[Recentattendees] Extended Friday afternoon schedule at IETF 118 Prague

[IETF Executive Director <[e-mail]>]

The demand for Working Group (WG) and Research Group (RG) sessions during IETF meetings continues to grow and now exceeds the available session capacity.  In response the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has decided that an additional 2-hour session will be added on the Friday afternoon of the IETF 118 Prague meeting, as an experiment. This will allow for 8 more WG/RG sessions, which should be sufficient to meet expected demand.

In making this decision, the IESG considered three other options and consulted with the IETF Administration LLC (IETF LLC):

1. Adding another track - rejected that as it would increase the number of session conflicts, which is already too high.  This was experimented with in IETF 111 and the feedback in the post-meeting survey was not favorable.    
   
2.  Adding a late evening session mid-week - rejected on advice from the IETF LLC that this would introduce too many practical problems for staffing and venue contracts.

3.  Starting earlier in the day - rejected as the morning time is important for ad-hoc conversations, side meetings and leadership sessions.  Again, this is supported by evidence from post-meeting surveys.

The IESG is still to decide on the exact timing and how to allocate a Friday afternoon session, as it expected that some WGs/RGs will specifically request not to meet in this session.


Please send any feedback or questions to the IESG at [e-mail]

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]