ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Scheduling unpleasantness

2008-03-24 10:45:49
Iljitsch,

Tell me about it... I had more than one WGs of my own meeting at the
same time (6MAN and MEXT), triple booked on slots like the Tuesday
morning slot where we had MEXT, V6OPS, and RRG at the same time, etc.
INT has for years generally met (at least!) twice on every slot, and the
ADs typically can go only to their own WGs. In this IETF I had 2 slots
where my WG was not meeting. And in addition to the official agenda
there is typically a fair number of private meetings and some bar BOFs,
even during the day.

But in general, I think this is due to an impossible number of conflicts
to satisfy, rather than some failure in running the scheduling algorithm
to get the optimal result. Basically, given a limited number of slots
and a number of interested folks/presenters/chairs/ADs that cause
conflict lists to be created, I'm not sure we can do any better. Of
course, I don't know this for a fact; its just my experience that when a
new conflict arises in my WGs, the alternate scheduling suggestions tend
to have either equal or worse conflicts. If anyone is interested in
checking the schedules for optimality, that might be an interesting
exercise, though.

But other than algorithm improvements, making the scheduling better
would mean either lengthening the IETF week, lengthening the days, or
reducing the number of people who need to be in several WGs/areas. The
last one is an argument for getting more new people into chair and
editor positions, as opposed to relying on the well known super experts
that come with the need-to-be-in-that-other-wg-too baggage...

Jari

_______________________________________________
IETF mailing list
IETF(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf