Subject: this is insane.

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 08 Dec 1998 16:35:55 -0500

The meeting is just too big. I have missed two working group meetings
today because rooms were too crowded. We have to do something about
the problem, and holding meetings in football arenas is NOT the
answer.

Perry

---

From: Gunnar Lindberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 14:27:07 +0100

Nice try. But, would you start questioning people about draft content?
Otherwise, this will only increase the amount of ego-aggressive people
that are quite common in the IETF already (no particular persons or
countries mentioned).

The problem is real, though, and the quesion is only how to solve it
without flushing the baby out with the water. An important input to
that might be whether the increased number of participant is because
people from more countries come or there are simple more people from
the already active countries.

	Gunnar Lindberg

>From [email-masked]  Wed Dec  9 06:52:58 1998
>Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
>To: [email-masked]
>cc: [email-masked]
>Subject: Re: this is insane. 
>Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 00:28:56 -0500
>From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>

>I would remind people that it is in order for Working Group chairs to
>give front seating preference to those who have read the drafts and
>presumably someone attempting to attend a WG meeting that was over
>crowded and had read the drafts could request this.

>Donald

>From:  "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
>To:  [email-masked]
>Reply-To:  [email-masked]
>Date:  08 Dec 1998 16:35:55 -0500
>Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Fleischman, Eric W" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:40:32 -0800

I believe that Ole's point about distinguishing between working members and
the curious is a good one. However, his idea about moving the IETF to
convention centers is another matter altogether...

The bottom line is that unless we change the WG processes, many of the IETF
WGs will be deprecated if the attendance size continues to grow. 

I like the earlier idea of meeting in comparatively undesirable places such
as Minneapolis in March as a vehicle to constrain attendence. However,
should we pursue this idea we also need to ensure that we do not discourage
the attendence of active members.

---

From: "Fleischman, Eric W" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:40:32 -0800

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 98 13:47:25 EST

I would suggest that the IETF take reservations for each working group
meeting at the time of registration.  Chairpeople when submitting
their request for a session can include a list of active participants
to be placed at the top of the list.  This will provide the IETF with
a better idea of the number of people interested in a particular
session for planning purposes and provide the ability to limit a
session to a particular list if a large enough room cannot be found.

I also think the idea of holding meetings in less than desireable
tourist locations is a good one.  

    Jeffrey Altman * Sr.Software Designer * Kermit-95 for Win32 and OS/2
                 The Kermit Project * Columbia University
              612 West 115th St #716 * New York, NY * 10025
  http://www.kermit-project.org/k95.html * [email-masked]

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 15:23:21 -0500

At 09:48 AM 12/9/98 -0800, you wrote:
>If there was a simple solution to this problem, we would probably have
>implemented it already.

simple solutions have been suggested a number of times.  they involve
substantial advance planning and elimination of the host (unless one
appears two years before the event).  While there is a claim that the
attendance has grown beyond planning, but evaluation of the attendance data
suggests that the growth is, in fact, proceeding rather predictably.

In effect, we have one or two IETFs every year that have a serious
logistical problem.  It appears that the terminal room has finally been
removed as a consistent problem, by virtue of getting a consistent and
competent resource to handle it on a continuing basis.  There's a lesson here.

Megan used to make a point of looking for places with large/wide corridors,
since the tendency of the IETF population to clutter the halls is
consistent.  Clearly we did not benefit from that bit of well-established
expertise this time, presumably due to limited choice.

The solution to limited choice is to find a few places that work well for
us and to keep visiting them, with the option of visiting new places ONLY
if they are clearly going to be very comfortable for the group.

d/ 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker                                       Tel: +60 (19) 3299 445
<mailto:[email-masked]>             Post Office Box 296, U.P.M.
                                         Serdang, Selangor 43400 MALAYSIA
Brandenburg Consulting                                          
<http://www.brandenburg.com>                       Tel: +1 (408) 246 8253
Fax: +1(408)273 6464              675 Spruce Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA

---

From: Wegrzyn Chuck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 16:01:36 -0500

Actually from experience - Houston in the winter is the
best time to find space. In the summer most of the big
hotels are taken with conventions. 

