Subject: Our deadlines are dizzyingly complex and confusing

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:49:36 -0800

Hi,

I just found out that I missed the deadline for early-bird registration 
and payment.  I registered early, but was planning to pay just in time, 
but alas the deadline has passed.  I was thinking that the deadline is 
later in the day, end of the business day Eastern time.

We have deadlines at 9:00 ET, 12:00 ET and 17:00 ET for draft 
submission, WG session scheduling, payments and proceedings submission. 
  I was thinking that all payment deadlines are at 17:00 ET, end of 
business day.  They are not!  The early-bird registration and payment 
deadline is at 12:00 ET and the final pre-registration and pre-payment 
deadline is 17:00 ET.  Perhaps there is a logic to this, but it is not 
intuitive to me.

Could all deadlines be at the same time (on different days obviously) to 
avoid such confusion in future?

thanks,
Lakshminath

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From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 21:33:25 -0600

Laksminath's note is more detailed, but it's roughly what I was thinking at 
about 2 PM EST today :-(

I'm sure there's an opportunity for us to pick a time zone for IETF 71 
cutoffs!

Thanks,

Spencer

> We have deadlines at 9:00 ET, 12:00 ET and 17:00 ET for draft submission, 
> WG session scheduling, payments and proceedings submission. I was thinking 
> that all payment deadlines are at 17:00 ET, end of business day.  They are 
> not!  The early-bird registration and payment deadline is at 12:00 ET and 
> the final pre-registration and pre-payment deadline is 17:00 ET.  Perhaps 
> there is a logic to this, but it is not intuitive to me.
>

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:42:02 -0800

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> Laksminath's note is more detailed, but it's roughly what I was thinking
> at about 2 PM EST today :-(
> 

you mean like UTC?

I'd note that all the reference times in this message were in the same
timezone just not at the same time. I submit that I really hate having
to convert the offset from my current timezone in someone else's
particularly when I can't remember when their daylight savings time
begins or ends. however the challenge really is that they're not all in
my calender rather than than that I need to calculate the offset because
software will happily do that for me.

> Thanks,
> 
> Spencer
> 
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just found out that I missed the deadline for early-bird
>> registration and payment.  I registered early, but was planning to pay
>> just in time, but alas the deadline has passed.  I was thinking that
>> the deadline is later in the day, end of the business day Eastern time.
>>
>> submission, WG session scheduling, payments and proceedings
>> submission. I was thinking that all payment deadlines are at 17:00 ET,
>> end of business day.  They are not!  The early-bird registration and
>> payment deadline is at 12:00 ET and the final pre-registration and
>> pre-payment deadline is 17:00 ET.  Perhaps there is a logic to this,
>> but it is not intuitive to me.
>>
>> Could all deadlines be at the same time (on different days obviously)
>> to avoid such confusion in future?
>>
>> thanks,
>> Lakshminath
>>

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:33:55 -0600

>> I'm sure there's an opportunity for us to pick a time zone for IETF 71

:-)

OK, guilty. My point was that the cutoff time seemed to be "close of 
business, ET", and I was kinda hoping that whatever time we picked would be 
"close of business, a little further west" :-)

... especially if we were headed toward using the same cutoff TIME for all 
IETF cutoffs (BOF requests, WG meeting requests, registration, ID cutoffs, 
etc) ...

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:39:03 -0800

From my point of view, it can be any timezone as long as the cutoff 
time is the same in all cases.  While we are on topic, I propose to use 
AOE as defined by IEEE (I think 802.16).

regards,
Lakshminath

On 11/26/2007 10:33 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> business, ET", and I was kinda hoping that whatever time we picked would 
> be "close of business, a little further west" :-)
> 
> ... especially if we were headed toward using the same cutoff TIME for 
> all IETF cutoffs (BOF requests, WG meeting requests, registration, ID 
> cutoffs, etc) ...
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Spencer
>

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:42:07 -0800

At Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:39:03 -0800,
> AOE as defined by IEEE (I think 802.16).

