the week, both of us miss several meetings due to having to be in two
> places at one time, and we still stretch the meeting from Monday to Friday.
>
> shorter slots for some of the groups (that might be a reasonable solution,
> IMO), more ADs, or less AD involvement. And our area keeps shedding groups
> to RTG and TSV on a regular basis, so its not like we are hoarding WGs :-)
>
> Jari
>
>

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:55:47 -0400

Hi,

FYI. I'm not sure how many people know this.
In general, each area gets a "track" during the week - one session per
time slot.
(INT gets roughly two because of the large number of WGs).
Then within their "track" the ADs schedule their WGs.
This is not formal or rigid.
Our main goal is to minimize conflicts for ADs and for people within
an area and across areas.
That means some sessions for each area are likely to end up on Friday.

Should we put especially important WGs on Friday?
Let's see. We can judge "importance" by expected attendance (I'll use
the ietf79 chair estimates).
In TSV area, behave (200) is one of our most important WGs.
It has been scheduled on Friday for two of the past three meetings.
tsvarea (150) was scheduled on Friday at ietf76.
v6ops (300) is one of the two most important sessions (matched only by
intarea).
Two of three sessions for v6ops are on Friday in Beijing.
v6ops has been on Friday for the past two meetings as well - that's
three in a row!
grow (100) is on Friday for ietf79
So we already do schedule important sessions on Fridays, just like any
other day.
I think your assumption that we mostly schedule low priority meetings
on Friday is wrong.

Maybe we should approach this differently, if we want to treat Friday
differently.
Maybe the WGs that have NOT had sessions on Fridays should be assigned
to Fridays first, to make sure allocation is fair across all WGs.
If you haven't had a Friday session, maybe you as a chair should
REQUEST it next meeting, to be fair.

Personally, I'd rather treat Friday like any other day, and just work
to minimize conflicts so the greatest number of people are able to
attend the greatest number of sessions they want to attend.

dbh

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Tobias Gondrom
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 1:05 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> Importance: Low
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:22:00 -0400

--On Monday, October 18, 2010 9:21 PM +0300 Jari Arkko
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'm not sure that alone helps. On INT, for instance, with one
> exception we fulfill all slots in the agenda with 1, 2, or in
> several cases even 3 working group meetings. My co-AD and I
> are almost never in the same room during the week, both of us
> miss several meetings due to having to be in two places at one
> time, and we still stretch the meeting from Monday to Friday.

Understood.  Sorry for not being a little more explicit.

> If you want to change this, we're talking about smaller number
> of WGs, shorter slots for some of the groups (that might be a
> reasonable solution, IMO), more ADs, or less AD involvement.
> And our area keeps shedding groups to RTG and TSV on a regular
> basis, so its not like we are hoarding WGs :-)

Independent of the shedding factor, that is exactly what I was
talking about.   My personal view is that we are at or above the
number of WGs we can effectively handle (more in some areas than
others, but that is probably temporary) and that our choices
will ultimately come down into expanding into a second week or
meetings or getting a lot more ruthless about priorities.  IMO,
while forcing some WGs (or more WGs) into shorter slots would
help for a while, in the long run, it just postpones the problem.

And, for at least some areas --and it sounds like yours is
getting close-- the choice will sooner or later be "three ADs"
or getting really ruthless about priorities as well.

A long time ago, there were a few I-Ds on the general subject
about how to get ruthless, with one theory from, IIR, Marshall
Rose, Dave Crocker and others and another one from me and some
others.  The problems haven't changed much other than scaling up
enough that we now need Fridays.  The community's apparent lack
of will to accept the pain of the solutions hasn't either.  Back
then, I believed that the IESG could just impose an appropriate
solution and move on.  I've gotten over that (maybe things have
changed, maybe I was just naive) and now believe strongly that
the community as a whole has to be willing to accept the pain.

    john

---

From: Ross Callon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:02:43 -0400

The simple reality is that the IETF doesn't fit anymore into four days -- even with Friday meetings it is quite difficult for the appropriate folks to schedule everything and to minimize (not eliminate) conflicts. (It would also be difficult for inappropriate folks to schedule everything, should they try). 

There have been some important meetings scheduled for Friday. There will be more. 

I think that at least the IETF leadership (IESG, IAB, WG Chairs) need to accept this and show up for Friday meetings, and remind their contributors to show up for Friday meetings. I understand that this stretches out meetings longer than anyone wants them to be stretched out, and blows out two weekends, but it does seem to be the least objectionable practical solution to the "not enough slots, too many conflicts" problem. 

