Subject: survey on Friday IETF sessions

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 21:20:54 -0700

One of the issues we seem to be running into is an increased number of
conflicts in meeting slots at IETF meetings.  For instance, two years
ago the meeting slots predominantly were used for 6-7 meetings, whereas
the agenda for the upcoming meeting has no slot except for Friday
without 7-8 meetings.  There has been some discussion about IETF
meetings on Fridays, possibly extending the agenda to later Friday
afternoon.  In the interest of creating a more informed discussion,
we've put together a short questionnaire to gather some data on
attending meetings from IETF participants.

See http://ietf.levkowetz.com/survey/attendance/

--aaron  (for Aaron Falk, Henrik Levkowetz, and Mark Allman)

PS. Please don't complain about the questions.  If you have better,
feel free to build your own -- more data is good!  :)

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From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:13:51 +0200

On 21-jul-04, at 6:20, Aaron Falk wrote:

> In the interest of creating a more informed discussion,

Ok, that's great of course, but I have two different suggestions:

1. Get a better feel for which wgs can overlap without problems and 
which can't. (Hint: two wgs with "6" in their name probably shouldn't 
overlap...)

2. Move away from the session/break/session model. So rather than let 
the rooms be empty for 1.5 hours during the lunch and dinner breaks, 
schedule sessions more or less continuously. People who want to eat are 
no worse off, as they still get to attend one session and eat during 
another, while those who can't stand overlap now have a better chance 
of being able to attend everything they want to.

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:51:12 +0200

--On 21. juli 2004 21:13 +0200 Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> 1. Get a better feel for which wgs can overlap without problems and which
> can't. (Hint: two wgs with "6" in their name probably shouldn't
> overlap...)
>
> 2. Move away from the session/break/session model. So rather than let the
> rooms be empty for 1.5 hours during the lunch and dinner breaks, schedule
> sessions more or less continuously. People who want to eat are no worse
> off, as they still get to attend one session and eat during another,
> while those who can't stand overlap now have a better chance of being
> able to attend everything they want to.

that's OK with me - I have meetings in all the breaks, so I have to take my 
breaks when there are scheduled meetings :-)

seriously - I think this is a seriously bad idea, because it lessens the 
ability of people to schedule informal time together.

New survey question: How many lunches and dinners did you have at the last 
IETF that were NOT meetings....?

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 23:05:46 +0200

On 21-jul-04, at 21:51, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>> the

> seriously - I think this is a seriously bad idea, because it lessens 
> the ability of people to schedule informal time together.

The first thing we should recognize is that between the two of us, we 
probably represent the two ends of the spectrum in IETF meeting 
attendee type: you being the chair and all, and me being a fairly 
casual IETF goer who participates mainly in one wg.

That being said, the informal scheduling thing isn't my experience. 
I've had a few of those during the breaks, but more often than not 
there isn't enough time or previous commitments so it's easier to find 
some mutually dead space in the schedule. This is usually doable for a 
three - four person group.

As the number of concurrent sessions becomes smaller, the opportunities 
for people with the same interests to find some "dead" time in the 
schedule increase. Only people who want to participate in pretty much 
everything won't benefit, but they have many problems now anyway.

But first and foremost we need to do SMARTER scheduling: even though 
I'm only really interested in the IPv6 stuff, idr, rpsec and grow, I've 
had overlapping sessions in all three meetings I attended. I would make 
a survey for that if I had the software...

Speaking of surveys: the results of Aaron's suggests that having 
session on sunday is probably a better idea than having them on 
friday...

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 17:07:25 -0700

>IETF that were NOT meetings....?

For me, it is rare to have meals that are not meetings of some sort. And I 
often have face-to-face editing sessions on IETF business or 
offline-but-topical discussions with customers and partners during slots 
that I don't have scheduled meetings in.

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:06:58 +0100

> that I don't have scheduled meetings in. 

I think it is useful to have lunch gaps to have fringe meetings, and many
people may wish to retain the ability to arrange gatherings outside the
main program.

