Re: Agenda experiment for IETF 103 in November in Bangkok

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

I don't see the same problem with things sliding into Thursday because I
expect to be in a meeting at 6pm on the Thursday or 8pm if there isn't the
social that evening.

It is quite important to continue the official meeting through Friday
however because if I am going to have discussions, I want them to be under
Note Well.


On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 2:59 PM, Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Thanks all for the feedback thus far. I have a few personal observations
> to share (not sure if the rest of the IESG would agree with these or not).
>
> It is indeed difficult to experiment with both the shortened week and more
> unstructured time at once without changing up the agenda too drastically.
> Personally I had been in favor of experimenting with just ending the
> meeting on Thursday evening, but the feeling in the IESG was that there
> would be certain groups of people who might take advantage of the ability
> to schedule ad hoc meetings on the Friday. This is easy enough to
> experiment with, so it will be interesting to see what happens (and also
> interesting to see if there is a slippery slope that extends into Thursday
> as Christer described). We also discussed future experiments with
> unstructured time mid-week and we’re working on agenda proposals of that
> sort, so I hope this can be viewed as the beginning of the experimentation,
> not the end.
>
> There are a few different vectors for enforcing “agenda discipline,” so to
> speak. This proposal focuses on the length of WG sessions and will involve
> some days running longer than they have in the past (to the point about
> “cramming” more sessions in). But certainly focusing on the number of WG
> sessions is also possible independently or together with reduction in
> session lengths. This has come up before and could be fodder for future
> experiments.
>
> Regarding the hackathon timing, one trend we’ve observed is that we have
> people who live near enough to the meeting site that they are able to join
> the hackathon precisely because it is on the weekend and does not interfere
> with work or school time. These folks tend to be new(er) to the IETF (and
> the hackathon) so this provides them with some valuable exposure and
> cross-pollination with the IETF crowd without requiring extensive travel
> and time away from day job. This isn’t a reason to never move it to
> different days but was one reason to keep it where it is while we
> experiment with other changes.
>
> Understanding how attendees feel about conflicts would indeed be useful,
> altough I suspect generic feedback (“I keep having to miss 5 WGs where I’m
> a contributor due to conflicts”) would be more helpful than specific
> feedback about particular WG clashes at a particular meeting, since there
> will always be some conflicts for some people as long as we have multiple
> WG meetings scheduled at once in the agenda. We can think about how to
> incorporate a question in the post-meeting survey.
>
> Thanks,
> Alissa
>
>
> On May 11, 2018, at 9:07 AM, IETF Chair <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> 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] or by speaking with IESG members at the meeting.
>
> Alissa Cooper
> on behalf of the IESG
>
>
>