On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 06:40:19PM -0700, manning bill wrote: > On 12August2014Tuesday, at 16:20, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 13/08/2014 10:45, manning bill wrote: > >> So - for a novel suggestion. Split the IETF areas into autonomous > >> entities that run their own meetings, in essence franchising the > >> IETF model. The IETF itself only meets bi-annually and only to The IETF meets *three* times a year. > >> coordinate areas. Size concerns dissipate, the number of > >> available venues goes up and related costs go down. > > > > Actually, that's an old suggestion. It certainly doesn't work for > > me: I regularly attend meetings in at least three Areas, and am > > happy to sit in on others to improve my general knowledge. > > why does it not work for you? are you being prevented from > participating in multiple areas? Many would be, yes. If the IETF were to have 6 or more meetings a year for different areas many attendees would not be able to attend as many meetings as might be relevant to them. Six weeks a year is a lot to be away from work! Even if you make each meeting shorter, it's still a problem. Besides that, we get a lot of benefit from having people from many areas talking to each other in hallway meetings, bar BoFs, and so on. If you split up the group then a lot of the network effects will be attenuated. > or do you want to kill the organization effectiveness because you want > to optimize your travel schedule? What's with the attitude? Ah, yes, I remember, this is ietf@xxxxxxxx :/ It's always possible that the IETF will indeed get too big. But look, we can always meet in Las Vegas; they have venues big enough. In the meantime, that's not the main problem. Nico --