On 22 Sep 2020, at 8:17, Livingood, Jason wrote:
Maybe for WG sessions we should just let the WG chairs determine the timeframe that works best for the participants rather than imposing a time zone on a top-down basis? To use an extreme example, if all the participants are in UTC then why force them all to meet in UTC+10 for their session? Letting each WH choose their meeting times seems a potentially better way to go, though common sessions like the plenary could adhere to a common time zone. I'm sure conflict avoidance may be an issue but I'm sure this could be sorted during the draft schedule stage.
Asking the WG chairs to decide which WG members might be the most important is not a good way for the IETF to go. The fact that many of the authors and regular list contributors for the WG are in one region is irrelevant to the value of a meeting.
We should be optimizing for valuable mic-line-equivalent participation, not for non-sleepy presenters and non-sleepy mic line regulars. WG chairs are often surprised by who was valuable at the mic lines during a meeting. Asking them to try to predict that will likely lead to anti-optimization. Random inconvenient time zones still seems best.
--Paul Hoffman
