BoF's in the Age of Covids

[Michael Thomas <[e-mail]>]

It's been my impression that a substantial amount of the work for 
putting together BoF's, etc has been done loosely and informally usually 
in the setting of a meeting and drinking beers with others (aka bar 
BoF). Since we seem to be doing neither neither these days, from what I 
can tell this list is the closest to that in purpose. Yet since it's 
ietf-wide it includes lots of different areas and interests it's easy to 
see how the signal to noise ratio might get bad in a hurry. Often when 
you're poking around about a problem you really don't want to lay it out 
there when it's clearly not baked and makes no claims of the sort.

BoF's in particular are hard because you might know a few people who 
have been thinking about a problem, you have no good clue who else might 
be thinking about it as well, and who might be interested in it. With a 
bar BoF it is much easier to gauge interest given the number of people 
who show up, and the number of beers consumed.  I am not aware of any 
virtual analog to this, and I'm wondering whether this is going to 
become an issue if this pandemic drags on as is being contemplated.

There are almost certainly a host of other issues in a similar vein that 
I doubt has been a problem until suddenly it is.

Mike