Do we spend too much time with overviews of drafts that really should have been read by all attendees beforehand? Maybe it would be good for the first session on Monday to be an "Area Overview" session where an overview of all the latest drafts can be "presented" to give people a broader view of what is going on? Actually I have often felt that the IESG plenary would be a good place for area directors to give status updates/overviews of the work going on in their areas.
On reading this I found myself wondering if the "real" IETF WG meetings - these consisting of actual discussions - should be Tuesday-Friday. Then Mondays could be used to conduct "presentation" or "introductory" or "catch up" sessions for each of the WGs. Attendees who hadn't read the documents and kept up with the mailing list, along with document authors and WG chairs, would be expected to attend on Mondays so that they could catch up on the material. Everyone else could show up on Tuesday and stay through Friday.
I'm also tempted to suggest that there be an extra charge for attendance on Mondays (other than for WG chairs and people presenting material), with the proceeds split between the secretariat and the people doing presentations.
I honestly think that "catch up" sessions could be quite valuable in several ways. They could help newcomers to a particular WG get up to speed, they could facilitate more cross-area review, they could make the real discussions more effective by minimizing time spent explaining things to those who weren't caught up.
Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf