Re: Fix the Friday attendance bug: make the technical plenary the last I

On Nov 10, 2009, at 10:06 PM, Stanislav Shalunov wrote:

> This would recognize that Friday is not a "normal day" and so would  
> be an improvement.
> First, I appreciate you stepping forward.  This would redistribute  
> ~5% of the existing Friday pain to RRG.  Regardless of other  
> outcomes of this discussion, RRG should always from now on be  
> scheduled on Friday as long as we have a Friday.
For the record, I just attend the RRG (when I can), Lixia Zhang and  
Tony Li are the chairs. And, it's meeting on Friday this week as well.
Regards
Marshall

> Second, do we have ~19 more WGs that would trade off having the  
> Friday pain for having a consistent meeting day on Friday?
> --
> Stanislav Shalunov
> BitTorrent Inc
> shalunov(_at_)bittorrent(_dot_)com
>
> personal: http://shlang.com
>
> On Nov 11, 2009, at 4:04 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
>
> > Dear Stanislav;
> >
> > RRG always had good attendance on Friday. It was, I think, viewed  
> > by the people interested
> > as a session to schedule for.
> >
> > So, one possible solution would be to see if there were WG or RG  
> > that wanted permanent Friday status.
> > That way, people who wanted to attend these sessions would know  
> > that they had to be there on Friday.
> > This implies that there would be people that would only come for  
> > that day, or for the end of the week, but we have some of that  
> > already.
> > Marshall
> >
> >
> > On Nov 10, 2009, at 3:05 AM, Stanislav Shalunov wrote:
> >
> > > [I hope to raise this issue during the administrative plenary.   
> > > Because I obviously won't have time at the microphone to present  
> > > the full argument and because I might not get the chance at all,  
> > > I'm writing something down and sending it out now.]
> > > When you participated in a WG on any Friday during the past  
> > > meetings, you probably noticed impaired attendance.  This becomes  
> > > particularly visible for WG chairs, few of whom are thrilled to  
> > > get a slot on Friday.
> > > Friday is declared to be a real day, but the declaration is  
> > > disregarded (rationally, as I'll explain) by a fraction of  
> > > participants.  This makes Friday a defective day, making it  
> > > rational for more people not to attend, creating a positive  
> > > feedback loop making it more defective.
> > > The fuzzy end bug wasn't always there.  When the IETF didn't have  
> > > sessions on Friday, the technical plenary was the last thing that  
> > > happened during each meeting for normal participants [1].  The  
> > > plenaries have the largest attendance, so it put a very sharp stop  
> > > to the IETF meeting.  When Friday sessions were added, there were  
> > > few to begin with, so the end got fuzzy and the attendance  
> > > problems began.
> > > For some participants, it is rational to skip Friday in its  
> > > present form.  Checking this meeting's agenda, Monday currently  
> > > has 124 track-hours [2] worth of sessions.  (Tuesday-Thursday are  
> > > similar full-day affairs for most people, even if differently  
> > > structured because of the social and the plenaries.)  Friday  
> > > currently has 29.5 track-hours worth of sessions, ~4.2 times  
> > > less.  For a person who is only interested in a few sessions,  
> > > there's a good chance that none of them will fall on Friday.  If  
> > > the person judges that the relatively small probability of missing  
> > > an interesting session (or, more precisely, the relatively small  
> > > expected number of interesting sessions) that fall(s) on Friday,  
> > > multiplied by the cost of missing a session, is smaller than the  
> > > cost of an extra day of travel, it is rational for them not to  
> > > attend Friday.  Repeating that Friday is a normal day is not going  
> > > to change the calculation if Friday continues to be ~4.2 less  
> > > valuable.
> > > Once these participants choose to go home on Friday, the value of  
> > > Friday is further depleted.  Not only there are fewer sessions on  
> > > Friday, but they are not as well attended, creating a multiplier  
> > > through a positive feedback loop.
> > > The bug is easy to fix: we should restore the technical plenary to  
> > > where it was before -- namely, to the very end of the IETF meeting  
> > > for normal participants.
> > > Put the technical plenary on Friday afternoon.  This will make it  
> > > natural to increase the number of track-sessions on Friday.  This  
> > > will restore a sharp end to the IETF, fixing the Friday bug.
> > > A side effect of the fix is that it would increase the total  
> > > number of available track-hours by about 15%, making scheduling  
> > > easier for the next few meetings after implementation.
> > > Here are some immediate, but invalid, objections that this  
> > > proposal is prone to elicit:
> > > "But nobody will come to the technical plenary Friday afternoon!" --
> > > 1. We did come to the technical plenary when it was the last thing  
> > > on Thursday, and it was in the evening.
> > > 2. If people won't come to the technical plenary, they won't come  
> > > to WG meetings.  If it's an unsuitable meeting time, we should not  
> > > put WGs there.
> > +1
> >
> > Marshall
> >
> > > "Can't we just make sure it's not the same groups that get put on  
> > > Friday?" --
> > > Zero-sum redistribution of pain pitting WGs against one another  
> > > does not reduce total pain.  We can fix the bug instead of making  
> > > everyone suffer equally.
> > > "Can't we only put unimportant sessions, like second sessions and  
> > > maybe these two session I personally don't like, on Friday?" --
> > > No.  Friday started out with only non-technical sessions.  The  
> > > first was IPR, if I recall.  The IETF needed more first-class  
> > > technical track-hours, which is why they bled into Friday.  We  
> > > have no plan to reduce the number of sessions.  Moving technical  
> > > plenary to Friday afternoon would, instead of reducing the number  
> > > of first-class hours, increase it, moving Friday closer to a full  
> > > day.
> > > "Can't people just book tickets after the agenda comes out?" --
> > > This is not the answer for two reasons:
> > > 1. Agenda changes.
> > > 2. This replaces "expected number of interesting sessions that  
> > > fall on Friday" with "number of interesting sessions that fall on  
> > > Friday".  Because the expected number was lower, the actual number  
> > > will be lower on average, giving a similar aggregate effect.
> > > We shouldn't suffer from the Friday bug and repeat "normal day"  
> > > mantra.  We should fix the bug that detached the technical plenary  
> > > from the end of the IETF meeting by moving it to the end again.
> > > -- Stas
> > >
> > > PS The WG that I cochair happened to get the short straw this  
> > > meeting with several key contributors unable to attend, which  
> > > triggered my thinking about how to fix the Friday bug, but this  
> > > message is not about any particular WGs.  Again, we should not  
> > > redistribute the pain or worry if it gets distributed evenly when  
> > > we can simply remove it.
> > > [1] "Normal participants" = {all participants} - {people who come  
> > > for a single meeting or two} - {members of IESG, IAB, etc.}
> > > [2] track-hours = sum_slots num_sessions*duration.  This is an  
> > > imperfect proxy for person-hours, because it does not take into  
> > > account number of attendees of the sessions.  (I don't have data  
> > > on person-hours by day of the week.)  To partially mitigate, I  
> > > avoided picking Tuesday-Thursday with the huge social event and  
> > > the plenaries as baseline.
> > > --
> > > Stanislav Shalunov
> > > BitTorrent Inc
> > > shalunov(_at_)bittorrent(_dot_)com
> > >
> > > personal: http://shlang.com
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
> > > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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