Subject: RE: Tao overall organization

From: Gary Malkin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 10:26:54 -0400

<<stuff deleted>>

> My vote goes for one long document, with two major sections. I would 
> also reverse the order that Susan proposed, and put the 
> "participants" part first and the "attendees" part second. There are 
> many more participants than attendees. Also, there is a strong (and 
> correct) assumption that attendees are in fact participants in at 
> least one WG. Telling someone about registering and t-shirts before 
> you tell them the benefits of active participation on mailing lists 
> will likely lead to attendance by folks who will not help the WGs.
>
> Gary's original Tao made an assumption that I think has become false 
> in the last six years, namely that the only people who would want to 
> come to a face-to-face IETF meeting were probably at least a bit 
> active in some WGs. Now, IETF meetings appear attractive to people 
> "trying to learn about Internet technologies" and "coming up to speed 
> on networking". There's two ways of dealing with this change:
> - ask passive watchers not to come
> - encourage them to participate in WGs and then come
> I strongly prefer the second approach.
>
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --Internet Mail Consortium

Even when I wrote this, attendance was typically one-third newbies; I
assume that percentage hasn't changed much.  Most of them were people
who attended because the IETF was convenient to them.  About one-third
of them did return for the next meeting; the rest were pretty much
passive watchers.  The inclination has always been to allow anyone
who wants to come and watch.  It's up to the WG chairs to ensure that
newbies don't derail the WG trying to play catch-up.  How much tutorial
is permitted is also up to the individual chairs.  I see no reason to
change that.  In fact, we should document it so that newbies don't get
upset when a chair insists that the group move on.

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 12:00:34 -0700

At 10:26 AM -0400 7/19/00, Gary Malkin wrote:
>passive watchers.

Question for Steve Coya: are these numbers still accurate?

>   The inclination has always been to allow anyone
>who wants to come and watch.

That seems to have changed in the past few years. There is a strong 
feeling now that watchers can gunk up the WG process. I don't agree 
with that feeling, because...

>   It's up to the WG chairs to ensure that
>newbies don't derail the WG trying to play catch-up.

Exactly right. There are many ways to do that.

>   How much tutorial

Good point! I covered that a bit in my material, but it should be emphasized.

Gary: do you like my proposed outline change, to essentially "WG 
stuff first, meeting stuff second"?

--Paul Hoffman, Director