Chuck Wegrzyn
[email-masked]

-----Original Message-----
From: Perry E. Metzger [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 1998 3:33 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Ole J. Jacobsen; Gunnar Lindberg; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: this is insane. 

> tourist locations is a good one.  

I am dead serious in suggesting that Ottowa in winter, Texas in
summer, etc., is the approach we should be taking. The worst possible
locations that have good conference facilities. Any places that have
comfort and tourist value should be avoided.

Perry

---

From: Wegrzyn Chuck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 16:01:36 -0500

Chuck Wegrzyn
[email-masked]

-----Original Message-----
From: Perry E. Metzger [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 1998 3:33 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Ole J. Jacobsen; Gunnar Lindberg; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: this is insane. 

Perry

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 98 16:23:10 EST

> Perhaps a reservation list would be self-policing to some degree -- 
> if attendees don't consciously decide beforehand they will attend a 
> session, they are less likely to decide to attend it "on the spur of 
> the moment."  The problem would be inducing enough compliance to make 
> the reservation lists meaningful.  The obvious solution - a 
> gatekeeper at the door checking off names - is onerous from a number 
> of points of view.  Another problem is that the agenda is rarely set 
> at the time many people register (especially since the dearth of 
> meeting site hotel rooms at recent meetings has fostered the reaction 
> of registering within minutes of seeing the open registration 
> message).  So it is hard to see how reservations at the time of 
> registration would be possible.

Point made.  Modify my comment to be registration for a session
becomes available at the date of agenda publication which is two weeks
before the meeting.

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 98 16:23:10 EST

---

From: "Kevin M. Lahey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 21:28:59 -0800

>comfort and tourist value should be avoided.

That might not work out the way you intend...

As I totally failed to convey in tonight's plenary, I wonder about the
resolve of the "contributers" vs. the "observers".  It could very well
be that plenty of potential "contributers" would stay away from a
hardship location, and plenty of the "observers" would still like to
see what's going on, even if it meant a little extra trouble.
The IETF meetings certainly have a (well-deserved) reputation 
as fascinating places...

Kevin 
[email-masked]

---

From: "Kevin M. Lahey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 21:28:59 -0800

Kevin 
[email-masked]

---

From: "Feigel Reinhold (UC-ON/EMY)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 11:35:17 +0100

Dear all

As a new subscriber (since two days) I follow with interest your discussion
on how to reduce the amount of delegates to those who are really
collaborating in the work and to get rid of the "tourists".

Even if I don't know the rules in IETF for the selection of meeting places:

As since more than 10 years familiar with ITU standardization: Nearly all
Study Groups are meeting all times on one place, in Geneva, and therefore
the meeting place is not more attractive for "tourists".

Could this also be a solution for IETF to meet on only one place even if
this place could be attractiv? I'am shure IETF will loose its tourists
latest after the third meeting.

Might be that this idea is already discussed and not new.

Regards

Reinhold

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von:	Jon Crowcroft [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Gesendet am:	Donnerstag, 10. Dezember 1998 07:06
> An:	[email-masked]
> Betreff:	Re: this is insane.
> 
> 
> In message <v0410360fb2949329e010@[129.46.172.254]>, "John W. Noerenberg"
> typed
> :
> 
>  >>At 1:47 PM -0500 12/9/98, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
>  >>> meeting at the time of registration.  
>  
> at some point in the past, there was a tacit agreement that a WG could
> have observers (i cant recall when....) but it seems to me the idea
> has gone awry - implementors should be able to use the i-d, rfc,
> working code examples, as in the past, and not have to be _in the WG
> meeting_ unless they are contributors......why did we get into some
> sort of performance art event where there are 12 good folks and true
> and a public gallery of 100 rogues watching? in  a BOF, yes maybe, but
> not in a protocol design group -
> 
> it would be interesting to use the ietf  registration list and grep
> thru all the WG mail archives and rfc and i-d drafts and see how many
> people are registered who never wrote a thing - "we know who you are"
> ....
> 
> 
>  cheers
> 
>    jon

---

From: "Feigel Reinhold (UC-ON/EMY)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 11:35:17 +0100

Dear all

Regards

Reinhold

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:17:29 -0500

Fred, we made the comment last night that one problem was the working group
chairs didn't have good estimates of the number of people who would be
showing up in their workgroups:

My impression is that certain workgroups (not just BOFs) have spiked beyond
all expectation (I'm thinking diffserv, VPN, and a couple of others), and
that it's hard to imagine WG chairs having good forecasts for some of these
mega-groups.