I've also been to Internet 2 meetings where they have WG or special
interest meetings through lunch, and you take lunch into the meeting.
That seems to work fine.   These are meetings on the agenda, rather than
the ad-hoc IETF groupings that might (do) happen.

I can remember an IETF over a year ago where Iljitsch and Michel organised
a whole week of unofficial multi6 meetings through the event.   So if
you pick your slots, and the people are determined, anything is possible :)
(and that IETF really helped get multi6 back on track)

Tim

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:30:31 -0400

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Chown <[email-masked]> writes:
    >> For me, it is rare to have meals that are not meetings of some
    >> sort. And I often have face-to-face editing sessions on IETF
    >> business or offline-but-topical discussions with customers and
    >> partners during slots that I don't have scheduled meetings in.

    Tim> I think it is useful to have lunch gaps to have fringe
    Tim> meetings, and many people may wish to retain the ability to
    Tim> arrange gatherings outside the main program.

  If asked, I would give up an hour of the dinner break and retain the
lunch break. The why is simple: the 2 hours we have to dinner is both
too long for a quick bite, and too short for a relaxed meal.

    Tim> I've also been to Internet 2 meetings where they have WG or
    Tim> special interest meetings through lunch, and you take lunch
    Tim> into the meeting.  That seems to work fine.  These are meetings

  Hmm. That could work, but aren't IETF meetings a bit bigger than
Internet2? I'm thinking about the logistics of 1200 people trying to get
a bag lunch all at the same time.

    Tim> I can remember an IETF over a year ago where Iljitsch and
    Tim> Michel organised a whole week of unofficial multi6 meetings
    Tim> through the event.  So if you pick your slots, and the people

  And... some of us couldn't make any of those either.
  having been on nomcom one year, I can tell you --- there are people
who make use of every single gap in the day.
  I think it comes back to:
    a) some groups probably shouldn't meet as often
    b) some groups perhaps shouldn't exist at all
    c) some groups need 6-10 hours of continuous face-time in which they
       can actually get things done. We have pushed such things to
       interim meetings, sometimes with success, sometimes without.
       The problem is that these groups get 4 hours at IETF, easily
       fill that, and still feel that they didn't get everything done.

  We can tweak the schedule a bit and get some time back for some
people. At least, perhaps even things out. Someone needs to run an
online scheduling experiment, and see what we can actually do with some
sophisticated scheduling software. (Most of it is very hard to use
right, based upon my experience with our local transit company.) 

  I'm not in the loop on the problem-statement stuff, having missed two
IETFs, and been busy. But that's where some of the answers need to come
from.

- --
]     "Elmo went to the wrong fundraiser" - The Simpson         |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson,    Xelerance Corporation, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked]      http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/mcr/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian GNU/Linux using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [

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From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 10:55:51 -0700

>        fill that, and still feel that they didn't get everything done.

Perhaps we should raise the bar on what it takes to get a slot at the 
IETF meeting.  For example, try to come up with some objective criteria 
for what deserves a 1hr slot, 2hrs, multiple, etc.  This  might even 
nudge groups into making some additional progress  ("you can't have 
your meeting if you don't hit a/some milestones").

BTW, regarding the survey: there's only been 80 responses so far.  My 
take is that people don't care about the issue enough to voice their 
opinion.

--aaron

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 20:51:25 +0100

> take is that people don't care about the issue enough to voice their 

Or maybe that 5% of a typical attendance is a good sample of the more
active people?

Tim

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:07:18 -0700

At 10:55 AM 07/22/04 -0700, Aaron Falk wrote:
>Perhaps we should raise the bar on what it takes to get a slot at the IETF 
>meeting.  For example, try to come up with some objective criteria for 
>what deserves a 1hr slot, 2hrs, multiple, etc.  This  might even nudge 
>groups into making some additional progress  ("you can't have your meeting 
>if you don't hit a/some milestones").

At the risk of making a statement that arguably belongs on (and which I 
have made on) the problem-statement list...

