Subject: Re: [73attendees] Attendance by country

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:26:54 +0000

Most of the single parent folk I know actually have an easier time of it  
since they are sharing custody of the children with another party who is  
anxious for as much contact with them as possible. Dumping the kids on the  
ex for a week is usually an available option.

Also the age of the children is rather significant as is the effect that  
dad being away has on their behavior.

I don't think that the IETF should be entirely indifferent to the personal  
lives of participants as you appear to suggest. Most IETF participants can  
find alternative jobs even in a down economy - although the crisis of the  
past few months is something of an exception. But I really don't want to be  
placing volunteers with a choice between participation and their job  
unnecessarily. And I suspect that those of us who are full time corporate  
representatives are a minority in any case. And even if that were not the  
case, we are not recognized as such in IETF process.

If we are going to argue for making meeting times on the assumption that  
this is a job then we should carry that assumption over to other areas. If  
we are going to continue to be a volunteer organization then we should  
encourage widespread participation by chosing meeting times than minimize  
impact on personal life as much as possible. It is not going to be possible  
to satisfy everyone everytime. But I don't see why the fact that some  
people are going to chose to travel on the weekend should oblige everyone  
else to. Or the fact that you have to get up for a 6am flight in SFO to  
make it back to Europe the same day argues for holding meetings on the  
Friday.

On Dec 4, 2008 11:29am, Mary Barnes <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Again,
>
> a YMMV issue. Having spent 14 years in a both parent's working household
> (and now being in a single parent household), this is still not such a
> significant issue. In my experience, it's actually a bigger issue in a  
household
> where the mother is a SAHM because they rarely get a break. And, yes, I
> know this is a controversial point. When I was at Telecom '99, which  
required
> more than two full weekends away, the guys were fussing as
> the SAHM wives back home were complaining about all the
> family issues without the Dad home for support and they were really
> taken aback when I told them that the job that the moms were doing was  
far more
> stressful than anything we were dealing with on a daily basis,  
particularly
> when you consider most of us have opportunities of enjoying at least one  
nice
> meal and we usually have someone that makes our beds daily, etc. There is
> research that shows that the stress levels of mothers (determined by both
> questionnaires and blood tests of hormones impacted by stress) is  
equivalent to
> that of a soldier on the front lines of a war.
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---

From: "Mary Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 13:45:47 -0500

Yes, as I said YMMV. And, I'm not suggesting IETF be entirely
indifferent to the fact that we have lives outside of work as I think in
general, the schedule does accomodate folks in that the rotation of WGs
in scheduling the Friday afternoon sessions. It seems to be fair in that
I've never seen the same WG end up in that slot for two consecutive
meeting. And, in RAI, it's most often been the WG I chair that gets that
slot every other Friday. 
 
Also, taking us back to the idea that no decisions reflect WG consensus
until they are agreed on the ML, folks missing a Friday session
occasionally should not have a huge impact on their ability to influence
the WG.  And, the same can be said for folks that sometimes participate
remotely. As I recall, we had that discussion in the past around folks
ability to participate in the proposed Big Interim. 
 
And, yes, we are all volunteers and certainly can agree that none of us
are likely compensated for the amount of volunteer work we take on in
IETF. I just don't personally view it to be this huge personal sacrifice
to miss a full weekend (part of the day on a Saturday of travel and
always a full Sunday with part of another Saturday - on average) 3x a
year to be that big of a deal.  And, many people take the opportunity to
bring their families (and significant others and friends) to the summer
meetings, which are often in very "nice to visit" locations. So, that
added benefit in my experience well makes up for the fact that we spend
two weekends  
a year away from families. 
 
 Again, YMMV, but since I was raised a military brat and was without a
father for the majority of my life -  I don't think you can make a
general statement at all about the impact on kids in terms of whether a
father was in the household (or a mother for that matter) based on how
much time they spent away from their families. I had 6 siblings and
indeed the experience likely had far more of a positive impact than
negative on me as I was independent from an early age and cared for my
younger siblings - and the household overall - I'm the OCD neat freak in
the family - for over half my time growing up. I don't think anyone in
IETF is an expert on family dynamics and it might actually be a good
idea for such a professional to attend an IETF as research shows that we
do bring our family dynamics and experiences into the workplace and how
we interact with colleagues. So, if we could improve how we work
together in IETF that might just have an impact on how we interact with
our families ;)  Also, given the technologies that we all have played a
part in developing, we are certainly far better able to keep in touch
with our families than anyone ever has been able to in the past :)
 
I'll now go back to summarizing WG status so that my WG can make some
progess outside the WG meetings, which is really how things should work
overall.  And, I'll hand out gen-art assignments tonite for next week's
telechat, with the IESG being a prime example that alot of IETF work
really does happen outside the meetings on a regular basis via audio
conference and folks reading and evaluating docs outside the f2f
meetings. 
 