Is it possible to imagine people expressing interests in attending WG
meetings at registration time, so that the WG chairs don't have to read
their minds (more than usual)?

The obvious flaws are:

People register before we know what WGs will be meeting (this would be most
significant for WGs that form just prior to the next IETF, and for
first-time BOFs),

Schedule conflicts would not be taken into account (although it might be
easier to avoid them if the registration process identified significant
conflicts among attendees expressing preferences)

The process would not be precise (we would still need excess capacity).

But might this help?

(Quoting Eric Travis:) "I may not be the brightest candle in the room, but
..." I also hear lots of first- and second-time attendees that think they
need to be in a meeting every time there is a meeting; I'm still learning
how much of the IETF meeting happens in the halls outside, and not just
during the breaks. This is one of the nicest things about Orlando - we can
go outside in the sun, so there's plenty of space for these conversations
(that take people out of the meeting rooms). (Let's NOT do this in Ottawa in
January, unless the strategy is to freeze the tourists to death!)

Another possibility is to assume that if 500 people show up for a BOF (in
Washington DC, for example), they aren't all solving the same problem,
anyway!

Spencer

---

From: "Robert (Bob) J. Aiken" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 08:35:00 -0800

>the attendence of active members.

Although I agree that holding the mtgs in undesirable places (ie. very coold
places in mid winter - I would also like to vote that we stay close to good
airport cities to make flight scheduling easy (options of times and
carriers) - e.g. Chicago in lieu of Fargo NOrth Dakota or the Antartic ;-) . 

bob

CISCO SYSTEMS  Bob Aiken, Internet Business Development Manager
  :     :      Advanced Internet Initiatives Division, Office of CTO 
.:|:...:|:..  6519 Debold Rd., Sabillasville, Md. 21780,USA  
1-301-271-2919(v),1-800-365-4578(pager), [email-masked]
"Nec Temere, nec Timide" ( "Neither rashly or timidly")

---

From: Jerry Skene <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:19:23 -0500

A simple solution, which cost nothing to try out, is to put a sign on
the first 2-3 rows of seats:

"Reserved for those that have submitted content being discussed at this
meeting. All others please respect this seating arrangement."

This should accomplish two things:
- helps ensure that those few attendees at each meeting that really
contribute are able to find a place to sit down
- helps encourage more people to make a contribution, furthering the
work of the WG.

Jerry Skene              | Tellabs, Inc.
Director,                | 45085 University Drive
International Standards  | Ashburn, VA 20147.2745
tel:+1 703 724-7302      | URL: www.tellabs.com
fax: +1 703 724-7202     | email:[email-masked]

---

From: Jerry Skene <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:19:23 -0500

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 06:21:31 -0800

>comfort and tourist value should be avoided.

I suggest that anyone stupid or insane enough to come to Orlando and sit in
WG meetings about which they are clueless (instead of by a pool or visiting
attractions) would not be deterred by winter in Ottowa.  OTOH, I (apparently
lacking Perry's masochistic and/or puritanical tendencies ;-) would think
twice about being voluntarily snowbound with him...

>
>Perry
>
>-
>This message was passed through [email-masked], which
>is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
>Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Harald Alvestrand.
>

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 06:21:31 -0800

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 06:38:11 -0800

Fleischman, Eric W <[email-masked]> writes:

>the curious is a good one.

It's not too bad, but I think that greater granularity is required.  I know
that I was once a newbie (as were Ole and Perry) and arguably among those
who appear to be being dissed in this thread.  My first IETF had exactly one
WG meeting in which I had any real technical interest, but I stayed the
whole time, checking things out and learning.  I was relatively clueless,
extremely curious and _enthusiastic_.  I don't really think the major
problem is either "tourists" or the quietly clueless: it is the people who
are simultaneously vociferous, clueless and lazy, the folks who are happy to
pontificate on items they don't understand but are unwilling to work on.

