Subject: RE: survey on Friday IETF sessions

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 12:20:10 -0400

First, let me apologize for bcc-ing, rather than cc-ing, the 
IETF list.   I _told_ you I was burned out, and I'm not even on 
the IESG (although I'm clearly getting old).

Several people have written me and said, essentially, "not 
everyone is on the IESG, and _we_ are still fresh on Friday". 
Ok, that is fair.  But we claim that we want cross-area review, 
more participation by people outside the core of a WG, and fewer 
late surprises.   Those suggestions either require much more 
significant changes than tuning the schedule (I personally favor 
changes in those areas, but...) or require designing our 
schedules around the overloaded.  Or we could designate the 
extra day as reserved for only those sessions that didn't need 
much external attention.   We've tried the latter.  It didn't 
work well, but it might be worth considering again.

Just my thoughts -- and I am still not recovered enough that I 
am sure I'll believe them at the end of the week.

      john

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John C Klensin [mailto:[email-masked]]
>> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 9:31 PM
>> Subject: Re: survey on Friday IETF sessions
>>...
>> An additional thought about Friday meetings that the survey
>> doesn't capture...
>>
>> Whether the problem is "Friday" or "after four days", our
>> meetings are intense enough that many of the people who are
>> participating in several WGs, the plenaries, etc., end up in
>> a  state by Friday such that they aren't real functional
>> (terms  like "wasted" and "zombie" come to mind).  Especially
>> since that  high-activity group includes all, or almost all,
>> of the IAB and  IESG, Friday sessions seem to have rather low
>> productivity or at  least discussions that are unusually
>> risky in terms of reaching  well-thought-out conclusions.
>>
>> Many years ago, we tried having the IESG meet Friday mornings
>> (in a meeting slot) to give them an opportunity to reprise
>> the  week, identify issues, make plans, highlight things
>> needing  cross-area attention, etc.   We finally gave it up
>> after  noticing that we spent a lot of time staring at each
>> other,  unable to form complete sentences and showing other
>> signs of  mental exhaustion.
>>
>> Unless we can figure out a way to reduce the level of
>> exhaustion  that comes with our present schedule, I'd
>> question the  productivity of adding a full extra day, even
>> if no other  considerations applied.  For example, I've not
>> in favor of it,  but Friday (or fifth-day) sessions would
>> make a lot more sense  to me if we dropped all evening
>> sessions, including the  plenaries, and moved them into the
>> daytime.
>>
>> Or perhaps I'm just getting old :-(
>>
>>       john

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