Best Regards,
Mary. 

________________________________

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 12:27 PM
To: Barnes, Mary (RICH2:AR00); Phillip Hallam-Baker; DRAGE, Keith
(Keith); [email-masked]
Subject: Re: RE: [73attendees] Attendance by country

Most of the single parent folk I know actually have an easier time of it
since they are sharing custody of the children with another party who is
anxious for as much contact with them as possible. Dumping the kids on
the ex for a week is usually an available option. 

I don't think that the IETF should be entirely indifferent to the
personal lives of participants as you appear to suggest. Most IETF
participants can find alternative jobs even in a down economy - although
the crisis of the past few months is something of an exception. But I
really don't want to be placing volunteers with a choice between
participation and their job unnecessarily. And I suspect that those of
us who are full time corporate representatives are a minority in any
case. And even if that were not the case, we are not recognized as such
in IETF process. 

If we are going to argue for making meeting times on the assumption that
this is a job then we should carry that assumption over to other areas.
If we are going to continue to be a volunteer organization then we
should encourage widespread participation by chosing meeting times than
minimize impact on personal life as much as possible. It is not going to
be possible to satisfy everyone everytime. But I don't see why the fact
that some people are going to chose to travel on the weekend should
oblige everyone else to. Or the fact that you have to get up for a 6am
flight in SFO to make it back to Europe the same day argues for holding
meetings on the Friday. 

household 
required 
far more 
particularly 
> when you consider most of us have opportunities of enjoying at least
one nice 
equivalent to

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith \(Keith\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 20:02:12 +0100

The statistics are fast approaching the point where an equal number of the people who write drafts (i.e. the people who do the work) come from Europe as opposed to North America.
 
Show me any flight that leaves San Francisco at any time and gets to anywhere in Europe on the same calendar day. There isn't one. Do the sums and you will work out why.
 
Point: People are continuing to argue that the meetings are in North America and the participants come from North America and adopting timing preferences to suite. If you are North American participant, start thinking about your preferred meeting schedule if all the meetings were in Europe. Living in Europe, I'd be quite happy with the current schedule and be able to get to all the meetings with minimum impingement on weekends. 
 
I lose the best part of two weekends for every North American based IETF meeting. I have no sympathy (and very little tolerance) for people complaining about losing half a day.
 
regards
 
Keith

	From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
	Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 6:27 PM
	To: Mary Barnes; Phillip Hallam-Baker; DRAGE, Keith (Keith); [email-masked]
	Subject: Re: RE: [73attendees] Attendance by country

	Most of the single parent folk I know actually have an easier time of it since they are sharing custody of the children with another party who is anxious for as much contact with them as possible. Dumping the kids on the ex for a week is usually an available option. 
	
	Also the age of the children is rather significant as is the effect that dad being away has on their behavior. 
	
	I don't think that the IETF should be entirely indifferent to the personal lives of participants as you appear to suggest. Most IETF participants can find alternative jobs even in a down economy - although the crisis of the past few months is something of an exception. But I really don't want to be placing volunteers with a choice between participation and their job unnecessarily. And I suspect that those of us who are full time corporate representatives are a minority in any case. And even if that were not the case, we are not recognized as such in IETF process. 
	
	If we are going to argue for making meeting times on the assumption that this is a job then we should carry that assumption over to other areas. If we are going to continue to be a volunteer organization then we should encourage widespread participation by chosing meeting times than minimize impact on personal life as much as possible. It is not going to be possible to satisfy everyone everytime. But I don't see why the fact that some people are going to chose to travel on the weekend should oblige everyone else to. Or the fact that you have to get up for a 6am flight in SFO to make it back to Europe the same day argues for holding meetings on the Friday. 
	
	On Dec 4, 2008 11:29am, Mary Barnes <[email-masked]> wrote: 
	> significant issue. In my experience, it's actually a bigger issue in a household 
	> know this is a controversial point. When I was at Telecom '99, which required 
	> taken aback when I told them that the job that the moms were doing was far more 
	> stressful than anything we were dealing with on a daily basis, particularly 
	> when you consider most of us have opportunities of enjoying at least one nice 
	> questionnaires and blood tests of hormones impacted by stress) is equivalent to

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:05:17 -0500

On Dec 4, 2008, at 1:26 PM, [email-masked] wrote:
> If we are going to argue for making meeting times on the assumption  
> that this is a job then we should carry that assumption over to  
> other areas. If we are going to continue to be a volunteer  
> organization then we should encourage widespread participation by  
> chosing meeting times than minimize impact on personal life as much  
> as possible.

If we were really going to do this, I would think that the way to do  
it would be to make sure that participation in the meeting from  
offsite was a satisfying experience.   The IETF has gotten better at  
this over time, but I still feel that if I don't show up in person,  
I'll probably miss out on something.   As networking geeks, I think it  
is worth at least considering whether our technological expertise  
could be bent to the service of this goal.

---

From: "Mary Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:06:29 -0500

For me being in North America, I still would not fuss about the European
meetings with sessions on Friday - in the past, I either take a hop to a
European city on Fri nite where I get a direct flight the next morning
(Sat) and get home in the afternoon/early evening on Sat, thus missing
only one extra day from home.  And, this includes arriving one day
earlier. However, I personally find that one additional day is nice to
get over the jetlag and see the city (particularly since we've been to
some great ones).   Also, even for folks from NA, there is likely not a
consistent position - for east coast folks - the travel time is
virtually identical to western Europe/UK as it is for West Coast.  
 
So, I do agree, perhaps on average folks lose an extra day when they
travel outside their own country, there are pros and cons either way and
it's clear from this thread, that is completely impossible to please
everyone. It is completely and totally YMMV and very, very individual.
 
Mary. 

From: DRAGE, Keith (Keith) [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 1:02 PM
To: [email-masked]; Barnes, Mary (RICH2:AR00); [email-masked]
Subject: RE: RE: [73attendees] Attendance by country

The statistics are fast approaching the point where an equal number of
the people who write drafts (i.e. the people who do the work) come from
Europe as opposed to North America.
 
Show me any flight that leaves San Francisco at any time and gets to
anywhere in Europe on the same calendar day. There isn't one. Do the
sums and you will work out why.
 
Point: People are continuing to argue that the meetings are in North
America and the participants come from North America and adopting timing
preferences to suite. If you are North American participant, start
thinking about your preferred meeting schedule if all the meetings were
in Europe. Living in Europe, I'd be quite happy with the current
schedule and be able to get to all the meetings with minimum impingement
on weekends. 
 
I lose the best part of two weekends for every North American based IETF
meeting. I have no sympathy (and very little tolerance) for people
complaining about losing half a day.
 
regards
 
Keith

	From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
	Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 6:27 PM
	To: Mary Barnes; Phillip Hallam-Baker; DRAGE, Keith (Keith);
[email-masked]
	Subject: Re: RE: [73attendees] Attendance by country

	Most of the single parent folk I know actually have an easier
time of it since they are sharing custody of the children with another
party who is anxious for as much contact with them as possible. Dumping
the kids on the ex for a week is usually an available option. 
	
	Also the age of the children is rather significant as is the
effect that dad being away has on their behavior. 
	
	I don't think that the IETF should be entirely indifferent to
the personal lives of participants as you appear to suggest. Most IETF
participants can find alternative jobs even in a down economy - although
the crisis of the past few months is something of an exception. But I
really don't want to be placing volunteers with a choice between
participation and their job unnecessarily. And I suspect that those of
us who are full time corporate representatives are a minority in any
case. And even if that were not the case, we are not recognized as such
in IETF process. 
	
	If we are going to argue for making meeting times on the
assumption that this is a job then we should carry that assumption over
to other areas. If we are going to continue to be a volunteer
organization then we should encourage widespread participation by
chosing meeting times than minimize impact on personal life as much as
possible. It is not going to be possible to satisfy everyone everytime.
But I don't see why the fact that some people are going to chose to
travel on the weekend should oblige everyone else to. Or the fact that
you have to get up for a 6am flight in SFO to make it back to Europe the
same day argues for holding meetings on the Friday. 
	
particularly

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:11:15 -0500

Excerpts from Ted Lemon at 14:05:17 -0500 on Thu  4 Dec 2008:
> offsite was a satisfying experience.

