On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:45 AM, Melinda Shore wrote: > Yoav Nir wrote: >> Who's "folks"? A lot of people come to an IETF meeting, and are >> only following one or two of the working groups. That does not mean >> that they sit in their hotel rooms for the rest of the meeting. >> Instead, they pick what looks like interesting meetings, and go >> there, with the hope of catching something interesting. > > That's a really good point, actually. I've also made a > point in the past of attending at least one session > completely unrelated to what I'm working on, in hopes of > learning something or getting new ideas or new associations > or something. But still, it seems to me that there are > two somewhat but not quite orthogonal questions here: 1) > whether or not the increasing formalization of the bar > BOF reflects an increased expectation of attendance in > order to participate/advance work in the IETF, and 2) what > a working group meeting is. I'll pass on answering #2, but as for #1, I think the bar BoF "institution" is mis-used as a working group of last resort. If I can't present my idea at a regular working group (because of time constraints or because it doesn't fit the charter of any current WG), and I can't present it at the area gathering (for lack of space), adding a "bar BoF" to the wiki seems to be the only way. In the end we don't get a lot of discussion - merely a presentation + Q&A session. And still the "right" people are often not there. So formalizing a bunch of presentations is a good thing, although I think it needs to be done differently. Formalizing a bunch of people throwing ideas around (the "true" bar BoF) is not a good thing. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf