----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Braden" <braden@xxxxxxx> To: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Cc: <braden@xxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 6:16 PM Subject: Re: IETF65 hotel location > I don't understand why this discussion keeps going on and on, much > less why it started in the first place. > > Folks, surely we have more important issues of Internet technology to > talk about, rather than jaw-boning about a task that we have delegated > to a competant organization. That organization has in general done an > excellent job over the past many years, and I for one am confident they > will continue. They are sensitive to input, but they get the job > done. Site selection and contracting requires a difficult balancing > act to perform, between the ideal and the real. As far as I can see, > they do a much better job of than the IETF could possibly hope for. I > am thankful for their dedication and expertise. > > Let's stop spending our resources micro-managing the Secretariat, > and deal with the problems that we are supposed to be solving. > > Bob Braden > Bob (tongue only partly in cheek) I wonder if you have the same feelings about virus'; after all, no rational person would be fooled into doing what the spammers want and so sending virus' on their way - yet they do propagate. Trouble is, humans are not always rational, scientific, technological, engineering beings. They also have a dark side, one which repays study and the findings of which are collected in the sometimes under-rated discipline of psychology. Any experienced meeting chair will know that there are times when a meeting has a mind of its own and gets its teeth into some irrelevant topic. Such a chair will also know that it needs a very forceful personality to stop this; better usually to let the fire burn for a while, and then intervene to get things back on track, as the flames die down. But the chair will also know that this behaviour is a symptom, a displacement of some other issue that it is worth trying to identify and deal with. In face-to-face meetings, it is possible to look for physical clues in the people, to cast back over what happened just beforehand and maybe get some insight. On mailing lists, this is much more difficult but sometimes still possible. So while I see the frustration that you, Bert and others express, these times are for me a chance to reflect on what lies at the bottom of the behaviour and what I could do about it. No clues on this occasion but perhaps one day I will study the archives and see enough to produce an I-D on it. Tom Petch _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf