I think John has the issue nailed. I think it would be easy to try to eliminate the plenaries and then end up with a full Friday, anyway. I would offer that it would be very difficult, however, to take a compressed Friday and later add an afternoon to it. Thus, I am much more in favor of a compressed Friday, perhaps with some of the mentioned tweaks (a cookie break or a graham cracker and milk break for those who know the Montessori routine), than either leaving Friday as is or eliminating the Plenaries. BTW, has anyone noticed the trend of doing more and more on the Sunday and Saturday *before* IETF week? On Aug 1, 2011, at 10:32 PM, John C Klensin wrote: > > > --On Monday, August 01, 2011 19:02 -0400 Margaret Wasserman > <mrw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> ... >> If we don't want to hold meetings on Friday afternoons due to >> conflicts, I'd much rather see us eliminate one of the >> plenaries and hold meetings during that time slot. > > Margaret, > > FWIW, I personally think the plenaries have enough value, if > only as potential checks on the leadership, that I'd hate to see > one or both go. I even think their substantive content is > occasionally helpful. > > However, my main purpose in responding to the above is to advise > that you Be careful what you wish for. I suggest that, until > we start pushing back aggressively on requests for meeting slots > (or, if necessary, on new WG requests), the number of slots that > are asked for will always expand to fill (or nearly fill) the > number of slots available. The IESG has concluded that it is ok > to have three meeting slots on Fridays. If we eliminate a > plenary to open up one or two more slots and use those slots to > stop using the Friday afternoon ones, I suggest that it will be > only a matter of time before we have enough demand for slots > that we expand back into the Friday afternoon times, retaining > the slots that eliminate the plenary. > > If we really want to eliminate the Friday afternoon slots, then > we should eliminate those slots, ratcheting up the criteria for > getting meeting time to the point that we don't need them. > Whether or not we need two plenaries (or one or zero or three) > is almost independent of thet, even though we could get some > short-term relief. Given the amount of burnout I often see by > Friday, simply dropping the afternoon sessions is my personal > favored solution. > > If we want to keep the Friday afternoon slots, or keep the > number of slots that Friday afternoon gives us, then compressing > the day make sense to me. Doing that compression according to > the suggestion has disadvantages --both those you cite and > others. But maybe modifying the proposal to include a short > beverage and cookie break around 11:30 would make sense. Maybe > there are other ideas too. But I think the trends are very > clear and that, in the long run, eliminating a plenary would > "buy" an extra slot or two (and another very long and exhausting > day) but would not improve the Friday situation. > > john > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf