On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 3:53 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
wrote:
--On Sunday, January 10, 2016 07:40 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
(4) "Couldn't make a determination, due eitherto lack of
attendance by key people or some technical issue.". As with
(3), little has been lost and we can always hold a physical
BOF under traditional rules if needed.
Speaking from the time-zone-challenged corner, I see a high
risk of hitting (4) rather frequently. Of course you can argue
that there is also a high risk of hitting (4) with face2face
BOFs at unpopular destinations.
Yes. I could also suggest that the virtual plan gives more
flexibility of scheduling to accommodate people who are
"normally" time-zone-challenged or even of holding two sessions
at different times and collecting information from both. (4)
may certainly happen and, again, if it does, it seems to me that
we gain some small amount of information and don't lose much.
We will clearly have to experiment and learn as we go along but
it seems to me that, if we don't need just about everyone in the
same physical room at the same time, it opens up all sorts of
possibilities.
That said, it does seem worth a try.
thx.
john
p.s. I read Phillip's note, but I see most of the issues he has
raised as more "bad charter", "bad WG management", "failure of
the IESG to supervise adequately", or even "not enough
mechanisms for feedback by the broader community into how a WG
is going" and not specifically BOF problems.
The BOF part of the issue is what the purpose of the BOF should be.
I think we spend rather too little time discussing what the general
problem space is. There are main two ways that a WG can fail. The
first is that they pick something so big and complex that they can't
deliver. We haven't done that for a long time. The second is that they
tackle a problem so small that either nobody cares or nobody can
actually make use of it without the rest of the support required. We
do that a lot.
Having a virtual BOF and spending a day or two days brainstorming the
problem area is probably a better use of people's time than a lot of
other things we do.