Fred, doing the planning cycle a bit earlier wouldn't hurt anyone,
but there will always be a chance of last minute changes.
However, I have to plead for the traditional argument. Cross-
fertilization is *more important than ever* today. As we have
changed the Internet architecture over the last few years by
adding middleboxes, the implications of one protocol for
another have got stronger, not weaker. You can't just run in,
change a bit in a protocol, and run out again. Everything is
connected to everything.
For some of us at least, cheap fares mean staying over Saturday
night and two months advance booking. The notion of deciding
at the last minute just doesn't arise.
Brian
Fred Douglis wrote:
Before the last IETF meeting I asked some IETFers in my company about the
rationale for having the final IETF schedule so close to the meeting date that
one can't necessarily get a reduced-fare ticket for the days one would want to
be there. I heard back that this is indeed a dead horse, so I guess I'm
beating it publicly this time....
Perhaps a while back it was a given that people could afford the time and
money to attend IETF for the entire week, and therefore the specific agenda is
not so important. And various people say how important the
cross-fertilization is, and how terrible it would be if people went to the
IETF meeting just for a WG meeting or two and then went home.
I've heard this viewpoint before, and I sympathize, but I think the whole
scale
of the IETF has shifted dramatically, and the IETF should be pragmatic. When
there were 500 people attending, and they could all come for a week and know
everything that's going on, that was fine. But the economic realities can
impinge on a company's ability to send dozens of people across an ocean (or
even halfway across a continent) for a week at a time (though I do grant that
if you do it for a week, at least you can get the cheap airfare :), and the
people who participate have ever-increasing other demands on their time.
Has anyone done a study to get an idea of what fraction of attendees currently
stay for what fraction of time? This might shed some light on the subject.
It's one thing to decree that it's a good idea, and it's another thing to
recognize that in practice maybe that's not the way it works anymore...
BTW, I also heard that WG/BOF chairs would kvetch if they had to ask for a
slot earlier. I can't buy this whatsoever -- if the whole schedule were known
well in advance to start and end two weeks earlier, where's the pain?
Fred