IMHO, the charter of a working group is a contract-of-sorts to accomplish 
something. If a working group has no future milestones, I can't imagine why 
it is meeting - at minimum, it should be (IMHO) in the process of 
rechartering (which is a milestone in its own right). I would like to see 
working groups held to their chartered work plans, and rechartered if the 
work-plan changes.

I'll name one example, but (since I'm not trying to pick on anybody, 
whether AD, WG Chair, or WG, but point out something that is far too 
frequently true of WGs), I will only tell you how I found them. I went to 
see whether there was an obvious example of a working group that was 
outside its charter. I went to www.ietf.org, clicked on "working groups", 
clicked on the area at the top of the list, and clicked on the first 
working group under that area. This working group has two milestones that 
are past and a number that are future, and no notation of whether they have 
met their milestones or not. I then clicked on the second working group in 
that area, and found the following:

>Done  Submit ### specification as Internet-Draft.
>Done  Submit first Internet-Draft of ### Interoperability Protocol.
>Done  Submit second draft of ### specification as Internet-Draft.
>Done  Submit revised Internet-Draft of ### Interoperability Protocol.
>Done  Submit ### specification to IESG for consideration as a Proposed 
>Standard.
>Done  Submit ### Interoperability Protocol to IESG for consideration as a 
>Proposed Draft.

What *is* a "Proposed Draft" anyway?

>Done  Submit Internet-Draft (informational) on Guide to Implementors using 
>### Protocols
>Feb 01  Hold second ### Testing on ###, ### and ###
>Mar 01  Submit Internet-Draft on ### Protocol to IESG for consideration as 
>a Proposed Standard.
>Jul 01  Request last call on Guide to ###
>Jul 01  Submit Internet-Draft on Guide to ### for consideration as a 
>Proposed Standard
>Jul 01  Submit revisions for Internet-Draft for ###, ### and ###
>Jul 01  Submit revisions for Internet-Draft for ### Protocol
>Jan 02  Evaluate readiness for interoperability testing of ### Protocol

Consider the dates: what is the argument for this WG meeting? Someone needs 
to sit down and very specifically ask "what in the world is happening? Is 
this WG moribund and in need of some merciful person to put it out of its 
misery? If not, what is the real plan for its future?"

On the whole, the IESG is doing a much better job than it used to in this 
area. But I will agree that working groups need to do a much better job of 
managing to their objectives, and producing results. Whether that means 
interim meetings or putting an end to projects that are not actually moving 
forward, working groups (and therefore chairs and authors) need to take 
their tasks rather more seriously than they do, and ADs need to grade them 
on their track record in doing so.

If there is further comment on this topic, I would suggest it continue on 
the problem-statement list.

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:46:07 -0400

--On Thursday, July 22, 2004 10:55 AM -0700 Aaron Falk 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> BTW, regarding the survey: there's only been 80 responses so
> far.  My take is that people don't care about the issue enough
> to voice their opinion.

I can't guess at the percentages, but at least a few people (who 
do care) took a look at the survey, concluded that answering it 
accurately would take some digging through old notes, assessed 
the odds that the questions, as asked, would yield good and 
useful information, and then decided they had other things to do 
with their lives than to respond to the "survey".

     john

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From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:45:42 -0700 (PDT)

perhaps the reason there has not been more participation in your survey is
associated w/ the following:

"A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred."

this error could be due to the fact that I did not attend Seoul but did attned MPLS and will attend
SD.  in any case, here is a data point:

I will be in SD the friday,saturday,sunday -PRIOR- to the offical IETF meeting to attend other,
ancillery mtgs that can not be held (for whatever reasons) during the IETF week.  Depending on the
scheduling of the WG's of interest, I'd be just as happy arriving in SD on the Wed during IETF and
staying through the trailing  wkend, holding the ancillery mtgs of interest then.

that said, most corporate travel folks don't mind sending folks a few days early (there are plausable
reasons for this) - it is -MUCH- harder to justify staying around -AFTER- the conference has ended.

YMMV.

--bill
Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).