Subject: a simple solution to the room crowding problem...

From: "Marshall Rose" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 13:50:39 -0800

well, at the risk of being re-branded a ne'er do well, i have a simple
suggestion to the meeting room problem.

first, let's see if we can agree that, in general, the problem is with
working groups and not bofs.
if so:

require that every working group publish at least one I-D prior to the
meeting. in that I-D put a password, e.g., "swordfish". the password should
be buried in the middle of a big paragraph of text somewhere, e.g.,
"big-endian, blah, blah, blah ... and the password is swordfish (don't tell
anyone, eh?) blah, blah, blah little-endian."

at the meeting, have a monitor stand at the door asking for the password. no
password? have the monitor give them a hard copy of the I-D with
instructions to read it cover to cover and then come back.

/mtr

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From: "Marshall Rose" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 19:37:24 -0800

>Intresting concept, maybe we should all wear
>purple robes with gold belts and speak in an
>ancient dialect (spl???).

i agree, but only if funny green hats go with the robes.

>Actually, quite seriously, its not a bad idea,
>a little crude, but some sort of qualification
>such as reading elementary docs would be a good
>prerequisite.

well, seriously then, all we really need to do is to require that people
wanting to enter the room have a hardcopy on them...

this should solve 90% of the problem with little overhead.

/mtr

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From: Ari Ollikainen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 21:46:51 -0800

At 1:36 PM 12/15/98, Antony Bowesman wrote:
>Marshall Rose wrote:
>Apart from all the trees.
>
        Which trees?

        Time to put this myth to rest...Paper is made from trees grown
        for the purpose and NOT from virgin growth forests ruthlessly hacked
        down to feed hungry printers and copy machines.

        Back to the nattering...

      OLTECO                    Ari Ollikainen
      P.O. BOX 3688             Networking Technology and Architecture
      Stanford, CA              [email-masked]
      94309-3688                415.517.3519

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From: Scott Huddle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:26:56 -0500

Other conferences that I've attended have required pre-registration
for individual sessions.  This seems to work very well for very 
in-demand sessions.  It has the added benefit of encouraging people 
to register early.  Because the secretatiat would then have an 
accurate count of people pre-registerring a session that would be
better able to accomodate with appropriate room sizes.   

Of course there needs to be an admission policy for this to work, those 
not registered for a particular session aren't allowed in the door 
for an already full room.  

To obviate the problem of the tourists bumping the people who "must
attend" the WG chair can reserve a certain number of seats, with the
rest being made available to tourists on a first registered basis.

-scott (imagining the scalping of seats to diff-serv)

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From: Scott Huddle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:26:56 -0500

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From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 13:32:11 -0800

>        down to feed hungry printers and copy machines.

Sounds like _somebody_ needs to cut back on the Weyerhauser KoolAid ;-)

>-
>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.
>

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From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 13:32:11 -0800

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From: Peter Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 18:17:55 -0800

Most people who show up are lurking.  Many would be willing to lurk in other
ways such as on a conference call or on an MBONE session (if they really
worked reliably all the time ...).

Why not press technology into the solution space (although I do like the
secret key idea).

For many, it would be quite useful to have alternatives to attending the
meetings.  If we can solve their problem, then we can reduce the number of
people in the rooms.  This would require offsite access for all meeting
rooms.

peter

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From: Peter Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 11:02:42 -0800

Keith,

No, I don't know that they intend to lurk; I observe that in effect people
are lurking.   As you suggest the physical setting (100's of people) might
be keeping people from participating due to their own psychological
limitations. 

I can believe that most people come to the physical meeting for the
_opportunity_ to contribute.  if we had an mbone and/or tele conference into
every session and the people running the meeting were sensitive to their
presence then people "calling in" could participate w/o being in the room.

A very real problem is that someone can want to be in a session, but due to
physical contraints they  can not participate _AT ALL_.  This is the problem
that started this mail thread.  There have been IETF's where I wanted to go
to at least one session but due to work contraints it was impossible to go
to the IETF.  If I could have called in I would have.  (I won't bore the
list with the attempts to participate in the Munich IETF over the Mbone -
grrrrr).

I am proposing an inclusionary mechanism instead of an exclusionary
mechanism such as individual prioritization.  There is a cost, although I
will note that our friendly carriers might be willing to contribute
conferencing resources to something like the IETF.

regards and happy holidays,

peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Moore [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, December 18, 1998 4:29 PM
To: Peter Ford
Cc: [email-masked]'
Subject: Re: a simple solution to the room crowding problem... 

> Most people who show up are lurking.

do we really know that?  at least in Orlando, when I took the trouble to 
poll a few sessions to see what people were there for, the majority of 
attendees were actually there in hope of contributing useful input.
admittedly this is limited data, but I wouldn't want to base a policy
decision on the the belief that most people are lurkers without more
evidence to support that belief.

there may be a group dynamics effect at work here - if you get more than
say 30 people in a room, most of them will keep their mouths shut unless
called on.  only the most bold/obnoxious, or those elected as leaders 
or speakers, are likely to speak.  so it may appear that there are 
large numbers of lurkers, when this is really not the case.

maybe we need to find better ways to give voice to the silent majority
of would-be contributors, rather than implicitly favoring the
bold/obnoxious.

Keith

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From: "Mark Harrison" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 19:14:10 +0800

David W. Morris <[email-masked]> wrote:
>being able to
>follow the discussion in another room via closed circuit TV within the 
>Hotel would have been sufficient.

I think this is the best idea so far.  And reruns can play on the hotel
pay-per-view. :-)

Mark.

[email-masked]
Mark Harrison, AsiaInfo Computer Networks,
Beijing, China

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From: "Mark Harrison" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 19:14:10 +0800

Mark.

[email-masked]