I will admit that I have at least three times been stuck in some foreign country with nothing to do after 9am on Friday and flights that couldn't be rearranged to go home a day earlier -- although I have usually found something interesting to do. This is just the way it is. 

Ross 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Tobias Gondrom
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 1:05 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: scheduling
Importance: Low

Tobias

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:10:46 -0700

my issue/comment is not about friday or not. I understand the need to 
have friday as a normal ietf day.

my comment is about to get the final schedule earlier than currently so 
people can plan travel accordingly and get cheaper flight tickets.

Marc.

Le 10-10-18 15:02, Ross Callon a écrit :
>>>> As Joel&  others have pointed out, there's really nothing

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:44:01 -0700

On Oct 18, 2010, at 1:55 PM, David Harrington wrote:
> FYI. I'm not sure how many people know this. In general, each area gets a "track" during the week - one session per time slot. (INT gets roughly two because of the large number of WGs). Then within their "track" the ADs schedule their WGs. This is not formal or rigid. Our main goal is to minimize conflicts for ADs and for people within an area and across areas. That means some sessions for each area are likely to end up on Friday.
> 
> Should we put especially important WGs on Friday? Let's see. We can judge "importance" by expected attendance (I'll use the ietf79 chair estimates). In TSV area, behave (200) is one of our most important WGs. It has been scheduled on Friday for two of the past three meetings. tsvarea (150) was scheduled on Friday at ietf76. v6ops (300) is one of the two most important sessions (matched only by intarea). Two of three sessions for v6ops are on Friday in Beijing. v6ops has been on Friday for the past two meetings as well - that's three in a row! grow (100) is on Friday for ietf79 So we already do schedule important sessions on Fridays, just like any other day. I think your assumption that we mostly schedule low priority meetings on Friday is wrong.
> 
> Maybe we should approach this differently, if we want to treat Friday differently. Maybe the WGs that have NOT had sessions on Fridays should be assigned to Fridays first, to make sure allocation is fair across all WGs. If you haven't had a Friday session, maybe you as a chair should REQUEST it next meeting, to be fair.
> 
> Personally, I'd rather treat Friday like any other day, and just work to minimize conflicts so the greatest number of people are able to attend the greatest number of sessions they want to attend.

I find this discussion equally amusing each IETF meeting...

I book my flights in advance too. In this case, I was invited to speak to a government entity in Korea on the Monday the IETF starts, and chose not to (Gunter van de Velde is going in my place) because I didn't yet know the IETF agenda. As it turns out, the only formal meetings I have on Monday are the Ops Directorate and the technical plenary - I could easily have gone, and have filled in with eek-corporate things. But yes, since I *will* be there on the Sunday and I *will* be there on the Friday, I have found other meetings to add; I will be in various meetings from Hui Deng's meeting Friday before until I leave for Hong Kong on the Saturday after, and no I'm not going to go to the Great Wall, which I would recommend. As you note, v6ops has frequently had meetings on Fridays recently (3 of the past 3, 4 of the past 6, 5 of the past 9). I thought we were getting them because we wanted two two-hour meetings, to be honest. If we were getting them because Friday is a normal day, I'm cool with Friday being a normal day.

You mean, I could have been a wanker and gotten out of it?

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:37:06 -0400

> (or 4 1/2 if Sunday evening is counted) days.

One thing that might help is a better use of actual meeting time.  To
this end, I note that the WG chairs lunch this time is focussing on
effective WG meetings.  I'm delighted to see this, and even happier to
see that it's someone else who has volunteered to stand up and give
advice (since I'm not sure I have any useful).

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:25:12 +0700

> people can plan travel accordingly and get cheaper flight tickets.

OK, but that's where I lose you: if I _know_ that the IETF is meeting
Monday-Friday I can book my flight an arbitrary length of time in advance.  

...

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:28:14 -0600

> people can plan travel accordingly and get cheaper flight tickets.

Marc, that seems like a reasonable request. To accomplish that goal, I
think we'd need to decouple BoF scheduling from WG scheduling, because
already we've moved the BoF request date earlier and before long you'd
be requesting a BoF before the previous IETF meeting happened. :) One
possibility would be to have a special "BoF night" -- we would set that
time aside for BoFs but we would not need to schedule the specific
sessions until later in the process.

