Re: IETF Hackathon at IETF 92, March 21-22, Dallas, TX

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 25, 2015, at 12:37 PM, Melinda Shore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> That's nonsense, Ted.  Nobody's saying "You didn't approach *me*".

Actually, that is _exactly_ what was said.

> What we're saying is that there are questions about where the list
> of technologies came from

Come on, please lose the passive voice and own it.   _You_ have questions about where the list of technologies came from.   I can tell you where: the organizer(s) (I don't know if it's singular or plural, I wasn't involved) had a deadline, and they came up with some ideas, and they threw the spaghetti against the wall to see if it would stick.  Nobody has copious free time at IETF.   Everything is best-effort.   Getting things right is _always_ an iterative process.

> Might have made more sense to wait until
> summer, give the thing a better chance of success because of
> better planning.

Best is the enemy of good enough.   I would rather see people try to do things and not do them perfectly than that they not try.   Speaking as someone who's tried a number of initiatives at the IETF, it is actually hard to organize them and get people to come, and after a while you stop trying because it's a skinner box where you always get a shock when you push the button.

We are smart people at the IETF, and _any_ proposal will have some obvious omission that we will spot.   If the way we express our discovery of this potential optimization is to use accusatory language that suggests that something improper has been done, as is _amazingly frequently the case_, then there's another IETF cynic we've created out of a formerly willing volunteer.

As a hint here, the right thing to say if you think the agenda is to Cisco-intensive is "I'd like to see more 'foo' in the next Hackathon," or even better, "how can I help," not "this looks fishy."