On 12/02/2012 10:49 PM, Joel jaeggli wrote:
On 12/2/12 19:02 , Keith Moore wrote:\
I saw very little productive discussion happening in Atlanta in the vast
majority of working group meetings which I attended. True, there were
times when people queued up at the microphones. (though that's actually
a pretty inefficient way to have a discussion.)
I'm unclear on how we'd carry on a discussion without a floor management
discipline.
We used to do it fairly well in IETF, in the days before the rooms had
(or needed) microphones. We did it successfully in days when IETF
meetings were about as big as they are now.
Unfortunately, when the microphones were introduced, chairs started
insisting that people queue at the microphones in order to say
something, and this helped considerably to degrade discussion.
Shouting?
The discussions could indeed get lively. But participants generally
respected each other. On the rare occasions when they didn't, the
chairs could (and did) intervene.
If the case is that you're in a room with 200 people and you have people
listening remotely, then fundamentally more discipline is required then
if you have 20 people around a table.
Perhaps. But if the meeting rooms weren't such good places to sleep,
read email, randomly browse, play Solitare, whatever, perhaps they
wouldn't be so filled with mostly-inactive attendees.
Keith