I would work on making the face-to-face meetings almost irrelevant.  
_______________________________________________
73attendees mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/73attendees

---

From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:20:54 -0500

It is still possible from the East Coast to travel from the US to Europe in
the same day but it almost always requires a red-eye. West Coast was
possible at some times before 9/11.

If one is going to have to take a red eye then surely taking off Thursday
night, arriving Friday morning (ish) and sleeping?

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 2:02 PM, DRAGE, Keith (Keith) <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> anywhere in Europe on the same calendar day. There isn't one. Do the sums
> and you will work out why.
>
> preferences to suite. If you are North American participant, start thinking
> about your preferred meeting schedule if all the meetings were in Europe.
> Living in Europe, I'd be quite happy with the current schedule and be able
> to get to all the meetings with minimum impingement on weekends.
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
> *Sent:* Thursday, December 04, 2008 6:27 PM
> *To:* Mary Barnes; Phillip Hallam-Baker; DRAGE, Keith (Keith);
> [email-masked]
> *Subject:* Re: RE: [73attendees] Attendance by country
>
> to satisfy everyone everytime. But I don't see why the fact that some people
> are going to chose to travel on the weekend should oblige everyone else to.
> Or the fact that you have to get up for a 6am flight in SFO to make it back
> to Europe the same day argues for holding meetings on the Friday.
>

-- 
Author: The dotCrime Manifesto: How to Stop Internet Crime
http://dotcrimemanifesto.com
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---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:24:07 -0500

> I would work on making the face-to-face meetings almost irrelevant.

Hear, hear.  

Melinda

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 13:26:06 -0600

> I would work on making the face-to-face meetings almost irrelevant.

Sounds cool, but I haven't been able to follow a remote multiparty  
meeting successfully for a long time. So the only way to eliminate f2f  
is to eliminate real-time entirely and work strictly from email/wiki/ 
other asynch tools.

And frankly, judging consensus on-list is a lot tricker than in a  
room. On-list, I seldom get more then 6 responses to even the most  
critical poll. While one might question how many responses in a room  
are "informed", it is still at least 3x higher.

--
Dean

---

From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:29:15 -0500

I have a fair amount of experience with this sort of thing.

I don't think it's possible.

The fundamental problem is that so much happens at an IETF meeting
outside of the sessions.  We don't know how to make remote interaction,
especially between people who don't know each other pretty well, to work
that covers those non-session interactions.  

On the other hand, it IS possible to make all remote participation work.
Conversely, it's not possible to have a mix of in person and remote
participation work very well for a large group.   Even for a smaller
group (say 10-20), while it's possible, it's prohibitively expensive at
this time.

If you think about it, you already know that.  Just thinking about
regular conference bridges: everyone on the bridge works better than
some people in a room and others on the bridge.  The in room people get
better interaction between themselves but worse interaction with remote
participants: worse than if everyone was on the bridge.  The remote
participants get horrible experience with the mix.

If you add text as a shared experience, it's pretty much even.  Text
works the same in person or not.  If you try to make text substitute for
voice or video, it fails.

If you add video, in a mixed environment, it gets worse, albeit somewhat
less worse for the in-room folks than the remote folks.

So, if you want the best overall experience, you do it all remote.  

But, as I said, that's just the session part.  You can't get the non
session part to work for remote participants.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of Scott Brim
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 PM
To: Ted Lemon
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [73attendees] Attendance by country

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:33:48 -0500

On 12/4/08 2:26 PM, "Dean Willis" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> meeting successfully for a long time.

I've found that it's hit-and-miss.  I've attended maybe
2 IETF meetings in the last 3 years but done the rest
remotely, and there are chairs who run very remote-friendly
meetings and chairs who don't.  (For that matter there
are chairs who run very in-person-friendly meetings and
ones who don't).  It can be done, and it *has* been
done in the IETF.  Maybe we could have better slide-
sharing tools or whiteboarding but I don't think it's
necessary.  Anyway,

> are "informed", it is still at least 3x higher.

The canonical hippie-esque way to do "real" consensus
decision-making doesn't require input from everybody
in the room or on the mailing list.  In fact, to some
extent it relies on individuals having the good
judgment to sit out a decision if they aren't familiar
with the issues, don't have a dog in the hunt, or
even if they disagree but don't want to block progress.

