Hi, Lloyd,
On May 27, 2017 09:06, "Lloyd Wood" <lloyd.wood@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's interesting watching the ongoing ossification of the
IETF and its workflow process.
RFCs were originally actual requests for comments.
(What was the first internet-draft requesting comments?)
Workgroups begat BOFs to possibly lead to workgroups.
BOFs became formalised to beget Bar BOFs once the BOF
process was formalised.
I was half-expecting bar seating reservations and waitlists,
with applications for bar discussions to be accepted by
a new ad-hoc committee, leading to Bar Queue Grouping
Formaulation discussions for Bar BOF applications...
And now we have side meetings? Bar, humbug.
If by "now", you mean "since 2012", yes.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6771/ (first draft in 2010) was written in response to a series of barless bar bofs. One of the side effects of having them called "bar bofs" was that they were easily confused with actual BoFs, especially when they were held in the same meeting rooms as actual BoFs, and looked indistingushable from actual BoFs. So, the half-decade-ago guidance was to call them something else, hence "side meetings".
I can't speak to why other IESG members thought this was a reasonable experiment, but the reason I supported this experiment was to give the community more tools to have the kind of organizational side meetings I hope BoF proponents have - with Occam's Razor being whether the desired outcome is
- the proponents agree on what to ask the community for (so, side meeting), or
- the community agrees that a working group should be chartered (so, BoF).
And it's always appropriate to point out that if this all sounds like organizational claptrap, there is no requirement to have a side meeting before requesting a BoF, AND there's no requirement to have a BoF before requesting approval for a working group charter, so you can safely ignore ALL of it ;-)
Please, enjoy your day.
Spencer, speaking as only 1/15th of the currently serving ADs, but one who has chartered working groups without a BoF ...
Lloyd Wood lloyd.wood@xxxxxxxxxxx http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________
From: Suresh Krishnan <suresh.krishnan@xxxxxxxxx>
To: IETF Discussion <ietf@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: IESG <iesg@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, 27 May 2017, 6:25
Subject: Side meetings experiment at IETF 99
Hi all,
The IESG has discussed how to improve the path for potential new topics to be discussed transparently in the IETF community. For some cross-area topics, it is quite useful to have active conversation among a group of people to work on defining the potential work and how it interacts with existing efforts. As the IETF week is quite busy, it can be a challenge to arrange these side-meetings to avoid conflicts. To facilitate the scheduling of these conversational side-meetings, the IESG has decided to provide a meeting room at IETF 99 in Prague for around 30 people, with a U-shaped table, that will be available for first-come first-served (FCFS) signup online as soon as the final IETF meeting agenda is published. This experiment will be conducted for IETF 99 in Prague and will replace AD approval for rooms for side-meetings for potential new topics. Proponents of potential new topics are reminded that the BoF deadline is June 2; this includes non-WG forming BoFs. The on-site signup FCFS room (seats about 16) will continue to be available at IETF 99.
Thanks
Suresh
(on behalf of the IESG)