[77attendees] Ad hoc meetings in real meeting rooms

[Dean Willis <[e-mail]>]

I'm one of the instigators of using idle meeting rooms and equipment  
for ad-hoc meetings of all sorts, including design-teams, informal non- 
wg-forming-BOFs, break-outs, and general bashing-together of heads by  
WG chairs when we just couldn't find a consensus in the main meeting.

We used to have these sorts of ad-hoc meetings hurriedly in the  
hallways, and with a very restricted information flow due to not  
having a projector or whiteboard handy.

Then one day I realized that the IETF was paying for meeting rooms  
that were sitting there idle because Nobody Needed Them Right Now. So  
I started using those rooms and resources to make the IETF Work  
Better, and it was a Good Thing. Eventually, the Secretariat started  
requiring AD approval before letting me get a room, wand I thought  
that was a Good Thing, because by then, other people had started doing  
the same thing and some sort of approval process helped reduce the  
chance that the meeting room would be either conflicted or wasted.

I don't recall ever inviting an AD or IAB member to one of these ad- 
hocs. They occasionally showed up, but it wasn't really their problem.  
The results of such a meeting, if useful, would eventually be brought  
to their attention through normal working group processes. As a chair,  
I used such meetings many, many times to break deadlocks in the WG,  
and I did it without having to have an AD there to beat the team with.

I really don't want to go back to meeting in the hallway while seeing  
those comfortable and expensive breakout rooms sit idle just because  
Some People were trying to bypass the formal BOF approval process.

So I suggest instead simply having a FCFS system for ad-hoc meeting  
space, whereby any WG chair can reserve a room that hasn't already  
been set aside for some higher-priority purpose. Perhaps we need  
guidelines that say "Area Directors Are Not Invited".  But don't waste  
the meeting space and the money that paid for it!

--
Dean