At 15:51 -0400 7/30/07, Matt Pounsett wrote:
I was talking to a couple of people this week about what I consider to be a related issue: the fact that for the two or three wg meetings I'm interested in, there's little point in me being at the meeting for a whole week.
I can relate, I left Chicago on Tuesday.
What about holding two or three meetings smaller meetings a year for each area, and then just one big meeting for the full IETF? That would bring down the cost of the individual area meetings and therefore the admission fee, make them smaller and therefore capable of fitting into a wider range of hotels, and would likely result in fewer nights of hotel stay for a lot of people.
This idea has been tossed around before. The rationale for maintaining large meetings, all under "one roof" has been to maintain coherency across all of the areas. I was told that there have been times in some other standards bodies where one area will develop a standard that is completely incompatible with a standard developed by another area. ("I was told" meaning that I have forgotten all the particulars of the story by now.) While all we should need is the IESG to be present together, by the time you count up the areas and weeks in a year and the ability of the IESG to travel...we just keep up having our large conventions.
Take a look at this for an extreme counter example: http://www.itu.int/events/monthlyagenda.asp?lang=en -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Edward Lewis +1-571-434-5468 NeuStar Think glocally. Act confused. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf