Hi Rich,
On 15/12/2015 02:25, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 08:14:53AM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
A real commitment to real inclusiveness is not free.
Agreed. Real inclusiveness will take more work and some adapation.
For example, I think *all* in-person meetings should be discontinued,
as those exclude all but the elite, privileged few who have the time
and money and employer/family tolerance for them. And even remote
participation in these requires real-time activity by people who
may be a significant number of timezones away -- should the IETF really
expect someone to be on a 3 AM call (when they'd probably like to be
asleep) or on a 2 PM call (when they may be working)?
No. But that timezone argument applies just as much to virtual meetings
as to f2f meetings. The big advantage of the f2f weeks is that those
who are fortunate enough to have a travel budget all end up in the same
time zone and have nothing else to do except focus on the meetings.
It's perverse to ignore this advantage.
(The IETF plenary-week method is also far superior to SDOs that mainly
schedule individual f2f meetings of working groups in different places.)
The IETF should not be trying to solve the problem(s) of remote
participation in physical meetings. The IETF should be working on the
complete elimination of all physical meetings -- because as long as
those exist, all the talk about "inclusiveness" is just that: talk.
Actually the IETF has considered email to be the primary venue for
consensus for more than twenty years, because it is both inclusive
and independent of time zones. Meetings of any kind are an adjunct
to this. (Speaking personally, I just don't do virtual meetings at
unsocial hours. What's the point, when all definitive decisions
are taken on the basis of drafts and email?)
Brian