John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > --On Sunday, October 23, 2011 07:05 -0700 "Murray S. Kucherawy" > <msk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> ... I also am very familiar with the fact that getting work done >> on lists can be a real challenge: People get sidetracked and can >> take days, weeks, or even months to answer something that's >> holding up a working group. But _why_ is that something "holding up a working group"? >> If you're sitting on a mailing list and someone asks you to >> provide a document review by some date and you say nothing, >> there's no indication of whether or not you even got the >> request. If you're sitting in a meeting room and someone asks >> you to provide a document review by some date, that person is >> likely to get an answer from you right away. But is that "right-away" answer necessarily useful? >> In short: Meetings don't stall, but lists do. I have seen many meeting stall. :^( Fortunately, they end. ;^) We're stuck with human nature here, and human nature tends to put things off until the "last minute". Meetings "work better" because they start and end at known times. > Murray, fwiw, your analysis doesn't require f2f meetings. If it > could be done, well-conducted virtual/remote meetings would work > as well because they, too involve fixed cutoffs, real-time > responses, and opportunity to confront those who may not be > responding, etc. I bring to your attention an existence proof: the IESG. For years they've been doing the vast bulk of entirely-too-much work over "telechats". They _have_ fixed cutoffs, real-time responses, and bi-weekly opportunities to confront those who may not be responding. Et cetera... IMHO, we shouldn't dwell on why face-to-face meetings work better: we should admit they really don't work well enough. I follow far too many (heck, one would be too many!) WGs where the only cutoff is the I-D submission deadline before IETF week. We're all seeing the ritual announcement in WG lists right now: "If you'd like to present something, tell us!" WG chairs put so much effort into trying to make IETF-week meetings work well that you really can't blame them for relaxing a bit after IETF week completes. But too often, the momentum is lost: WGCs have assigned responsibilities to folks who did show up; and they too are exhausted by the end of IETF week. Finally, they are roused by the I-D submission deadline for the next IETF week. :^( I follow other WGs where there are Interim Meetings. The result is much happier -- quite possibly _mostly_ because of the added cutoff. Admittedly, the face-to-face Interims work better than virtual Interims; but I'm not convinced that would still be the case if instead of one face-to-face we had three or more virtual Interims. There is a definite learning-curve working with conferencing software, but once you've climbed this it works well enough. And the additional cutoffs, IMHO, accomplish almost as much as the meetings themselves! ;^) My advice is to put more effort into formal scheduling of Interim meetings (probably mostly virtual Interims). Currently these are treated as exceptional events needing AD approval: while I agree AD-approval probably belongs there, I'd wish we could treat them as "normal" events. -- John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx> _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf