Yes. Another option would be to lengthen all or most of the refreshment breaks. Bottom line and a suggestion: (1) Especially if the IESG has concluded that informal conversations have become more important relative to the value of WG sessions, BOFs, and two plenaries, it may be time for the IESG, with the support of the community to become much more aggressive about reviewing whether proposed WGs will actually serve the Internet and whether established ones are doing so. For a possible starting point, see the now-ancient draft-huston-ietf-pact and possibly draft-klensin-overload for discussions of related topics more than fifteen years ago. (2) Historically, the main justification for thrice-yearly and week-long IETF meetings has been to facilitate cross-area review and broad perspectives on technical work. While there are clearly exceptions, most informal discussions, other than unmonitored, un-minuted BoFs, are among those who already know and/or work with each other, so they don't contribute much to that diversity of technical perspectives. Given improvements in remote communications facilities, cut IETF meetings back to two a year, concentrate on cross-area activities and even technical plenaries that focus on the IETF's work, and require strong justification for WGs who are making progress to take up f2f meeting time. I note that (2) would significantly change the cost models, both for running the IETF and for attendees and would do so by reducing costs rather than raising rates. I don't imagine this suggestion will go any further than its predecessors did, but it is worth thinking about such options as worse ones, like this Friday plan, are explored. john --On Monday, May 14, 2018 10:39 +0100 Stewart Bryant <stewart.bryant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > I think this is a silly experiment. There may be a few who use > it to meet informally, but given the reluctance of so many to > stay to Friday even when there are formal meetings, I think > the IETF on Friday is likely to become even more of a ghost > town. > > If you want to create informal time, I suggest the IESG > simply declare some mid-week open slots, where nothing is > allowed to be scheduled. Ideally neither the first or the last > slots in the day. That way people will be in the building but > free to talk, just like they are for the Sunday reception, and > for most lunch, refreshment breaks and dinner breaks.
