--On Sunday, 26 March, 2006 14:50 +0200 "Romascanu, Dan
\\(Dan\\)" <dromasca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I believe that I made this proposal in the past, in a plenary
> session a while ago, when numbers in the IETF particpation
> were the issue. Discussions hold then led to the edu track,
> which is however focused on IETF process and not on technical
> or tutorial content.
>
> I do not see why should not the IETF offer a full Sunday track
> of tutorials with technical content. Why should one go to a
> industry conference or trade show to hear what is going on in
> an IETF WG, when the principal contributors (WG chairs,
> editors) who usually give these talks are all attending the
> IETF meetings? Having a full Sunday track of tutorials would
> not only attract new people to come to the IETF and help them
> justify to their employers and to themselves the cost of the
> travel, but also improve the level of understanding of the
> technical material in the WGs, increasing the chances that new
> attendees would become active participants in a shorter time.
>
> We can even play with different fees structure (conference
> only, tutorial only, conference + tutorial) to help people
> optimize their costs.
>
> The extra money resulting from the tutorial fees and increased
> participation would lower sponsoring costs, and hopefully the
> meeting fees for the technical contributors.
Dan,
I see one major problem with this. I tried to raise it with the
EDU team before Dallas but, other than one set of offline
comments from an individual, have gotten no response.
Despite all of the noise in the IPR WG, the biggest risks to a
standards body involve claims that the review and approval
process have been captured or manipulated by particular
interests, causing the documents that are produced to reflect
those manipulations rather than open and balanced community
consensus.
A tutorial whose subject matter is how to get things done in the
IETF -- how we are structured, how we do business, the tools we
use, and even what one needs to know technically and
structurally to write an I-D or RFC -- are not problematic.
But, as soon as we start giving technical tutorials that related
to areas that are under standardization, there is a risk of
someone later claiming that the tutorial content was biased in
one way or another that impacted the standardization choices we
made. That would be extremely bad news... possibly of the
variety that could have the EDU team or the IESG neck-deep in
lawyers.
So, if there are to be technical tutorials, I suggest that you
start working on an organizational structure that would keep the
decisions about which sessions to hold and their content at
arms-length or further from anyone with decision-making
leadership in the IETF. Even then, there are risks. But a
decision made by an EDU team that operates under even general
IESG supervision, or with a lecturer who is involved in the
standards process and who is taking positions there (or is
associated with a company that is doing so), are really poor
ideas if we want to preserve both the fact and appearance of
fairness in the standards process.
john
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