Melinda

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:45:09 -0500

Excerpts from Dean Willis at 13:26:06 -0600 on Thu 4 Dec 2008:
> meeting successfully for a long time. So the only way to eliminate
> f2f is to eliminate real-time entirely and work strictly from
> email/wiki/ other asynch tools.

I would be glad to help boost our asynch tools to the level where they
can do this.  I'd also be glad to help boost our real-time tools to
where they work for you.  And of course there are pseudo-real-time
tools.  (All I need is a little spare time.)

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:47:20 -0500

> session part to work for remote participants.

Imagine you don't have the non-session part, since you have no
in-person meeting.  How does your work suffer?  Now, being the smart
guy you are but not having any travel budget, how do you compensate?
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---

From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:52:42 -0500

Then support my position on the IETF list on Internet architecture, NAT and
multicast.

The only reason I care about the anti-NAT fetish is that the participants
have effectively blocked the deployment of open standards for video
conferencing. The only person-person video connection that is free and
accessible to any Internet user without a download larded up with cramware
is the new Google scheme. Everything else was simply not viable as it
required a technical expert at each end to get working at all.

Not that the Google Scheme is entirely satisfactory. It only works for about
ten minutes before the clients get out of sync and will not restart, but its
a beta. And if we had a real NAT story it would not be necessary for Google
to carry the packets.

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 15:00:38 -0500

> I would work on making the face-to-face meetings almost irrelevant.

That makes sense in theory, but there are two things working against  
it.   First, a large amount of IETF in-person meeting participation is  
as much a junket as it is a necessity (I know not everyone sees it  
this way, please don't flame me just because you happen to be one of  
those people), so I would expect to see substantial resistance to  
eliminating in-person meetings.

Secondly, a lot of what I get done at IETF meetings happens between  
sessions.   The sessions themselves are largely superfluous - mostly  
people get up and spent ten minutes of the agenda at a time explaining  
things to us that we aren't interested in, or if we are interested in,  
have already read and understood.   So we just sit and type on our  
laptops, waiting for some interesting discussion.   The real meat of  
an IETF meeting is the face-to-face discussion between principals.    
To me the main purpose of the in-person wg meetings is to trigger  
those between-meeting conversations.

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:05:58 -0600

> participants get horrible experience with the mix.

This is just crappy technology.   Conference bridges exist because  
they are easy, not because they are the right solution.   Offsite  
participants ought to be able to speak questions into their laptop  
mics, and wg chairs ought to be able to queue those up in order  
against the people who are actually at the mics in the room.   When  
I'm taking minutes (for some reason I do that a lot), I'd like to be  
able to ask my own questions that way, rather than having to miss  
taking part of the minutes when I go up to the mic.

However, your larger point is probably true - if *everyone* were  
remote, then a lot of the technical issues of mixing remote and in- 
person participation would go away.   But I think the experience would  
be less satisfying even for the remote participants in that case,  
because the energy of in-person participation helps to drive the  
process in a way that purely remote participation would not.

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:07:01 -0600

> even if they disagree but don't want to block progress.

Word.

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 12:08:53 -0800

> guy you are but not having any travel budget, how do you compensate?

The thing is, time and money are somewhat fungible here.  For a  
particular individual, the choice might be to spend more time on  
mailing lists and phone conferences in order to get work done, but for  
another, the choice to fly to a meeting might be effective.   
(Substitute employers making decisions about time vs. money if you  
prefer).

The IETF does already discriminate in favour of those who have time  
but not money, as all decisions can be ratified on the mailing lists.   
In fact, I think the meetings are the only official means somebody can  
use money to reduce time expenditure on the way towards technical  
standards goals.   If we didn't have official meetings, we'd probably  
see the money expended in unofficial meetings of authors, design teams  
or WGs anyway, with less oversight on matters such as open  
participation and tools for remote participants.

Speaking as somebody who can't take her travel budget for granted, I  
still see why so many of us spend money to save time.

Lisa

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:09:20 -0600

> guy you are but not having any travel budget, how do you compensate?

My work would go down the crapper. Most of what I (usefully) do is get  
two or three people with intractable positions into a face to face  
situation and browbeat them into a compromise. That's Really Hard  
remotely.

--
Dean

---

From: "Richard Shockey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 15:24:53 -0500

Dean is spot on here.  Personally there is nothing like buying someone a
beer or not too subtle threats in their face to foster the spirit of  "rough
consensus".

