I think there are really two issues here.
First is people who have an idea they want to present, but that idea either
doesn't fit the charter of any particular working group (or they don't know
about such a working group), or else said working group's schedule is too full
with existing work. The only way they can do this, is to "schedule" some bar
bof, and hope the right people come and listen. For these people, the larger
the audience, the better.
The other kind is people with just a topic they think something should be done
about. In that case, they really want to find a small group of people who may
be passionate about the topic, and think of ideas about what the IETF can do
here.
The second group are the candidates for the classic bar BoF, whether it is held
in an actual bar, in the hallways of the meeting venue, or in a meeting room
but the classroom-style arrangement of the chairs there is not so great. I
think the best way to schedule one of those is to send a message to the
attendee list (or the IETF list) saying "I'd like to get together to talk about
this-or-that. Anybody who's interested, please email me off-line". Requiring an
email sets the bar for participation just high enough that the people who just
want to read their email won't come. Then this organizer can see how many
people are interested, and find the appropriate venue based on that, informing
them by private email.
What we really should be thinking about, is what to do with the first group.
They are likely to have a presentation, so they need a meeting room, and they
do want a large audience (so maybe someone there says, "I think we can do this
at so-and-so WG". One idea may be to allocate a fair-sized room for this
purpose (something like Berlin in the MECC) and allocate the time there in
30-minute chunks, of which no more than half is the presentation, and the rest
is time for questions. The list of topics would not be moderated, unless there
are so many of them, that they won't fit, and the list, including a timetable
can be published, with slots taken on a first-come-first-served basis. This
way, the presenter can avoid having conflicts between their presentation and
some session where all the people they want are attending.
Just a thought. There are probably other ways to do this.
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