John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> wrote:
--On Sunday, October 23, 2011 07:05 -0700 "Murray S. Kucherawy"
<msk(_at_)cloudmark(_dot_)com> wrote:
... I also am very familiar with the fact that getting work done
on lists can be a real challenge: People get sidetracked and can
take days, weeks, or even months to answer something that's
holding up a working group.
But _why_ is that something "holding up a working group"?
If you're sitting on a mailing list and someone asks you to
provide a document review by some date and you say nothing,
there's no indication of whether or not you even got the
request. If you're sitting in a meeting room and someone asks
you to provide a document review by some date, that person is
likely to get an answer from you right away.
But is that "right-away" answer necessarily useful?
In short: Meetings don't stall, but lists do.
I have seen many meeting stall. :^(
Fortunately, they end. ;^)
We're stuck with human nature here, and human nature tends to
put things off until the "last minute". Meetings "work better"
because they start and end at known times.
Murray, fwiw, your analysis doesn't require f2f meetings. If it
could be done, well-conducted virtual/remote meetings would work
as well because they, too involve fixed cutoffs, real-time
responses, and opportunity to confront those who may not be
responding, etc.
I bring to your attention an existence proof: the IESG.
For years they've been doing the vast bulk of entirely-too-much
work over "telechats". They _have_ fixed cutoffs, real-time
responses, and bi-weekly opportunities to confront those who may
not be responding. Et cetera...
IMHO, we shouldn't dwell on why face-to-face meetings work better:
we should admit they really don't work well enough.
I follow far too many (heck, one would be too many!) WGs where
the only cutoff is the I-D submission deadline before IETF week.
We're all seeing the ritual announcement in WG lists right now:
"If you'd like to present something, tell us!"
WG chairs put so much effort into trying to make IETF-week
meetings work well that you really can't blame them for relaxing
a bit after IETF week completes. But too often, the momentum is
lost: WGCs have assigned responsibilities to folks who did show
up; and they too are exhausted by the end of IETF week. Finally,
they are roused by the I-D submission deadline for the next IETF
week.
:^(
I follow other WGs where there are Interim Meetings. The result
is much happier -- quite possibly _mostly_ because of the added
cutoff.
Admittedly, the face-to-face Interims work better than virtual
Interims; but I'm not convinced that would still be the case if
instead of one face-to-face we had three or more virtual Interims.
There is a definite learning-curve working with conferencing
software, but once you've climbed this it works well enough. And
the additional cutoffs, IMHO, accomplish almost as much as the
meetings themselves! ;^)
My advice is to put more effort into formal scheduling of
Interim meetings (probably mostly virtual Interims). Currently
these are treated as exceptional events needing AD approval:
while I agree AD-approval probably belongs there, I'd wish we
could treat them as "normal" events.
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>
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