Peter

--
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:32:00 -0700

> Monday-Friday I can book my flight an arbitrary length of time in advance.

ok, but sometimes, one might have interest in only tuesday-wednesday, or 
monday and thursday or any combination of the above. and then might have 
some other reasons to go somewhere else (business or ...).

The whole point is some people do not have interest to be there the 
whole week and having an earlier final schedule will help them.

(and I'm not talking about the one-day pass).

Speaking for myself, 90% of the IETF I attended since 15 years now, I 
came 6 days, but sometimes I need to be somewhere else during the week 
or just before or after and earlier final schedule would help the travel 
planning.

As wg chair, I have contributors that are not full-week-ietfers and it 
would be great to have final schedule finalized earlier to help them to 
come to the meeting by proper planning.

Marc.

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:15:11 +0700

> sessions until later in the process.

Actually, moving both plenary sessions to Friday would give at least 16 more 2 hour slots during the M-Th period _and_ solve the problem of having technical work on Friday ;-).

---

From: Yaakov Stein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:34:38 +0200

> Monday-Friday I can book my flight an arbitrary length of time in advance.

You are assuming that everyone who comes to IETF meetings is interested in
the work of dozens of WGs.

That just isn't the case.  
There are many people who are very active in only one or two WGs,
and can not justify being out of the office for an entire week 
for 2 to 4 hours of meeting time.

Many of these people are document editors, and/or recognized experts in their fields,
and we don't want to lose their participation.

So, stabilizing the agenda as early as possible is a noble and important goal.

I attend large international conferences that publish detailed agendas 
(hour of presentation of each paper) a month of more ahead of time.
The cost is that the papers have to be accepted for inclusion 3+ months before the conference.

However, if we don't need that level of detail, and only the clash list is crucial,
it should be possible to have a final agenda 2 weeks ahead of time.

Y(J)S

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:48:17 -0700

> The cost is that the papers have to be accepted for inclusion 3+ months before the conference.

3+ months before  is the previous meeting.

there were 172 00 drafts announced in the last 24 hours so I think we
can categorically reject that as being not aligned with the our workflow.

> it should be possible to have a final agenda 2 weeks ahead of time.

two weeks out is the coming monday, so people who are hosed now because
of tickets already purchases are in no way benifited by that. or did you
mean two weeks ahead of the present e.g. the 4th.

---

From: Yaakov Stein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:56:44 +0200

> can categorically reject that as being not aligned with the our workflow.

Most drafts are submitted just before the deadline.
Moving the deadline will move the submission flood.

> mean two weeks ahead of the present e.g. the 4th.

I meant 2 weeks before the early-bird cutoff
(assuming that is when people finalize flight plans).

Y(J)S

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:06:45 -0700

> (assuming that is when people finalize flight plans).

I don't know about you but I registered long before I made flight plans
so I'm not sure the events are aligned, coming or not is a different
decision point than when to arrive or leave.

---

From: Benoit Claise <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:06:55 +0200

Glenn,
> Monday-Friday I can book my flight an arbitrary length of time in advance.
It's because you take the assumption that attendees want to attend many 
meetings.
People do come for 1, 2 or 3 meetings they participate in, and they fill 
in the rest with extra meetings, as lurkers.
Then the challenge is simple:
     1. early cheap flight with a bet on the agenda (for example, my 
meeting will not be on Monday morning, nor Friday)
     2. late expensive flight, once the agenda is posted.
This was my challenge for many years, when I was only involved in one or 
two WGs.
I've seen that again with the EMAN WG, i.e. "I want to attend the EMAN 
meeting and only that meeting, please let me know when when it's 
scheduled so that I can book my flight as soon as possible."
Conclusion: let's post the agenda in advance, and we will have less 
problems.
Note: I can't believe that the conflicts we face now were not present a 
few weeks back.

Regards, Benoit.

---

From: Yaakov Stein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:42:25 +0200

> The simple reality is that the IETF doesn't fit anymore into four days -- 
> even with Friday meetings it is quite difficult for the appropriate folks to schedule everything and to minimize (not eliminate) conflicts. > (It would also be difficult for inappropriate folks to schedule everything, should they try). 

