Subject: Re: [93attendees] Meeting schedule

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 05:47:07 -0700

At 8:10 AM -0400 7/21/15, Ted Lemon wrote:

>   Another option would be to make more efficient use of meeting 
> time. Still, after all these years, the presentation/discussion 
> format assumes that nobody has read the drafts, and that 
> nevertheless everything is qualified to speak at the mic.   Sales 
> pitches are great, but should be brief; discussions should be among 
> people who have read the documents.   And political discussions 
> probably ought not to occur in working group meetings, because they 
> just waste time.
>
>   I think that if we just said "the schedule will be four days, 
> regular business hours only, with a half day on Friday ending at 
> noon, and the plenary on Monday at 9," and chunked sessions down to 
> an hour each, we'd get a lot more value out of the meeting, because 
> we could have fewer tracks, more meetings, and chairs and 
> participants would have to be strategic about what presentations to 
> allow and what form the presentations would take.   It always bugs 
> me when I see a working group consuming six hours or more of agenda 
> time.
>
>   This is partly motivated by a belief that what in-person meetings 
> accomplish best is people who are doing real work talking face to 
> face.   Most of the discussion that occurs at the mic is wasted 
> time; most of the presentations are wasted time.  This is the 
> source of the truism that most of the work at the IETF occurs 
> during the breaks.   It would be nice if we could change that.

I'm all for having shorter sessions be the norm, as that helps get WG 
agendas to focus on the issues that are not reaching conclusion on 
the list.  If, say, 60 minutes was the norm, and WGs with many active 
drafts and/or many active issues that need discussion able to have 
some number of hopefully consecutive slots, that might help a lot.

I also think we should have a few slots during the week when no WGs 
are scheduled, for use in scheduling ad-hoc discussions.  These could 
be perhaps 30-45 minutes and possibly scheduled just prior to breaks, 
allowing more time for involved discussions.

--
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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One question, among many raised in recent weeks, had to do with
whether my financial support in any way influenced several
political figures to take up my cause.  I want to say in the most
forceful way I can: I certainly hope so.
    --Charles Keating, on the "Keating 5" senators who blocked an
      investigation into his failing S&L