--On Thursday, 14 March, 2013 14:03 +0000 Ted Lemon
<Ted(_dot_)Lemon(_at_)nominum(_dot_)com> wrote:
I think it might also be worth encouraging working group
chairs to have working group breakfast or lunch meetings (RSVP
required) where newcomers are invited to come meet the chairs
and chairs can strategically invite a few return attendees
(but fewer than newcomers so they don't get crowded out) to
establish a connection with the newcomers. If this became
common it would probably require tool work, but what do folks
think of the idea in principle?
Fine plan if we can put a stop to having breakfast and lunch be
the prime target for assorted management and coordination
meetings. If I could have accepted every lunch meeting of that
variety that was suggested, this would have been nine lunches in
four days, and that excludes the ISOC presentation and Thursday
talk. As an IESG member, your schedule is, or will rapidly get,
worse than mine.
I think that, if we wanted to do this in a serious way, we would
ban both the ISOC (usually-Tuesday) presentation and the
Thursday lunch talks and the IESG, IAB (and their various
projects), and IAOC (and their various subcommittees) would need
to stop treating breakfasts and lunches as the target of first
choice.
I would, however, favor conducting a lottery among, say,
first-year attendees (but not first time unless they qualified
by useful mailing list participation -- see my earlier comment
and Spencer's response)-- and inviting the winners to sit in on
IESG or IAB breakfast meeting, ideally with a mentor who could
explain what is going on when needed. A similar lottery on the
WG Chairs list or in a leadership training session might be
equally helpful. It would provide an early and illuminating
view of sausage-making.
john