Re: Further update on COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and IETF 107 Vancouver

[Christian Hopps <[e-mail]>]

> On Feb 27, 2020, at 12:08 PM, Fred Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Attending IETF interims, what I tend to observe is that there is a presentation but often not much discussion. The value of an IETF meeting is, in my view, in the discussion. As others have noted, that discussion is often in the hallway, over a meal, or in a bar, and a remote meeting makes all of that close to impossible.
> 
> So I don't view "let's become completely virtual" as a realistic or viable destination. It's a reasonable plan B when we need one, but it's very much "plan B".

I completely agree. Every time one of these "let's stop meeting in person" threads starts up I'm baffled. I think it might be that some folks don't reap as much benefit as I (and I believe many others) do from the "off-site" week long meetings, and that's fine, but I sure wish the topic would stop coming back up so frequently, as it seems to imply the face-to-face "off-site" meetings could somehow altogether be replaced by chat windows, and teleconferencing.

A big thing that traveling to one place does for me which would never happen with virtual meetings is it makes IETF the primary focus all-day, everyday, for an entire week, which it is not normally. This large block of time and isolation is important. Lots of interesting things arise, as well as lower priority stuff getting tidied up, when one is given that level of freedom to interact and think about things.

Thanks,
Chris.