Re: [Pesci-discuss] Face-to-face meetings

Dave,

I mostly agree in uninteresting ways, but

> The mantra that is likely to be used to response to my concerns is "no 
> decision is final until it is approved on the list" however this ignores 
> some important differences in earlier dynamics versus now:  It is one 
> thing to have an active mailing list that is doing the bulk of the work, 
> and then bring occasional, discrete issues back to the list for 
> post-meeting approval.  It is quite different to move the bulk of the work 
> to face-to-face meetings, essentially stripping the mailing list of 
> serious content, and then load the list with a large number of decisions 
> to "approve".  It is simply not reasonable to expect the latter to do more 
> than catch the most egregious problems.

I'm not saying that we are ignoring this mantra, but it seems to me that we 
are skating right along the edge of doing so.

I really liked the amount of work we got done at the recent SHIM6 interim, 
and to be fair, a lot of that work was making design choices between 
alternatives that had been previously discussed on the mailing list, but the 
mailing list summary (http://ops.ietf.org/lists/shim6/msg00952.html) was 
tagged "Design decisions made at the interim SHIM6 WG meeting". Let me add 
immediately that Geoff was a good WG chair and added, "These decisions are 
subject to confirmation by the WG. Your chairs invite you to review these 
decisions and we'd like to understand the level of WG consensus for these 
decisions by the end of next week (Friday 28th October)", but there's a 
spectrum that looks like this:

- all work happens on mailing list
- all work happens on mailing list, but is discussed in face-to-face 
meetings
- most work happens on mailing list, but is discussed in face-to-face 
meetings, and decisions happen on mailing list
- some work happens on mailing list, a lot of work happens in face-to-face 
meetings, and decisions are made in face-to-face meetings and reviewed on 
mailing list
- work happens in face-to-face meetings. and decisions are made in 
face-to-face meetings

and gravity is pulling us downward in that spectrum ...

Let me also note that Geoff is really working hard to get the base protocol 
specification drafted this year, and no one is saying that's the WRONG goal.

> At the least, we should be clear about the real purposes of IETF meetings, 
> and make sure they make sense.

How could anyone disagree? :-)

... but I note that both Dave and JohnK chatted me up fairly recently about 
keeping working engineers engaged in the IETF (if we are all standards 
weenies, we can do that anywhere), and moving downward in that spectrum 
makes it easier for standards weenies to participate, and harder for working 
engineers to participate.

Spencer 

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