Re: Time to encourage interims instead of main meetings?

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> On Aug 19, 2015, at 12:09 PM, Andy Bierman <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 3:13 AM, Harald Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just observing that the other name for "virtual interim" is
> "teleconference".
> 
> We've had pushback in the past about depending on teleconferences for
> doing business - in particular people have cited the tendency of other
> standards orgs to use regular teleconferences for making decisions and
> thereby effectively shutting out everyone who can't be on the calls from
> participating; we've cited our extensive use of email as a feature of
> our process.
> 
> I do think that teleconferences have their place, as do face-to-face
> interims.
> Encouraging groups to meet at interims *instead* of IETF week? I am very
> hesitant to do that.

I think the key here is to make progress on long standing stuck items.

Take NTP/TICTOC they have been trying for over a year to publish a BCP
after there were large scale NTP/MONLIST related attacks.  Hasn’t
progressed, some people need a due-date while others do.

IETF work can happen via many means but as anyone who has bought/sold a house
knows, it’s one of the days when most tasks are completed because of
a deadline.

> Virtual interim meetings are fine but IMO they are not better than
> old-fashioned reviews posted to a WG mailing list and debated
> on the mailing list.
> 
> I attend lots of VI meetings.
> I have not yet attended one during my normal business hours.
> I have  not yet seen an "Asia-friendly" VI schedule.  Perhaps the schedule
> should shift by 8 or 12 hours every time and let some NA and EU participants
> call in at 3am.

This is a challenge that I face for some quantity of work schedules.  Using something
like a Doodle to get consensus may help.

> Almost always, the minutes from the VI either gloss over or misrepresent
> my comments made during the meeting.  If I sent them in email to
> the WG this could not happen.
> 
> Whatever the secret sauce of the IETF is (and no matter how tasty it is
> after all these years), the IETF meetings are part of it.

I don’t think anyone is disputing this.

> For somebody that just needs to follow just 1 or 2 WGs, because they are so busy in
> their day job with non-SDO activities, these meetings are not so important.
> The IETF WG slots only provide time for status and maybe 1 or 2 technical
> issues per meeting, so the IETF WG meeting slot is never going to
> be the same as a 2 day WG interim.

I think it’s all about deadline management.  As someone who is not working on another
task and writing this email, you can draw some conclusions about if my slides will be
ready for a meeting i have tomorrow, or if I will be doing them on the plane or
in the hotel late tonight :)

One size doesn’t fit all, but forward progress is the shared goal.

- Jared

> 
> 
> Andy
> 
> 
> 
> On 08/18/2015 10:27 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > I don't think we should encourage or discourage interims. I think we should
> > just make it clear that they are part of a WG's toolkit to use as appropriate.
> >
> > For a new topic with a lot of issues to discuss, a two-day f2f interim can
> > make as much progress as a year of "normal" IETF discussion. For an ongoing
> > topic, a two-hour virtual interim can be enormously useful, but cuts out
> > people in some time zones.
> >
> > I agree that nobody should fly to an IETF week for a two-hour meeting.
> > In my experience I fly there for about 50 hours of meetings; that's the
> > point.
> >
> >    Brian
> >





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