--On Sunday, October 05, 2014 08:28 +0200 Eliot Lear
<lear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>...
> On 10/5/14, 3:18 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>> Eliot,
>>
>> On 4 Oct 2014, at 4:48 pm, Eliot Lear <lear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> Your own group benefited from cross area review, both from
>>> transport and security. Now it is true that area directors
>>> and one WG chair flew to your interim meetings. But normal
>>> people didn't.
>> I don't see how this is relevant; I'm not asking to avoid
>> cross-area review, or to eliminate meetings during the IETF
>> week. Both are valuable.
>...
> I didn't say you were asking to avoid cross-area review, but
> it is an artifact of holding in person interim WG meetings
> when you are not planning to meet at the next IETF meeting,
> which is precisely what you were advocating. And "normal"
> means people who have limited budget and time to travel all
> over the world. That includes people who are not so-called
> "standards professionals".
I note that we once had a (fairly firm) rule against interim
meetings close to an IETF one unless the WG also planned a
meaningful meeting at IETF because they effectively encouraged
people to attend the interims and skip the IETF one. We also,
IIR, had a general principle that, except under rare and unusual
circumstances, a WG that didn't meet at IETF meetings didn't get
to hold f2f interim ones either. The latter was justified by
the observation that the IETF wasn't really adding value to the
WG (and, btw, WG participants who didn't attend IETF meetings
didn't contribute anything to IETF finances) even though the WG
still consumed management, I-D, tracking, and other resources.
Such a WG could essentially become a separate body with a
fast-track IETF approval process, and (despite a few recent de
facto exceptions that I personally think violate at least the
spirit of the way IETF does things) the community has steadily
resisted fast track standardization procedures.
Somehow those restrictions and their advantages for wide
community review and participation seems to be slipping away
from us.
>> Two days is useful when you can focus everyone's attention
>> on the matter at hand; I'm not sure whether having such a
>> meeting during the circus that is the IETF week — when
>> people will inevitably want to duck out for a few hours to
>> attend other meetings — would be useful. The experiment to
>> seat people differently during the IETF week meetings is very
>> interesting, though.
>
> Then we have found the limits of our abilities as an
> organization.
I don't know that I would go quite that far. However, it is
clear to me that any WG that regularly needs multiple days of
meetings, or even more than about four or five hours or face
time within a week (or month), has shifted from "most of the
work is done on mailing lists" to either "most of the work is
done face to face" or what Marshall Rose might have described as
a meeting primarily focused on the fine lunches and dinners.
Independent of debates about whether "do work in meetings"
versus "do work f2f" is ultimately a better model, it is clear
that the latter tends to increase the cost burden for anyone
participating in more than one activity and to drive
participation/membership more toward those who can prioritize
standardization activities over other types of work and demands
on time.
>...
> I am not saying that your pace was wrong, but your last phrase
> is. There is nothing that requires someone to stay the entire
> week at an IETF meeting.
Except that, if one defers making air (and often hotel)
reservations until the IETF schedule is stable (or gets
unrestricted fares to avoid change fees), those costs increase
very significantly. Also, if IETF scheduling results in two WGs
of interest, or two meetings of the same WG, separated by
multiple days, the de facto effect is to require staying almost
all week.
> Registration actually pays for the services you use
> (rooms, staff, RFC Editor, etc).
And I continue to believe that remote participants (distinct
from mailing list-only) ones, should be assuming some small
fraction of those expenses, especially those not bound to the
physical meeting. I think that, as well as a more formal
registration procedure for remote participants, would be
important in principle even if it did not significantly change
the revenue picture.
> Given the number of interims
> you had, that was a LOT of air travel AND hotel. I'm not
> saying it was wrong, but it was expensive.
I'm not recommending this, but it would be interesting if
someone, someday, appealed the issuance of a two week IETF Last
Call on products of a WG that did a very large percentage of its
work in interim meetings. That would be on the grounds that the
work was not adequately exposed to the broader community to
justify a short Last Call and, consequently, that it work should
be treated more like an individual submission for Last Call
purposes.
john