Re: PowerPoint considered harmful (was Re: Barely literate minutes)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Sunday, December 02, 2012 12:19 -0500 "Joel M. Halpern"
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> There is another unfortunate community habit that I have
> noticed.
> It is, I believe, a consequence o their being simply too much
> stuff to look at.

Of course, having too much stuff to look at is ultimately a
consequence of the inability of the Steering Group to prioritize
and structure work enough (even if it means saying "no" to
reasonable, but less-important, proposals) that the number of
things people (and they) have to look at bears a reasonable
relationship to available time and resources. 

That really fundamental problem is one that restrictions on
PowerPoint or presentations, or even ideas about how to
fast-track some work, are not going to fix.  In fairness to the
IESG, it is also impossible for them to fix unless the community
is willing to support their saying "no" or "insufficient
resources" to some proposals for WGs or for work within WGs.
But, as long as they simply accept almost all proposals that
"someone wants to work on" and that are not obviously
technically stupid, there is no chance of knowing whether the
community would support pushing back on lower-priority work.

> If you have a working group that is considering new ideas
> (looking to recharter), you are more likely to get folks to
> read the draft, either before or shortly after the meeting, if
> you get a presentation slot in the meeting.  In particular, if
> the presentation sounds interesting, he odds of readership go
> up.
>...

Yes, but see above.

best,
   john