> I think that at least the IETF leadership (IESG, IAB, WG Chairs) need to accept this and show up for Friday meetings, 
> and remind their contributors to show up for Friday meetings. 
> I understand that this stretches out meetings longer than anyone wants them to be stretched out, and blows out two weekends, 
> but it does seem to be the least objectionable practical solution to the "not enough slots, too many conflicts" problem. 

Ross 

I personally always have a flight coordination problem - if I have to stay on a Friday I am stuck until Sunday, 
and need to justify another 2 1/2 days of expenses (compared to leaving Thursday night) to my management,
and need to convince myself and my family that it is worth it.

But leaving that aside, I believe that we should acknowledge that the "Friday experiment" was proven to be a complete failure.
The two times that I attended Friday sessions they had less than 1/2 the attendance of "regular" sessions - 
meaning that the majority of IETF participants do not want them.
The fact that WG chairs and major participants specifically request that their meetings not
be scheduled on Fridays reinforces that proof.

I understand that there are a the large number of WGs, 
and that chairs do not want to miss holding a session in order to maintain momentum.
So the "obvious" choice was to mandate Friday sessions despite the failure of the very experiment 
whose purpose was to check the viability of these sessions.

However, could alternatives be reconsidered?

I see a lot of WG time going on "presenting" a new ID or an update.
This could be more efficiently done by placing slideware or even videos on the IETF site whenever ready
(and advertised on the appropriate lists), allowing interested parties to view at their leisure.

Then WG session time could be drastically reduced.
Joint sessions could be held for related WGs (forcing the chairs to optimally utilize time),
or even time scheduled for WGs in the "area" session.

A full WG session would only be devoted to attempting to resolve contentious issues
where face-to-face time is absolutely needed.

Y(J)S

---

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:04:25 +0200

> meaning that the majority of IETF participants do not want them.

when you measure attendance by headcount, don't forget that the last few
session(s) do not serve as "parking space" (no offense) for people
waiting for a later sessions who rather lurk than doing tourism or
going to side meetings.

> be scheduled on Fridays reinforces that proof.

Which could turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy.

The effect of a Friday afternoon meeting depends heavily on whether
one will fly out eastbound, westbound (or not at all) and thus depends on
both the location and the participants' destination.  Since all these vary,
pain can be distributed.  "+1" for earlier fixing the agenda, provided
we understand what the hidden cost for this are.

-Peter

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:38:08 +0700

> the work of dozens of WGs.

No, I'm assuming that attending the IETF is work.  A great deal of "work"
time is boring and/or useless, in any setting.

> for 2 to 4 hours of meeting time.

I've attended various flavors of SDO meetings for almost 20 years & I don't
recall any of those organizations modifying its schedule to fit mine.  On
numerous occasions I've spent a week of 12 hour days in terminally boring
meetings just to speak on a single subject (& sometimes been out of the room
when the subject came up, losing my chance).  The point is that if, in fact,
this is work then it needs to be treated as such: you come to work on Monday
morning & leave again on Friday night.  Maybe you're not in meetings all the
time but that doesn't mean that you're not working; if nothing else, you can
go back to your office (which in this case is most likely a lovely room in a
five-star hotel ;-) & process email instead of doing it during WG
sessions...

...

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:23:23 +0200

Hi Ross,

I agree with you, and I hope people will indulge me for a bit, but this
problem does come up nearly every meeting and I think the reason it does
is that (a) people hate Friday meetings and (b) we all think there
should be a way for us to solve for (a) but haven't yet done so.  And so
I wonder if perhaps some further analysis and experimentation is in order.

On 10/19/10 12:02 AM, Ross Callon wrote:
> The simple reality is that the IETF doesn't fit anymore into four days. 

Indeed, so, but I wonder if we have a good understanding as to whether
good work is actually getting done in the meetings that are allocated. 
How do we go about measuring that?

I want to commend in particular Hannes who chose not to hold a meeting
of OAUTH, knowing that the participants are doing Just Fine in email. 
We did the same in Calsify.

Another thought: I wonder if we actually have too many working groups. 
Here's a bit of a wild theory: by fragmenting things too small we are
actually not doing as good a job on managing time within the slots (I
don't know if this is true, by the way– I'm just pondering aloud). 
Here's an example: there is an allocation for a document that I've
written that I'm not in fact ready to present, and in actuality don't
think is ready for presentation.  And in fact, I'm not sure needs
presenting when it is ready!!  If we were to take several – say three –
closely related groups and combine them into fewer time slots (say 2/3),
what wouldn't get accomplished?  Such an approach would also more
efficiently address over/under, where one group finishes early and
another might need a bit more time.  It does require that people be more
dedicated to a track, tho.

