Frank Kastenholz wrote:
At 09:28 AM 12/19/00 -0500, RJ Atkinson wrote:
We can also end the de facto practice of
using the sessions as tutorials and discontinue fancy prepared
presentations of the material already in the I-Ds. While
tutorials are a fine thing, they are appropriate for USENIX
or Interop, not IETF WG sessions, IMHO.
I tried doing this in my area when I was on the IESG.
It didn't work. The chairs and attendees want this stuff.
One can also argue that with 400+ people in a room, having discussions
about minute protocol details is a less efficient use of time than
providing a concise summary of where the authors think the draft is at.
This gives everyone a chance to synchronize and emerge from the usual
"please fix the wording in table 3" minutiae to the bigger picture - is
this generally good/interesting stuff, is it sufficiently ready to move
forwards, is the scope clear, what are the big open issues, etc?. These
types of presentations do serve as a "tutorial" to the vast majority of
people that can't track every wording change in a draft.
A good overview that triggers a "you're going off the rails" remark is
much more useful than the common "shall we use upper case or lower case"
discussion with the same ten participants who are already particpating
in the mailing list discussion.
Further, I'd suggest that each area would have the
option (discretion of the relevant ADs) of having a single
Area Meeting someplace. This would last only perhaps 2 days.
It could be held at a rather larger number of venues
(due to smaller attendance)
I do not believe that this would work. Too many people
just go to see what's going on and be there in case
"something important" happens. If you have a
meeting, they will go.
It also tends to disenfranchise those who are not on infinite travel
budgets.
--
Henning Schulzrinne http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs