On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 4:02 PM Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 25, 2019, at 3:56 PM, Kyle Rose <krose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:It really seems like we're trying to stuff too much into 5 days. (When you have 5 lbs of manure and a 4 lbs bag...) Were side meetings in the mornings, evenings, or during slots without important sessions not working? Are there groups that really are too busy to skip less important sessions in favor of collaborative side work? (E.g., there are WGs I *like* to attend, but when it conflicts with some work I *need* to do, I know where I'm going to be. These 3 weeks per year are precious, and with every session being recorded, anything I'm passively consuming gets watched later.) It's not like the entire IETF needs to collaborate in the same place at the same time, so I'm skeptical of the need for slots dedicated to unstructured work.The problem is that everyone has _different_ conflicts. Coming up with a time when everybody is available for any value of “everybody” greater than about three is quite difficult. So no, not the entire IETF, but that’s an extreme example of the actual problem.
How widespread of a problem is this? Most of the groups I'm involved in comprise folks who have the same conflicts I do, because we're all working in the same general areas. There are also 5 mornings and 4 or 5 evenings (if you count Sunday) available for cross-functional collaborative work that can't fit elsewhere. I suppose some attendees are enough in-demand that those are all spoken for, but if those folks are outliers, I'm not sure their needs should drive meeting policy. To figure this out, we really need some survey of the attendees to find out how *uniquely* helpful the unstructured time slots are to resolving conflicts for collaboration.
