Too many changes?

[Gary Scott Malkin <[e-mail]>]

> Any suggestions on what those minor changes might be?

Well one could go back through the poised archives (I assume it is
archived :-) and pull out a lot of them.  But I believe that the
only real problem is one of communication between the IAB and the
IETF.  There are two reasons for the communication failure: one is
the IAB's fault and one is the IETF's fault.

Under the current standards approval system, the IAB doesn't start
it's review until the IESG has made it's recommendation.  And the
IESG doesn't look at a draft until after the Last Call period.  I
think if a member of each group were assigned to review the draft
WHEN the Last Call was issued, there would be more time for feedback.
This also means that the IESG and IAB approvals would take less time
since at least one member each group was already familiar with the
draft.  As a side effect, this would reduce the overall workload
for each group since it would not be necessary for everyone to read
every document.  This doesn't mean that an assigned reviewer might
not feel the need for others in his group to read a potentially
controversial draft.  So by starting "high level" review sooner,
we can reduce the risk of a last minute surprise.

The IETF should also take it upon themselves to seek advice from
IAB members whenever they are doing something which might cause
a problem.  Granted that it's not always obvious that something
will be contentious, but it never hurts to ask.  The IAB always has
several members in each IETF and there's no reason not to approach
them.  As I've said before, the IETF can't expect the IAB to be
mind readers.

These two very minor changes would go a very long way towards
eliminating the worst class of problems we have experienced in
the last few years.  If you want another simple suggestion, we
could have a plenary session (one of the 9:00-9:30AM slots) at
each IETF wherein two IAB members would give 15 minute presentations
about themselves so as to make them more approachable (it's harder
to walk up to someone you don't know).  We'd pick a different pair
for each IETF.

What I'd like to suggest is that we adopt these changes, and give
them some time to work, before we make a lot of major changes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Malkin                         Humankind asks: "Why are we here?"
[phone]                      Earth responds: "PLASTIC, morons."