As you can see from http://www.ietf.org/meetings/Agenda_51.html, the
plenary agenda this time does not contain a heavy dose of presentations.
This is intentional.
The plenary's intent is to give a chance for the whole IETF community to
communicate. Not only for the leadership to tell the community what
happened and what is important, but for the community to tell the
leadership what its concerns are, what the IETF is doing right, and what it
is doing wrong.
At recent IETFs, the plenary session's "open mike" time has often been
short - either because nobody had any issues to raise or because the time
was so late that most of the community felt like leaving the room.
This time, we are trying to make sure there is time available for the
questions you want to raise. And we are warning you ahead of time that we
will make it available.
Some matters (like hotel thermostats and cookie counts) belong in email to
the secretariat. Other matters (like US wiretap rules) belong in larger
forums than the IETF. But we believe there are matters where the IETF
community needs to talk.
Openness is the way we work. If we all don't speak, nobody will hear what
we have to say.
If you have a topic you want to raise, and feel like it, you might want to
send me (chair(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org) an email about it - we might be able to give you
better answers, or a more sensible dialogue, with some time to prepare. Or
buttonhole a colored-dot person in the hallway and talk to him or her about
it for a while.
But it is your choice. The mike is open.
Harald Alvestrand
IETF Chair