--On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 17:03 -0500 Keith Moore
<moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/30/20 4:42 PM, Stewart Bryant wrote:
>
>> Exactly, there are many professions including that do strange
>> hours, and everybody accepts it as part of the job. That
>> is why I am finding this hard to understand, although I have
>> been lucky not to have had really strange hours at an IETF
>> yet.
And, whether through choice or luck, relatively few IETF
participants have those sorts of jobs. Some of us have (and had
long before COVID-19) frequent online meetings that require
being present and alert at unpleasant hours but, in terms of
effects on body clocks, an isolated meeting in the wee hours (or
even a couple of them a week) is far less problematic for most
people than big blocks of time at those hours for four or five
days in a row. As to "everyone accepts it", I'd recommend
looking at the literature about health effects of regular swing
shifts. There is, of course, wide variance in the human
population about how well people deal with those kinds of
schedules, but, statistically, not healthy.
There are also many professions (or at least jobs) that, for
example, require carrying 50kg boxes or sacks around all day.
For those jobs, everyone accepts that as part of the job, too,
but I suspect few of us have that in our job descriptions and
are used to it. The differences, whether with that, with swing
shifts, or with semi-permanent third shift jobs compared to what
most of us do and our hours, doesn't make those jobs less
honorable or important, but the comparisons just don't hold up.
Put differently, if we were used to those hours or work
conditions, then we would be used to them. But many, I assume
most, of us aren't.
> This is not a problem that we need to solve. We're
> perfectly capable of discussing things and making most
> decisions over email. We've done it before, and it worked
> a lot better than trying to sort things out in endless virtual
> interim teleconferences.
It seems to me that is getting close to the core of the issue
here. According to my vague recollections, once upon a time an
IETF meeting was only four days long. There were two plenaries
and a Monday morning "introduction to the week" session (which
might have been combined with one of the plenaries -- as I said,
my memory is vague). Those sessions were intended to help
people get an overall sense of what was going on and included
reports from each Area about what was going on, both generally
in that Area's work and during the meeting. There were fewer
WGs and a much smaller IESG (the cause and effect relationship
there would also be interesting to speculate about). Just about
zero time was spent on reports from the RFC Editor, the IETF
Administration LLC, the IETF Trust, the IRTF, the Nomcom, and,
with one notable exception, the ability to get selected
waterfowl in a row and moving in unison. By both plan and
necessity, most issues were discussed and resolved by email
which was treated as an asynchronous medium. WG meeting were
important to check status, evaluate progress, and try to ensure
that no important issues had been overlooked and sometimes to
try to better understand topics on which people seemed to be
talking past each other and not communicating, e.g., often more
to identify and agree about the actual areas of disagreement
rather than trying to agree (which was left to the mailing
list(s)).
Now, things have changed and it is not clear either how well
that model (and some of the things that went with it) would work
in 2021. However, before dismissing it as outdated mythology,
it is probably desirable to ask whether we are actually
producing more high-quality work that better defines the
Internet and makes it better today than we were then... and
whether we are doing that more or less rapidly and efficiently.
Best wishes for a 2021 in which these issues resolve themselves
with a minimum of time taken away from technical work.
john
