RE: IETF 109 Preliminary Agenda

[Adrian Farrel <[e-mail]>]

This thread (re-)opens the question of the value of a full virtual meeting.

There is unquestionable (to me) value in the plenary session, and a few of
the agenda-slot meetings are widely attended.

But it seems that the main draw of an in-person meeting is the interactions
in the corridors and after people have spoken at agenda sessions. Also the
ad hoc gatherings to advance topics. 
It seems to me that most/all of this was missing at IETF-108 and is likely
to be missing at IETF-109.

So what is left between the packed one-week agenda and a sparse three-month
schedule of "interims".

Maybe the only benefit I can see is that rather than having to be out of bed
every week for a poorly-scheduled interim, I can be out of bed for a whole
week for the IETF week. I am not sure that is an advantage, especially when
weighed against agenda clashes (at IETF-108 I tried listening to multiple
audio streams at once, and it fried my poor brain).

So I'd like to see a renewed discussion of why we are doing this to
ourselves.

(And yes, this discussion should probably be in schmoo)

(And, oh yes, what about the funding model)

Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: WGChairs <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Michael Richardson
Sent: 19 October 2020 18:01
To: David Noveck <[e-mail]>
Cc: Working Group Chairs <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: IETF 109 Preliminary Agenda


David Noveck <[e-mail]> wrote:
    > It never occurred to me that there were people who would attend the
entire
    > 12Am-6Am meeting and had no expectation of people attending an
expanded
    > version of that.  It now appears that there are such people but I
expect
    > there will be very few.

Yes, there are many people who attend a meeting almost every single session,
and often have conflicts.

Some of them are Area Directors (IESG), and IAB.
But, many of them are just active members.

If your WG does not require or experience interactions with people outside
some specific working set, then I recommend not dealing with this time zone.
Hold a virtual interim meeting.  Hold a series of them.

The CELLAR WG, of which I'm co-chair, has met only once at an IETF meeting,
for instance.
It's a group of ~8 to ~12 people who are very github/ML focused, and who
mostly work on these documents outside of their day$job.

{typing this in an editor that is saving it's files over NFSv4, btw}

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks
[
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        |    IoT architect
[
]     [e-mail]  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails
[