>  From: [email-masked] [mailto:73attendees-
>  [email-masked]] On Behalf Of Dean Willis
>  Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:09 PM
>  To: Scott Brim
>  Cc: Rosen, Brian; [email-masked]

---

From: "Wes Beebee (wbeebee)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 15:37:22 -0500

Well, the advantages of being face-to-face aside, I think there are ways
to improve the remote experience for those who have recently had their
travel budgets cut.  The plenary was WebEx'ed so that you could follow
both the audio and the slides.  WebEx can also be recorded, so that you
can play back the audio in the future AND know what slide they were
talking about.  There's also an ability to do video with WebEx, but to
me - that's less important.  With WebEx, you can also vote and chat -
and have the chat log saved as part of the WebEx session.  What do we
say about expanding this plenary experiment to WebEx individual WG
sessions?

- Wes

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of Ted Lemon
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:05 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [73attendees] Attendance by country

On Dec 4, 2008, at 1:26 PM, [email-masked] wrote:
> that this is a job then we should carry that assumption over to other 
> areas. If we are going to continue to be a volunteer organization then

> we should encourage widespread participation by chosing meeting times 
> than minimize impact on personal life as much as possible.

If we were really going to do this, I would think that the way to do it
would be to make sure that participation in the meeting from  
offsite was a satisfying experience.   The IETF has gotten better at  
this over time, but I still feel that if I don't show up in person,  
I'll probably miss out on something.   As networking geeks, I think it  
is worth at least considering whether our technological expertise could
be bent to the service of this goal.

---

From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 15:38:42 -0500

I've done a lot of work on non-crappy technology.  It's pretty damn hard
to make it work. I claim, it doesn't work: large room environments
cannot be remoted successfully by any known technology regardless of
cost.

Small room remotes work, but it's expensive.  You can have 3-4 groups of
3-4 people and have a satisfactory experience.  $250K+ per room.  While
there isn't any real limit to adding more rooms, it's physically
difficult. 

Desktop remotes work, and you can make that work for many more people.
The quality of the experience is not as good as the room systems, but it
works in the absolute sense: you can get real work done, and you like
it.  You can make it work with the above systems, but it doesn't work
all that well for more than one person per room.

I'll say one more thing:
Lots of people have tried to do this.  It's not easy.  Every time you
start you think "there has to be an easy way to make this work, those
other guys are stupid".  Sorry.  It's very hard.  

We know a lot about what it takes.  We can describe pretty easily what
it takes.   Doing it is hard and/or expensive.

Brian

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:42:21 -0600

On Dec 4, 2008, at 2:09 PM, Dean Willis wrote:

> My work would go down the crapper. Most of what I (usefully) do is  
> get two or three people with intractable positions into a face to  
> face situation and browbeat them into a compromise. That's Really  
> Hard remotely.

I think Dean is on to something, but maybe not what he intended.  
Getting people with contrary positions to compromise may be the _only_  
"useful" use of our face time. But we generalize that to mean "get  
work to move forward". Sometimes, the reason work is not moving  
forward is because you need to get people to compromise. But more  
often, it's because you are trying to get people to care.

If we would systematically deny agenda time to work that is failing to  
move forward because no one is reading/reviewing/writing drafts/etc,  
and limit it to work where people that do care need to compromise, we  
might not have so much trouble finding enough time in the traditional  
meeting schedule.

---

From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 16:14:16 -0500

The other important effect is that some people find it somewhat harder to
conduct feuds with people they have met in person than those who they only
know remotely.

If alt.flame had held regular in person meetings...

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 16:17:18 -0500

All,
this conversation has been limited to those on the Minneapolis  
attendees list.
It might generate other interest on the ietf list.

Ray

On Dec 4, 2008, at 4:14 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> The other important effect is that some people find it somewhat  
> harder to conduct feuds with people they have met in person than  
> those who they only know remotely.
>

---

From: Paul Russell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:18:31 -0500

IETF 73 was my first IETF meeting.  I have been a lurker on several lists for
varying lengths of time, but had not contributed because I did not understand
how the process worked, and was not comfortable 'crashing the party', so to
speak.  I am still not sure that I understand the process, but attendance at
the meeting provided me with a few clues, and I have already become involved
in a discussion on one of the mailing lists.  There may be others who continue
to lurk, rather than contribute, for similar reasons.

