Spencer,
While I agree with all of this, I'm a little concerned that we
may be missing something. As Adrian pointed out, the number of
report participants seems to be rising in both absolute numbers
and as a percentage of participants. That is generally a good
thing: it enables or strengthens participation of people who,
for one reason or another, are unable to attend f2f and the
diversity of IETF participants. We also need to recognize at
least one downside: I think that someone who signs up to
participate remotely because of one or two WGs is at least a
little less likely to wander into a WG out of curiosity and end
up getting interested and participating activity than if the
same person were wandering the halls of a f2f meeting with
nothing better to do. At least it used to work that way.
However, we should also keep in mind that the "three meetings a
year" originated at a time when remote participation didn't work
well and WG virtual interims were all but impossible. For most
purposes and WGs, it was f2f three times a year, the mailing
lists, or nothing. Today, as some of us think about cutting
costs and maybe increasing per-meeting attendance by cutting the
number to two a year or maybe even three in two years, efforts
to make meetings more effective and interesting are, almost
inherently, efforts to find better justification for f2f
meetings. Probably some of those efforts would survive, or
maybe even thrive on, a less frequent meeting schedule. Aaron's
HotRFC and PechaKucha activities are almost certainly good
examples. On the other hand, if we need to depend on f2f
tutorials, f2f activities for mentoring/guiding, plenaries to
give our leadership a clear sense of how the community feels,
meetings for f2f nomcom interviews, etc., maybe that is a
counterargument.
I just hope we can consider the downsides of making meetings
more interesting and desirable to attend at the same time we are
doing that and remember that those downsides include making the
IETF more homogeneous and less diverse and broad if f2f meeting
involvement is effectively a requirement for effective
participation (rather than, e.g., just commenting on work).
I'm also concerned that, at precisely the time remote
participation is rising, f2f meeting and WG interims may have us
sliding toward treating the rule about consensus on mailing
lists as something to which we need to play lip service but not
really take seriously.
Finding The Right Thing to Do may be a little more complicated
in this case than seems obvious.
john
--On Friday, 26 July, 2019 11:16 -0400 Spencer Dawkins at IETF
<spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As we talk about whether three face-to-face meetings per year
> is the magic number, I suggest that we keep a few things in
> mind, because the definition of "face-to-face meeting" isn't
> constant.
>
> I am very gratified to see the number of hackathon
> participants at each Hackathon, and the number of hackathon
> participants who stay for IETF meetings, even after the
> hackathon is completed. The hackathons are still fairly new -
> the first was in Dallas, at IETF 92, and they've grown over
> time. Those are easier to do, face-to-face.
>
> I am very gratified to see the number of side meetings
> announced at HotRFC and held during the week, especially when
> (as in Montreal this week) it was easy to schedule them during
> open time each day during the week. Those are easier to do,
> face-to-face.
>
> The IETF 105 Deep Dive on NICs wasn't as strongly cross-area
> as the IETF 104 Deep Dive on spherical routers, but it was
> still cross-area (as well as useful). I have already had
> conversations about possible topics for future IETFs. Those
> are easier to do, face-to-face.
>
> I have no insight as to why there were only two Sunday
> tutorials, but that's lower than usual (four Sunday tutorials
> is probably usual). Understanding whether that's a trend would
> be useful.
>
> For your working group(s) - the decision about how often to
> meet is almost entirely up to you. Working groups like QUIC
> have scheduled additional multi-day meetings including interop
> testing three times per year (although if the working group
> needs change, that pattern will change), while other groups
> routinely skip IETF face-to-face meetings, have virtual
> interims, and may schedule other ways of moving work forward
> as their needs dictate. TL;DR, if you think things should be
> different for your working group, you don't have to get the
> rest of the IETF to agree to change your behavior.
>
> But Do The RIght Thing(s), of course.
>
> Spencer