I *think* this dovetails with what John is talking about about tracks. 
If we were to take the routing area track, for instance, and instead of
running

Two people who sort-of took a crack at formalizing what gets presented
are Tony Li and Lixia Zhang, after they got overwhelmed with slot
requests within the RRG.  I found their approach interesting.

Just some thoughts...

Eliot

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:51:47 -0400

ISTM that we should either:

- restrict the number of WGs. Once the limit is reached, require
   new potential WGs to pend until an old one disbands. The number
   would be limited by the number of meeting slots available.

- OR simply restrict the number of meeting slots to the point that
   not every WG can count on getting one every meeting. Then
   perhaps we need to classify WGs by how often they are entitled
   to a meeting slot. Perhaps some WGs would not be entitled to
   any meeting slots.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:06:06 -0400

> can categorically reject that as being not aligned with the our workflow.

That's a red herring anyway.  The meetings aren't scheduled on the
basis of actual submissions.  We get a final agenda before the -00
cutoff.

I don't believe there is a real reason why we can't give a firm and
final schedule of WG slots a month or two in advance of the meeting.
Sometimes that will mean inconvenient schedules, and people having 9
or 10 day trips.  But over all, I suspect that a more predictable
experience will lead to greater satisfaction and fewer attempts to
guess what will happen on Friday.

A

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:11:20 -0600

On 10/19/10 6:23 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

> what wouldn't get accomplished?

Hi Eliot, your example raises two questions in my mind:

1. What is the purpose of "an allocation"?

2. What are we trying to accomplish at WG sessions anyway?

We've all been at WG sessions that involved nothing more than folks
running through some slideware summarizing changes to an I-D since the
last IETF meeting (I've been guilty of that myself). That kind of
session is not very productive. Maybe we need to reserve meeting time
for focused problem-solving and document reviewing and issue closing.
You know, an actual working session.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:13:29 -0400

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 04:38:08PM +0700, Glen Zorn wrote:

> morning & leave again on Friday night.

This is a good example of a specialized-standardizer way of thinking
about the IETF.  It's true that if your job is standards and you go to
a lot of SDOs, then the current meeting planning makes sense.

But the idea has historically been that the IETF differs in this
respect, and that we want to attract or retain people whose main job
may well be something else.  For those people, the IETF is a side
obligation, and if something is going to get cut it will be IETF work.  

The idea that everyone really is participating all week is one of
those things that makes some regard us as the Internet Vendor Task
Force.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:26:31 +0200

Peter,

The classic term from perhaps another venue would be "mark-up".  And no,
a new committee isn't spun up for each document that is marked up.  One
point I would note, is that often times disagreements are best worked
out in in small groups of ad-hocs.  WG meetings, IMHO are rather
impersonal affairs these days.  Again, one might want to experiment with
having a room set aside simply for ad hoc discussion.  No advance
reservations.  If it's free, you can use it. The bar is only sometimes
conducive to this.  A white board would prove helpful.  This would bring
back a certain flavor that I think has been missing for a while, that
may yet be useful.

Eliot

---

From: Sandra Murphy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:28:04 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

> those things that makes some regard us as the Internet Vendor Task

I disagree with this statement.  I think that those who are participating 
in a short number of wg and do not have interest in a broader set of work 
are more likely to be interested in one feature - that is, more likely to 
be producing products in that one feature.  I would say that IVTF would 
apply more aptly to those with a narrow set of interests.

Note: this is not a definition, as there could be for example academics 
with a narrow set of interests.  And my statement is abount people, not 
organizations.

There are many people whose interest area intersects or spans multiple wg, 
even multiple areas.

--Sandy

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:33:46 -0700

> those things that makes some regard us as the Internet Vendor Task

Before you beat the stuffing out of that particular strawman, the people
with the friday scheduling conflict around lisp are vendors.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:47:11 -0400

> with the friday scheduling conflict around lisp are vendors.