AOE == UTC-1200. UTC seems much more natural.

That said, once you've selected one time zone as the reference,
it's not like it's difficult to translate.

-Ekr

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From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:48:27 -0800

Just in case you are not familiar with AOE, it stands for Anywhere on 
Earth (See http://www.ieee802.org/16/aoe.html)

regards,
Lakshminath

On 11/26/2007 10:39 AM, Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:
>> business, ET", and I was kinda hoping that whatever time we picked 
>> would be "close of business, a little further west" :-)
>>

---

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:55:10 -0800

Yeah, I can deal with any TZ actually (AOE is one suggestion and I think 
most intuitive, UTC is another), but can't handle the varying cutoff 
times :).

On why AOE is intuitive, everyone gets to treat the deadline with their 
own TZ substituted for AOE (the actual deadline for most people would be 
a bit or a lot later in reality).

regards,
Lakshminath

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:11:16 +0100

> a bit or a lot later in reality).

I agree on the general sentiment of *one* deadline time.

I'd prefer it expressed in a TZ which iCalendar files and most calendar
applications understand right off, though.  UTC sounds good to me.

	Henrik

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From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:31:59 -0800

Looks to me as if the cut off is start of business for the RFC Editor. That makes sense to me, no matter how much you try to change the cut off you can't make it any later than the point where the editor needs to start work.
 
I would not mind seeing the -00 cutoff moving to the same as the cuttoff for subsequent drafts. At this point we have the automated submission tool and the rationale for the difference is removed somewhat.
 
Make the week earlier -00 cutoff apply to manual processing of -00 drafts.

________________________________

From: Spencer Dawkins [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Mon 26/11/2007 1:33 PM
To: Joel Jaeggli
Cc: IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: Our deadlines are dizzyingly complex and confusing

:-)

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:45:43 +0200

Phillip,

> Looks to me as if the cut off is start of business for the RFC Editor.
> That makes sense to me, no matter how much you try to change the cut
> off you can't make it any later than the point where the editor needs
> to start work.

No, the RFC Editor does not edit drafts after the cutoff, they edit
drafts after they have been approved...
 
> I would not mind seeing the -00 cutoff moving to the same as the
> cuttoff for subsequent drafts. At this point we have the automated
> submission tool and the rationale for the difference is removed somewhat.

The rationale for a different cutoffs for -00 and later revisions is
simply that completely new ideas require a lot of time to digest. You
can make modifications still for another week.

(That being said, I've recently run into a few cases where it is not
possible to submit a revised draft to fix an issue raised in IETF LC or
IESG review -- even if the draft in question would not even be discussed
in the upcoming meeting. Our deadline system is a rather crude scheme to
prevent everyone submitting their only updates on the Monday morning of
the IETF.)

> Make the week earlier -00 cutoff apply to manual processing of -00 drafts.

I'd rather just keep both the same. You may have to revert to the manual
submission method if there's some kind of a problem in the tool, for
instance. And I'd rather move into the direction of less deadlines than
more...

Jari

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From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:31:23 +0200

> applications understand right off, though.  UTC sounds good to me.

Let me put in a plug for http://people.nokia.net/~lars/software/important-dates.pl 
, which is a perl script that makes iCal events out of the  
secretariat's "important dates" web page for a given IETF.

Lars

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From: Tony Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:25:14 -0800

On Nov 28, 2007, at 6:31 AM, Lars Eggert wrote:

> Let me put in a plug for http://people.nokia.net/~lars/software/ 
> important-dates.pl, which is a perl script that makes iCal events  
> out of the secretariat's "important dates" web page for a given IETF.

Let me also plug: webcal://icalx.com/public/tony1athome/ 
Net.Engineers.ics

This is a subscribe-able iCal calendar that tracks the main deadlines  
for IETF (as well as .*NOG, ARIN, etc.).

Tony