Re: WG meeting structure

[Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On 2019-5-15, at 10:08, Gorry Fairhurst <[e-mail]> wrote:
> For me, it served very badly when the a U-table was setup and then there were banks of chairs postioned to observe it. A part of the issue was that it encouraged people at the table to have an Interim-style discussion - engagement was faster with each other. These people benefited from cues in body language, eye contact, etc.

that was exactly the intent. QUIC never made much progress on any open issues during the IETF meetings, because the serialized "discussion" enforced by the mic lines is simply very inefficient at that. So we tried to replicate a discussion style like we have during interims, where we make much more rapid progress.

> Others became passive observers. Many people had their back to me and spoke to others without me knowing who they were or who they were talking to; I couldn't see who was speaking and it could be hard to see a presenter's face as they presented. I even saw a case where the person leading/chairing was seated with their back to many of the people in the room. To me it was like being a remote observer at an Interim.

In that particular room, the seats for the chairs where badly placed, but that is easily corrected.

I guess it all boils down to what a WG meeting at an IETF is for: is it for making rapid progress on open technical issues? Or is it for presentations to a broader audience with limited Q&A? The answer is obviously going to be different for different WGs, and even for different topics within a WG.

For QUIC, since we haven't had the chance for another experimental room setup in a while, we are actively scheduling things so that presentation-style topics are mostly presented with more limited discussion at IETFs, and (most) other things only at interims.

Lars