Re: Proposed Experiment for IETF 112: Moving the Plenary

-1.

That's adding significant pain, as some will have to adjust their schedules for the plenary, adjust back to 'normal', and then re-adjust for the meeting week.

I'd much rather see the IESG focus on establishing a meaningful threshold for WGs when they request scarce resources -- whether it be virtual or in-person meeting time, reviewer time, AD time, or RFC Editor effort.

Cheers.

> On 3 Sep 2021, at 2:41 am, IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> fully online meetings have a shorter length of day, which complicates
> scheduling sessions to minimize conflicts, compared to an in-person
> meeting with longer meeting days. The lack of travel arrangements also
> reduces the pressure to hold all events in a single week. However,
> scheduling all events in a single week both reduces the impact on
> attendees' schedules and encourages cross-review of ideas. Past survey
> data suggest both broad satisfaction with the current format and
> concern about the number of scheduling conflicts.
> 
> The plenary offers a unique opportunity to maximize benefits and
> minimize costs. This single event consumes an entire 2-3 hour slot of
> the meeting week across all tracks. Moving the plenary outside the
> meeting week thus opens up eight long slots that can be used to
> schedule other meetings. The experiment will test the hypothesis that
> the plenary is compelling enough to draw attendees independently of the
> rest of the meeting.
> 
> *** Proposal
> 
> For IETF 112, the plenary will occur on the Wednesday before the meeting
> week (3 November 2021), in the time slot of 13:30-15:00 UTC, or
> 14:30-16:00 Madrid time. At notable extremes, this begins at 05:30 in
> San Francisco and ends at 02:00 in Sydney, with some of the less
> popular hours over the Pacific.
> 
> *** Feedback
> 
> The IESG invites feedback to the IESG mailing list
> (iesg@ietf.org), especially if this proposal would change your ability
> to attend the plenary. Such feedback would be most useful if received
> within two weeks of the date of this email, as the IESG will then
> finalize the decision whether to proceed with the experiment. Strong
> feedback indicating the experiment would reduce the community’s ability
> to attend the plenary might cause its cancellation.
> 
> *** Success Criteria
> 
> The IESG will evaluate the success of this experiment based on the
> following criteria after its conclusion, in consultation with the
> community.
> 
> * An improvement in survey responses reporting session conflicts
>  compared to previous IETF online meetings
> 
> * Positive response to a new survey question about subjective
>  satisfaction with the format change
> 
> * Elimination of a ninth track, and a reduction in formal conflicts in
>  the final agenda compared to previous online meetings
> 
> * Little or no reduction in plenary attendance (< 15%) compared to other
>  online plenaries in European time zones (i.e., IETF 108 and 110)
> 
> * The subjective experience of the IESG and Secretariat in attempting to
>  minimize conflicts during IETF 112
> 
> This does not imply that all of these metrics must show
> improvement for the experiment to be considered a success, or that
> regression in any of them would indicate failure. The relative weights
> of these considerations are a subject for IESG discussion and community
> consultation.
> 
> Lars Eggert
> IETF Chair, on behalf of the IESG
> 
> 
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--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/