Note that I wasn't arguing that this _is_ the IVTF.  It doesn't matter
who has this particular conflict, either.  The point is that we need
to be welcoming to the kind of people who for some reason or other can
only focus on some tiny part of what the IETF is about.  I don't even
care if they _are_ vendors, and the sort that ignores all sorts of
other things about the Internet environment in the pursuit of their
One Bad Idea Protocol (obip.  I volunteer to be WG chair if we set it
up).  If we're actually interested in interoperation, we need to get
those people to work inside the IETF, rather than outside (in much the
way Lyndon Johnson wanted Bobby Kennedy in the tent).  Setting things
up so that the only people who can realistically come to IETF meetings
are those committed to coming for a week, those willing to gamble
their ticket, and those with deep pockets to buy late-date airplane
tickets doesn't seem to me to be the way to offer the kind of
encouragement I think necessary.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:11:48 -0700

> meaning that the majority of IETF participants do not want them.

My experience with this is that there are fewer lurkers in Friday sessions, but that all the principals show up.   I don't think it's accurate to describe this as "failure."

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:27:49 -0400

You might want to make that point during the WG chair lunch on how to
hold an effective meeting.

dbh 

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Peter Saint-Andre
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 10:11 AM
> To: Eliot Lear
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> 
> > presenting when it is ready!!  If we were to take several - 
> say three -

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:17:36 -0700

I am not sure why I read all of this thread, but I did and have one comment.

I am amused that some people complain about having to be at IETF for the rest of the week when the working group(s) they are active in is not meeting.  One way to look at this is that it is a waste of their time.

The other way to look at it is that it is an opportunity to learn something new.  In these days of scarce jobs and layoffs, expanding ones knowledge to new areas is a good thing.  It will make you more valuable to your current employer and make it less likely you will be let go, it may make it easier to get a new job as you may now have skills that more potential employers are interested in, and it will keep your knowledge from becoming obsolete.  In the cases where you are getting paid to attend the IETF meeting (I suspect the case for the majority of attendees), you are getting paid to do this.

So look at this as an opportunity.   It might also have the side benefit of helping to create a better Internet.

Bob

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:53:10 -0400

--On Tuesday, October 19, 2010 08:11 -0600 Peter Saint-Andre
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> We've all been at WG sessions that involved nothing more than
> folks running through some slideware summarizing changes to an
> I-D since the last IETF meeting (I've been guilty of that
> myself). That kind of session is not very productive. Maybe we
> need to reserve meeting time for focused problem-solving and
> document reviewing and issue closing. You know, an actual
> working session.

Hear! Hear!.

i.e., +1

   john

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:07:39 +0200

>> document reviewing and issue closing. You know, an actual

And I doubt anyone on this list would disagree, and so the question is
whether the homework is done to sufficiently get the meetings to the
point where only real issues are discussed.  Issue trackers really
REALLY help this.  And again, I've been in both types of sessions- where
time was both effectively and ineffectively used.  Even in the SAME session.

Eliot

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:38:17 -0400

Make sure to speak up and explain the differences during the WG chairs
lunch on effective meetings

dbh 

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Eliot Lear
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 4:08 AM
> To: John C Klensin
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> 
> 
>

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:43:08 +0200

Dave,
> lunch on effective meetings

As I will not be in Beijing this time, perhaps others might raise this
issue.

Eliot

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:05:35 -0400

Hi Eliot,

You mentioned your experiences being in effective and ineffective
meetings (even parts of the same).
Can you discuss on this list what you considered to be some of the
critical differences in the chairing? that would help to stimulate
discussion amongst the chairs, hopefully motivate other chairs to
think about how they will run their sessions in Beijing, and think
about their experiences so they can talk about them in the WG chairs
lunch?

Here's one experience that I had as co-chair. The netmod WG used to
meet twice a week. We deliberately requested the second meeting be on
Friday. We used the first session for slideware - often directed at
the people who came to see what progress was being made, and to
identify the open issues. The second session was a working session,
where we worked on resolving the open issues. We warned people that
the Friday session would be a technical working session, and if they
hadn't read the drafts, don't bother showing up! The Friday session
drew the active contributors, was a very productive meeting, and drew
no complaints from the contributors about it being a Friday session.
In most cases, we could have skipped the first session since it really
was an unproductive use of time. I recommend Friday sessions for WGs
that really want to get work done.

dbh

> From: Eliot Lear [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 9:43 AM
> To: David Harrington
> Cc: 'John C Klensin'; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> 
> 
> Dave,

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:54:40 +0200

On 10/20/10 4:05 PM, David Harrington wrote:
> critical differences in the chairing?

