Hi, Mark, > People's responses to the plenary session -- which they also perceive as a waste of time -- suggest that your > view isn't widely shared. No one is requiring anyone to sit in the plenary room, and yet lots of people do. Anyone who thinks it's a waste of time is welcome to skip it and spend the time in other ways. That people choose to attend shows that they think it's worth sitting there, even though they might choose to schedule the meeting differently if it were entirely up to them. > Perhaps it would be more fruitful to address the underlying problem -- that we have to pursue our work in parallel, > because the organisation is significantly overcommitted. You feel that the GENAREA work is important enough to > guarantee it doesn't have conflicts, but others are likely to feel differently -- both in the importance of the GENAREA > work and in the importance of their own interests. Clearly, we will never get everyone to agree on how the time should be allocated, and we will never please everyone completely with the scheduling decisions. Given that, a point that Brian has made is that we usually have less than a minimal time-slot of GENAREA material, so putting that material into a plenary session -- whether it be ALLDISPATCH or the Wednesday plenary session -- makes sense, as it gives everyone a chance to be part of the discussion. If I have to choose between GENAREA / GENDISPATCH and a working group session that I'm expected to be in or that I expect myself to take part in, that's suboptimal. If I am already planning to attend a plenary session of some sort, where 30 minutes is dedicated to discussion a process issue that we hope we can get plenary input on, then I, at least, think (1) it's worth my time and (2) I'm glad that you (Mark) and others are there so that we can also see what you think about it... because we value your input on those matters. Barry
