Re: [77attendees] Ad hoc meetings in real meeting rooms

[Richard Barnes <[e-mail]>]

Data point: I organized a Bar BoF at IETF 77, and checked with the
Secretariat, and they asked for AD approval to book a room in advance.



On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 6:48 PM, Fred Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Speaking for myself...
>
> I don't have a problem with them using a room - or a projector - that happens to be idle, nor do I object to having BOFs. I do suggest that they check with the Secretariat, which I have always found to be supportive and helpful in such things. What I found problematic was
> (a) the expectation of some (evidenced in this thread) that ADs-or-whatever would show up if they had a BOF
> (b) the sheer number of them this time, which made people choose between meals/sleep and attending BOFs
>
> I'm not actually sure you were the first to do such things. I for one have checked with the Secretariat and used rooms for BOfs since the early 1990's. As a working group chair, I have also taken key participants or design teams to a restaurant and bought them lunch or dinner to facilitate a discussion. I thought this was simply How It Is Done.
>
> On Mar 29, 2010, at 3:21 PM, Dean Willis wrote:
>
>>
>> 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
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