Thanks Dave.  As I wrote earlier, I think that going through open issues
that require discussion has been very fruitful in the past.  This is
particularly true when consensus could not be gotten on the mailing
list.  DKIM did reasonably well at this.  Having a secretary helped ;-)
I would say some of the least productive time has been spent on either
"what's changed" presentations or initial "here's my draft"
presentations.  Forgive me if I don't name names on that one, but we've
all seen tons of that.  And sometimes you do have to have some sort of
level-set, but it needs to be brief and to the point.  Again, I thought
Tony and Lixia had come up with an innovative approach to gate
presentations for RRG.

Also, note that I wrote that often times WGs finish early.  This happens
all the time.  That time is lost.  I think we've all seen instances of
"suchandsuch-wg on Thursday is cancelled" on the messaging board, as
well.  That's something we should also wonder about.

Eliot

---

From: "Livingood, Jason" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:58:01 +0000

My experience mirrors David's (both as a co-chair and contributor in other
groups).  I found having "update" sessions where an overview of the latest
status of each active draft was the main subject, encouraged active
contributors to tune out a bit and encouraged "drive-by" attendance.

A change that resulted in better productivity was to have an editor go
over each critical question/problem and then have active and meaningful
f2f discussion. So maybe that is one tidbit to consider. I think this
forces attendees into meaningful technical debate, compared to passively
listening to updates, and that fosters more / deeper engagement in the WG
session.

Jason

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:49:39 -0400

--On Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:05:35 AM -0400 David Harrington 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> We warned people that
> hadn't read the drafts, don't bother showing up!

That used to be the norm.

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:20:31 -0700

> That used to be the norm.

I was here in 1997 I don't believe that the participants were
dramatically more prepared then than they are now. and I know that the
exhortations to have read all the drafts were just as vehement.

When I look at an agenda like ours:

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/agenda/v6ops.html

the mind boggles.

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:26:31 -0500

> that really want to get work done.

In your example, what damage would have been done if you skipped the _first_ meeting?

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:30:22 -0500

> You know, an actual working session.

+1. 

Maybe even more focus could be applied: Discussion of issues that are deadlocked on the mail list.

If a working group is making good progress on its mailing list, it doesn't need to meet.

If a working group has issues that are not being resolved because of a lack of energy on the list, then it doesn't need to meet (and should consider if the work item is still relevant).

If a working group is primarily in the "present substantially new ideas in 00 drafts" phase of its life cycle, it doesn't need to meet.

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:34:05 -0500

> So look at this as an opportunity.   It might also have the side benefit of helping to create a better Internet.

This sounds great in theory--but in my experience, if a work group meeting is really focused on closing issues, then a newcomer is going to learn very little in that meeting unless they do a lot of homework in advance. 

Thanks!

Ben.

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:48:12 -0500

+1

On restricting meeting slots: 

I think we need to raise the bar here. Make chairs justify their meeting requests, in terms on how the meeting will help get work group business done. Maybe reduce all time slots to 1 hour. If all the participants have done their homework, and we get rid of status presentations _completely_(1), then I suspect an hour would be plenty for a lot of groups.

---

From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:09:08 -0700

> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/agenda/v6ops.html

indeed.
maybe this is an irrelevant question but let me ask anyway: do you think even the authors of all these drafts have read, or would read, each others documents?

Lixia

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:52:37 -0400

Hi,

I think one needs to consider what we need to accomplish.
I think the old axiom "if you build a better mousetrap, people will
beat a path to your door" is simply not true, even though many
engineers like to think it is.
How many startups that have a wonderful technical idea fail because
they don't know how to sell and promote the product?

It doesn't help IETF if we produce standards that that do not meet
users' requirements.
It doesn't help IETF if we produce standards that nobody uses because
they don't know about them.
The first meeting was sort a marketing (oooooh it hurts to say the
word !!!!!) meeting.
Seriously, the first meeting provided a status report to the community
about progress toward a standard, and to a degree what benefits using
Netconf with YANG models would bring to their company.
We also discussed the open issues, and the issues were frequently open
because the consensus was too rough to make a design decision, because
different segments of the community had different user requirements. 
The status meeting allowed us to solicit input from the community
about which features were important.
And it allowed us to try to find the common ground between different
user communities.
These people were not going to help write the specs, but they had a
stake in the outcome.
and the IETF has a stake in those people being satisfied.

