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What
if someone took the initiative to organize a new "newbie training" session on
Sunday in Philadelphia, entitled something like "getting your laptop ready for
the planned IPv4 outage experiment on Wednesday night" ?
Would
that reduce the potentially negative perspectives that newbies would take home
after the meeting?
Just a
thought ...
Regards,
Ed
Juskevicius
From: Dan York [mailto:dyork@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 12:54 PM To: iaoc@xxxxxxxx; iesg@xxxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Let's look at it from an IETF newbie's perspective... Re: IPv4 Outage Planned for IETF 71 Plenary Let me, though, add another perspective. What about all the
newbies? What are they going to do during this time?
At IETF 70, there was a question raised in one of the plenaries asking "How
many of you are here for the first time?" and a significant number of hands went
up. So let's look at this proposed IPv4 outage *during the plenary* from
their perspective. Now, these newcomers may or may not have been
subscribed to IETF mailing lists. They may or may not have attended the
Sunday "intro to IETF for newcomers" session. They may or may not in fact
be technical folks. They are probably still trying to figure out how all
this works and why these people are humming, etc.
So now we go into one of the plenary sessions and it is announced that "we
will now shut down IPv4 and use only IPv6". The newcomer notices
that:
1. A good percentage of the audience now dive into their laptops and become
engrossed in diagnosing how their system works with IPv6. Side conversations are
starting everywhere and occasional shouts of "Aha!" emerge from random
groups.
2. Another percentage gets up and leaves in search of cookies.
3. Some percentage who missed reading the emails are suddenly upset because
they lost their IPv4 connectivity.
4. Some percentage pops in their EVDO/EDGE/whatever cards and continues
along as they were before doing their work and completely ignoring the plenary
speakers.
5. Some percentage never showed up at the plenary because they went to join
Richard Shockey at a local steak house.
6. Non-technical users or others who did not subscribe to IETF mailing
lists are sitting there dumbfounded with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look
wondering what the heck is going on and if this has anything to do with the
hums.
7. NO ONE is paying attention to the speaker(s) in front of the room during
this part of the plenary.
Now maybe the newcomer is all excited about IPv6 and so plunges into the
technical troubleshooting. Maybe they go look for cookies or steak.
Maybe they sit there dumb-founded. Probably they are left wondering what
the point of this IETF "plenary" session really was.
I don't dispute that such an exercise could be an interesting experiment in
IPv6 connectivity (and one in which I would join), although in many cases I
think we can already know the outcome. I just question the wisdom of doing
it during the *plenary*. It would seem to me to be a great exercise to do
at some other point during the week when the people who care can attend and
identify issues, work through them, etc. Or we do as Ted suggested and
just run an entire event with only IPv6 wireless. (and count how many people are
using EVDO/EDGE cards!)
It goes back to a more fundamental question - what is the purpose of the
plenary? What information do we want to get across to attendees to the
session? (And if we *do* plan an IPv4 outage, what is going to be talked
about during the time of the outage?)
My 2 cents, (now worth less than when I lived in Canada) Dan--
Dan York, CISSP, Director of Emerging Communication
Technology
Bring your web applications to the phone.
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