Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Thanks to Keith for changing the Subject when changing the subject.
I know you've heard this all before, but it's been getting
increasingly difficult for us WG Chairs to get all the key
people working on a protocol to fly across the planet for
a 2 hour meeting. These are busy people who can't
afford to block out an entire week because they don't
know when or where the 2 hour meeting is going to be.
(This even applies to some WG Chairs ;-)
Andy, you've heard _this_ before, I'm sure: the reason we do IETF
weeks with many WGs in one place is to foster cross-fertilization,
and to strongly encourage people to become aware of work in
other WGs and other Areas that may impact their own topic.
There are very few cases of WGs that can safely work in isolation
from the rest of the IETF. We're all busy, but missing out on
what's happening elsewhere is a good recipe for getting unpleasant
late surprises when a draft finally gets a cross-area review.
If somebody comes to the IETF for a two hour meeting and wastes
the opportunity of another 30+ hours of learning about what other
WGs and BOFs are up to, that would indeed be a shame.
I understand that is a goal of IETF participation for some people.
IMO, the people who can help the most on development of a
particular protocol are not doing that.
The current solution is for progress-conscious WGs to hold interim
meetings, which seem to be discouraged, and certainly increase
travel cost for most to participate.
I do not envision a WG Interim IETF to be a regular IETF,
except people read email all day in 1 WG instead of 5.
Cross-area review is a reactive process. A cross-area interim
design meeting is a proactive process, that encourages better
design reuse, consistency, and robustness. I think some
joint-WG interims, intra-area planned project development
meetings, inter-area interims are important. The IESG
would need to prioritize the meeting slot usage as always.
It would be awesome if the key people to answer
an unexpected question that comes up in an interim just
happen to be in the building for a different interim.
We would get much more cross-area review in the design phase,
where it does the most good.
We could have every 3rd or 4th IETF be work-focused instead
of cross-review focused. We could try it once. Or we could
do nothing and just accept the slow pace of progress, and
the cost of WG interim meetings.
Brian
Andy
_______________________________________________
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf