Scott,
Interesting thoughts. One thing I can see as being possibly
a bit of a problem is that this approach - as opposed to the present
one - would most likely impose a different sort of problem on a lot
of people (the Secretariat, the host sponsor and the meeting Hotel
- just to name a few).
Making your - admittedly optimistic - assumption and following
it to a conclusion leads me to suspect that many (possibly most) WG
meetings would likely be subject to last-minute cancellation if all
remaining issues are resolved immediately before the meetings.
In many ways, this would be a good result. The possibility of
being able to avoid the trip would add incentives to resolve issues
before the meeting. People who can't make it to a meeting would miss
less if even a few issues were resolved on the mailing list before
the meetings.
In other ways, however this would be not so good. Hotels that
lost as many as 2,500 bookings on the Saturday or Sunday before the
meeting would black-list the IETF making it very difficult to set up
future meetings. The host sponsor(s) would not be able to guess how
much equipment and resources would be required. The Secretariat will
be in a walking nightmare simply trying to juggle room bookings to
accommodate meeting cancellations and rescheduling. Attendees will
most likely not know if and when meetings will be held. People will
have made travel plans around meetings that may or may not happen.
And so on.
And don't for a minute think that Employers would fail to note
that issues got resolved prior to a trip to Iceland but not before a
similar meeting in Hawaii.
I think things would eventually settle out. For example, the
IETF currently has enough going on that statistical methods should
find some applicability (how many will actually end up coming, how
many rooms will be needed and for how long). But the transition
would be _tough_.
--
Eric
--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: Scott W Brim [mailto:sbrim(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com]
--> Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 8:33 AM
--> To: Joel M. Halpern; Gray, Eric
--> Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
--> Subject: Re: EARLY submission deadline - Fact or Fiction?
-->
--> The reason we have the "deadline" is to protect the Secretariat from
--> having to be heroes. However, best would be if the need for such
--> protection didn't arise.
-->
--> Instead of assuming that things to be discussed in the meetings will
--> be written just before the meeting, and creating complexity and
--> bureaucracy around that assumption, institute a policy that nothing
--> *will* be discussed in the meeting unless it has already been
--> discussed on the mailing list and the WG has failed to
--> reach agreement
--> on the issue (note this is about issues, not documents). This will
--> reduce the number of drafts which must get out just before
--> the meeting
--> to only those which capture the result of ongoing discussion. The
--> others won't get discussed anyway. OK, I'm optimistic, but
--> I see all
--> this discussion of mechanisms to elaborate a situation we don't want
--> to be in in the first place.
-->
--> swb
-->
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