>However, his idea about moving the IETF to

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:08:53 -0800

I'm replying (belatedly) to the first message in this thread because of
rather wide streak of elitism and arrogance (and not a little hypocrisy)
that seems to be reflected in it.

>today because rooms were too crowded.

Which ones?  Was there no standing room, or just no seating left?  In other
words, did you miss the meeting because ther really was _no_ space in the
room or because you were not able to sit and be comfortable?  I _chose_ not
to attend a couple of meetings because I couldn't sit; I consider this to be
more an indication of my interest level (and the corresponding likliehood of
my making a meaningful contribution) than the overcrowding of the room.

>We have to do something about

If you are willing to endure Ottawa in winter, why not stand for an hour and
a half?  I'm picking on Perry (perhaps unfairly), but this whole thread has
the tone of aristocrats whining about the rabble.  I see no reason why Perry
or I or Fred Baker or Vint Cerf (well, maybe Vint :-) intrinsically
_deserves_ to sit in a meeting while others stand.  The larger meetings have
PA systems and if one is actively participating it is often _more_
convenient to stand then sit anyway; it is inconvenient if one's intent is
to read email or play solitaire, though.   I know one thing: I would much
rather have a clueless newbie who was willing to do work in my meetings than
the entire IESG, if the latter were merely adding  cachet and taking up
space.

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:43:46 -0800

Robert (Bob) J. Aiken <[email-masked]> writes:

>carriers) - e.g. Chicago in lieu of Fargo NOrth Dakota or the Antartic ;-)

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:43:46 -0800

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 08:47:43 -0800

Steve Deering <[email-masked]> writes:

>At 10:42 AM -0800 12/9/98, John  W. Noerenberg wrote:
>> Well we reserve a set at the front of the room for the WG chair.  Why
>> not also mark rows of seats for editors and authors, implementors,
>> list commentators, lurkers and the curious.
>
>How about reservations for the peripheral seats, next to the electrical
>outlets?  :-)

Next step: hire some maitre d's and bouncers...I can hear it now, "Deering,
party of one"  and "I'm sorry sir, but I can't find your name on the list"
;-)

>Steve

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 08:47:43 -0800

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 17:51:03 +0000

>people are registered who never wrote a thing - "we know who you are"

I think there's a disturbing implication here.

I don't see any shortage of people to *write* the drafts.  They also serve
who *read* and comment upon the drafts.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:48:36 -0500

>their minds (more than usual)?

actually, a long time ago in a different universe, I used to put mail
on working group lists asking those who intended to show up to drop me
a note.

I then multiplied the number by 3, and got a fairly accurate estimate.

In the current IETF environment, I think the multiplier would be 10,
and the task of counting responses may be onerous, but estimates are
certainly possible, if the WG chair so desires.

IMHO, Registration time doesn't cut it, for reasons mentioned before.

                      Harald A

-- 
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
[email-masked]

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:48:36 -0500

Harald A

---

From: Tim Salo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 08:44:59 -0600 (CST)

> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 14:27:21 -0500
> From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
> 	[...]
> My own wording for the trade-off you characterize is to note that the IETF
> is really quite willing to have participation from people who are obnoxious
> or ignorant, but not both.

I believe that the IETF would undoubtedly benefit from expecting at least
a modicum of professionalism from even the clueful.

-tjs

---

From: Tim Salo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 08:44:59 -0600 (CST)

-tjs

---

From: Jeff Schreiber <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 14:18:39 -0400

Ted Lemon <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>- NOT LA - even though LA theoretically has a decent downtown, you
>	   still have to drive everywhere.
>

    I didn't get the sense that LA was bad.  The Bonaventure last spring
    was a nice place... good sized meeting rooms, decent places to eat in
    the hotel itself, then plenty of places to eat close by (I was back out
    in LA, staying at the Omni - 2 blocks away, and definately got a better
    sense of some of the good places to eat within 3 blocks of the Westin).
    There also seemed to be plenty of semi-private locals to sit down and 
    talk... providing there isn't a Marathon. :)

                                -Jeff

--
Jeff Schreiber,            Process Software Corp.
[email-masked]   http://www.process.com
      TCPware & MultiNet: Stronger than Ever