On 4/18/20 11:04 AM, Andrew G. Malis wrote:
I think there's general agreement that at least some presentations are
useful (thanks, Carsten) while others are bad (thanks, Keith). But I
don't think we can agree that ALL presentations are useful or ALL
presentations are bad.
I think this misses the point, and is part of why I think the discussion
was framed unhelpfully. Quality of presentations is not the issue I'm
concerned about. The issue is whether the use of f2f meeting time to
do presentations is a wise use of that very expensive time. Clearly
there are differing opinions on that, but I can more than once recall
flying across an ocean and paying for a week's hotel room and the
conference fee, only to find out that one of the principal WG sessions
that I used to justify attending that meeting turned out to be almost a
complete waste of time -- not because the presentation was bad, but
because there was so little time available for actual discussion.
Discussion, not presentation, IMO, is the reason we have (had?) f2f IETF
meetings.
By contrast I don't have a problem with a few slides that are just used
to frame specific points for discussion, when those discussion points
are known in advance.
So? Let the WG chairs decide. If we require that presentations be made
available to the chairs well prior to the meeting, then they can
review them and see which would be useful to set the context for the
technical presentation, which others could just be made available for
offline reading, and they can set the meeting agenda appropriately.
I presume the WG chairs have already been deciding. But I certainly
agree with having the presentations* be made available for download (not
just to the chairs) prior to the meeting. Then, perhaps, if the chair
decides that it's worth using precious meeting time for that
presentation, the speaker can still benefit from early feedback to
improve the f2f presentation.
Keith
* IMO it's sufficient to prepare the slides in advance, ideally with
accompanying notes, and make those available for download. I am not
asking speakers to make video presentations available in advance.
