Hi Ted, On 4 Oct 2014, at 2:53 am, Ted Hardie <ted.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I wonder if we can't do something between "finalize down to the minute" and get blocks of time that aren't a week long. In apps, for example, do "web stuff" in one block and "email stuff" in another. Solidify that early and you will get some improvement. It won't help for cross-area concerns (HTTP and WEBRTC, for example), but it might help some. That would be nice, but I suspect it would make the task of setting up the agenda even more difficult for those that do it. >> * Freezing the day pass fee (and raising the “full week” fee proportionately) > > I don't follow this. Making the fee proportional, I agree with, but subsidizing the fee out of increased fees for those who do more (and potentially more cross-area work) isn't right. It might not do that now, but freezing it would lead you there eventually. People who do full-time standards can more easily justify paying a higher fee; for engineers it's already touch-and-go. >> * Allowing WGs to hold interim meetings without being required to meet at the adjacent IETF meetings > > So, this was forbidden to avoid regional cost shifting when the majority of participants were either U.S. or northern European; it was specifically to prevent folks from ditching a meeting in Asia and holding an interim instead, because it punished those coming from further. I think we still want to prevent that sort of exclusionary behavior, can you see other ways that do that? E.G. making the interims in the same region? Requiring interim meetings to be geographically distributed (and not just based upon existing participants' preferences) would do it, I think; this is what we've tried to do in HTTP (we've done one in A/P, 3 in North America and 3 in Europe; if we have another it'd be in A/P). > I note that you do not list "foster remote participation methods and tools" as a way around the lack of low-cost alternatives. I've heard you talk about it, but you might want to explain why a bit more here, since it is salient to where we invest. I have mixed feelings about remote participation. I think we can do a lot better on tools, but at the end of the day there's huge value to having people in the same room (and in the hallway, and going out to dinner). Often, it makes the difference as to whether an effort can be successful. So, I want to make it as easy as possible to get as many of the active participants in the same physical place at least a few times as is possible. Making them expend an entire week to do so doesn't help. Cheers, -- Mark Nottingham https://www.mnot.net/