I think the first meeting was important. The discussion might have
been handled as one or more presentations and solicitation of
community feedback in an area open meeting, which is likely to attract
a larger reprsesentation of the user communities. But it certainly
easier to do as the first of two netmod-specific sessions.

I really cannot accurately predict alternate paths through history,
but I think there was real value in the first meeting, but the second
meeting is where we really got the chartered work done.

dbh

> From: Ben Campbell [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 2:27 PM
> To: David Harrington
> Cc: 'Eliot Lear'; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> 
>

---

From: Roni Even <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:28:46 +0200

Or maybe we can cancel the meetings and resolve all open issues in
conference calls.

Sorry I disagree, there should be a balance between resolving open issues
and creating awareness to new work because otherwise my first sentence
holds.
Roni Even

> Behalf Of Ben Campbell
> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 8:48 PM
> To: Paul Kyzivat
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: scheduling
> 
> 
> I think we need to raise the bar here. Make chairs justify their
> meeting requests, in terms on how the meeting will help get work group
> business done. Maybe reduce all time slots to 1 hour. If all the
> participants have done their homework, and we get rid of status
> presentations _completely_(1), then I suspect an hour would be plenty
> for a lot of groups.

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:41:07 -0400

> Or maybe we can cancel the meetings and resolve all open issues in

No, because then we wouldn't be able to meet at breaks or over meals, which is (IMO) the primary reason
people travel to meetings. 

> and creating awareness to new work because otherwise my first sentence

I agree. Whenever there are complicated, long duration issues (to be neutral, let's say the IETF budget),
there is some need for status updates.

Regards
Marshall

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:01:40 -0500

> there is some need for status updates.

Sure, status updates are important. But they primarily involve one-way one-to-many communication. Why does that need to be face to face? It seems like email, web pages, RSS, etc are better channels for that even if we weren't constrained on time for face to face meetings.

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:16:00 -0500

On Oct 21, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Ben Campbell wrote:

> Sure, status updates are important. But they primarily involve one- 
> way one-to-many communication. Why does that need to be face to  
> face? It seems like email, web pages, RSS, etc are better channels  
> for that even if we weren't constrained on time for face to face  
> meetings.

Pure status updates are probably not good uses of meeting time.

But I have found it beneficial to shove "the new guy" up in front of  
the room with some slides as a way of getting people in the room to  
know the new guy. As I recall, you benefited from that approach  
yourself.

For this sort of intro, I prefer slides of the "We think this might be  
a problem, and we here's what we want to do about it" variety. Yes,  
people with previously-solved problems get ridiculed (our job as a  
chair is to avoid that one),  and some people may bring in non- 
problems, but it's still a great way for new people with new problems  
to get plugged into the community a lot faster than they do just by  
list-posting. It also gives them something great to put on their trip  
report to the boss, and makes them feel like they're participating in  
the community like nothing else does.

--
Dean

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:56:46 -0700

> well.  That's something we should also wonder about.

Gee whiz. I'll take their time.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:00:48 -0700

> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/agenda/v6ops.html

I agree. The thing that makes it hopeful is that we generally have reasonably effective mike discussions, and in the past perhaps six months have done a reasonably effect job on the list. But even so, usually we are able to slot about 20 minutes per topic. This time around, we have 13 minutes per topic including inter-speaker-gaps. I have told the various contributors that they should think in terms of five minutes to outline the big question and five minutes of Q&A. I'd take a third and a fourth session if I thought there was a chance of getting them.

BTW, in this meeting I have also turned away at least three topics; either sent them to another working group or told the author that his ideas needed further work.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:07:25 -0700

> maybe this is an irrelevant question but let me ask anyway: do you think even the authors of all these drafts have read, or would read, each others documents?

Actually, I know for certain that a subset of them have read together and commented on each other's drafts. They were hoping to have a separate BOF to discuss their topic, which happens to be central to the v6ops charter. So in their case anyway, yes they have. What I would question whether they have read is the RFCs that have gone before, or the work of a number of NOGs and RIRs, each of which one or another of them claimed didn't exist at some point and in some cases claimed that the IETF had fallen short in answering questions that the IETF should not have been asked.

But yes, there is the question. The way I deal with that is to ask people that seem to be working on or to have worked previously on similar topics to review each other's drafts for the list. If I have a sense that group A and group B are working on the same thing, I suspect that process will at least get them talking. It doesn't always go my way, however; sometimes they find ways to differentiate their topics...