RE: Agenda experiment for IETF 103 in November in Bangkok

[Linda Dunbar <[e-mail]>]

IMHO, no meeting on Friday doesn’t really facilitate more unstructured discussion as most people will book flight leaving on Friday if no meeting is scheduled on Friday.
It is much more effective to facilitate more unstructured discussion if less sessions are scheduled per day, longer break time, etc. such as morning sessions start later, say 10am (giving people time to have morning informal discussions), longer lunch break or session break in afternoon.

Linda Dunbar

From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of IETF Chair
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 8:08 AM
To: ietf <[e-mail]>
Subject: Agenda experiment for IETF 103 in November in Bangkok

The IESG will experiment with a new agenda structure at IETF 103. We will be running working group meetings Monday to Thursday, November 5-8, only. There will be no working group meetings on Friday, November 9. A variety of facilities will be available for ad hoc meetings on Friday, including some breakout rooms available until 13:30 and the Code Lounge until 15:00. Participants will be able to sign up to use ad hoc meeting space on Friday starting when we open up WG scheduling for IETF 103.

The motivations for this experiment are twofold. First, with the growth of the IETF Hackathon, the IETF meeting week is getting very long for a larger number of people. This is affecting even people who do not attend the Hackathon, because other pre-meeting events are now being scheduled prior to the Hackathon. Second, we would like to provide more unstructured time for IETF participants. Given that 20-25% of working groups typically request not to be scheduled on Friday already, we will be experimenting with more unstructured time on Friday.

While running this experiment we will still be able to accommodate our usual number of working group scheduling requests, in part by offering a larger number of shorter slots. There will be no 2.5-hour slots in the meeting session request tool; 2 hours will be the longest slot available for sign-up. WG chairs who want a slot that is longer than 2 hours will be encouraged to check the ‘Other’ box in the list of slot lengths in the meeting request tool and explain in the text box that they would like a longer slot. We will be able to combine slots on some days and in some meeting rooms to provide longer slots for WGs that need them. (This is basically just a reversal of the current default, where WG chairs already can indicate that they are willing to split their slot with another WG).

We will be collecting feedback about this experiment via the meeting survey. You will also be welcome to send feedback directly to [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]> or by speaking with IESG members at the meeting.

Alissa Cooper
on behalf of the IESG