On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 08:07:05 -0500
Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> wrote:
if we could get rid of wireless and powerpoint, we'd be much better
off.
Personal opinion: disagree. Wireless is immensely useful to grab a
document, check something on another SDO's web site, and - yes - for
instant messaging (e.g. "we need you in here right now"). And some
people simply have to multitask in order to be able to attend IETF
meetings in the first place. The jabber scribing has become very
important for remote participants - this time we even had one Area
Director who was partcipating actively by jabber (and audio
streaming). The wireless glitches that interrupted jabber were a real
problem this time.
yes, yes, and yes. but in many meetings it's hard to escape the
impression that most of the people in the room aren't really paying
more than say 10% of their attention to the meeting.
As for presentations, the fact that they vary in quality can't be
blamed on PPT. It should be blamed on the presenters, perhaps.
not on PPT as opposed to any of the other similar tools that exist for
that purpose. but there's something about that medium that seems to
encourage poor presentations - slides consisting of a small amount of
text (because of the low resolution of the medium) rather than drawings
(because it's easier to type in text on a keyboard than it is to draw
drawings with a mouse or trackpad). even with the old-style
transparencies you could get more readable information on a page, and
you could draw on them in real time.
Edward Tufte has some useful things to say about power point (alas, not free).
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
I personally think that it may be appropriate that most people are not paying
attention
much of the time. In some WG, you may only really care about 1 or 2 drafts, and
not at all
about the details of the editorial progress of some other draft.
It seems to me that the best discussion happens when there is a review of
some open issue; maybe that could be promoted as "invited reviews" by the chairs
and given slots in the schedule.
Of course the real work of any meeting happens in the corridor...
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
and yet even this is beside the point. maybe this is age setting in,
but it seems to me we used to get a lot more work done when we used our
meetings primarily for discussion rather than scheduling presentations
for most or all of the meeting time. these days some IETF WG meetings
remind me of Apple's 1984 commercial...except that there's nobody to
throw a hammer through the screen.
one benefit of our somewhat reduced attendance should be that we can
get more work done by reverting to a more effective meeting style. (or
maybe our reduced attendance can be attributed to a widespread
realization that we're not getting much work done in these meetings?)
Keith
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