The current meeting format, as opposed to a virtual meeting where remote
participation is assumed to be the default, has another advantage that has not
been mentioned, in that it enables participants to seperate themselves from
day-to-day operational issues and focus on the work of the working groups.
Some participants may be able to structure their work day to enable them to do
this now; others may need to get out of the office in order to get away from
real-time work-related demands on their time.

-- 
Paul Russell, Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame
[email-masked]
_______________________________________________
73attendees mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/73attendees

---

From: "Roni Even" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 23:24:16 +0200

I suggest that you should also work hard at solving time zone issues at the
same time.
I would recommend to have these virtual meeting early afternoon in south
east Asia (Japan, China) which is morning in Europe and that will mean late
night early morning for US.
Roni Even

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Scott Brim
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 9:11 PM
To: Ted Lemon
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [73attendees] Attendance by country

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 19:24:17 -0500

On Dec 4, 2008, at 2:33 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:

> meetings and chairs who don't.

If you ever feel that I conducting a non-remote-friendly meeting,  
speak up. Services without use
or complaints may get slighted.

Regards
Marshall

>  (For that matter there

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:21:28 +0000

>> I would work on making the face-to-face meetings almost irrelevant.

yes, that's pretty much all you can do -- if there's a microphone in the room and audio streaming is working.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:36:35 -0500

> It might generate other interest on the ietf list.

Or it might generate even more noise.  I have a prediction... :-(

But I would strongly encourage you, or any IAOC and/or IESG
member, to prepare a summary of the high points of this
discussion, possibly with some initial reactions, and then use
that summary, ideally in I-D form, to initiate a real discussion
on the IETF list.  We have often found that those are the types
of discussions that actually work in the IETF, unlike these
things that wander back and forth among the same themes with a
comparatively small number of people... and that do their
wandering a lot faster --and further into the weeds -- with a
larger one.

If you, the IAOC, or the IESG were willing to try to prepare
such a summary, it would also indicate to the community that you
understood the issues and were taking them seriously which
would, itself, be a helpful step forward.   

I believe that the discussion on this list and the issues raised
have been wide-ranging enough that you should take it as a
mandate to do some preliminary consideration and then respond to
the broader list with either a summary, a preliminary proposal,
or both, not just a suggestion to go repeat the discussion on a
larger list.

    john

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 09:49:38 +0100

On the 73attendees list we had a discussion about making face-to-face  
meetings unnecessary through better technology.

In my opinion, that will be extremely hard to the point of being  
impossible, for various reasons. (See the 73attendees discussion for a  
bunch of them.) However, a more useful way forward would be to make  
remote participation work a whole lot better.

At one point we had multicast video for a couple of tracks, which  
didn't work very well. Now we have audo for all sessions, which works  
much better (although when the audio quality is bad it takes a lot of  
energy to listen and the lag makes reacting problematic). Jabber came  
along before we had audio everywhere, giving rise to the notion that  
someone should type in whatever happens in the meeting. I think that  
use of jabber is problematic, but using jabber as a back channel for  
additional discussion without interrupting the speaker only works on  
occasion because too few people participate in jabber, or participate  
in that way. And we don't use jabber anywhere in our process. I think  
there's an opportunity there once we figure out how to use it well.

But that's just the state of affairs today. Bandwidth and hardware are  
now cheap enough that we could revist video in the form of unicast  
streaming, although that may take more person hours. Or maybe we can  
create some other way to allow remote participants to see the slides  
"live". I assume there are solutions for this, although they may not  
be compatible with the quaint operating systems some participants  
choose to use. Maybe we can hack something together ourselves? Export  
slides to images or HTML, use some web magic to have the current one  
on a web page, a volunteer triggers advancing the slides?

Something that I'd like to see is a way for remote participants to  
talk back. I know a system that can do this called Talk Shoe exists  
that allows people to make home brew call in radio shows. If it works  
well enough, we could even do away with microphones in the meetings  
and people can just speak into their laptops.

However, making progress here probably requires more than just  
volunteer work. Would it make sense to charge a fee for remote  
participation? At first, the extra money could be used to improve the  
tools for this. If it them becomes popular it could become a new  
revenue stream for the IETF.
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https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/73attendees

---

From: Huub van Helvoort <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:49:26 +0100

Hi Iljitsch,

> meetings unnecessary through better technology.

And is the fact that there was no ice cream at IETF73 an
indication that we are already moving in that direction?

Cheers...  Huub.

-- 
================================================================
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