RE: Meeting room size estimation

[Tony Hain <tonyhain at microsoft.com>]

This sounds easy, but when the exceptions are taken into account (ie: I will
attend x unless it conflicts with y), the already difficult task of creating
the agenda gets even harder. The IETF has and will grow to fill its
container, much like the root ball of a plant. The reason the recent
problems are becoming more pronounced is we have exhausted the incremental
spaces and the next size container is a significant leap. It is also
extremely unlikely that any real work would be accomplished in convention
center sized rooms, which would lead to more content free presentations than
we already have.

===================================================
Tony Hain			tonyhain at microsoft.com
<mailto:tonyhain at microsoft.com> 


		-----Original Message-----
		From:	Bernie Volz [mailto:volz at PROCESS.COM]
		Sent:	Monday, December 14, 1998 9:31 AM
		To:	braden at ISI.EDU
		Cc:	IETF at ietf.org; FRED at CISCO.COM
		Subject:	RE: Meeting room size estimation

		How about asking some additional questions on the
registration form?

		If the form asked which working groups or BOF sessions are
you likely to
		attend, that would give the folks scheduling sessions an
idea as to the
		likely attendance. Of course, past history can also be used
as it might
		be more accurate for sessions that have been running for
several IETF
		meetings.

		The web form would just allow follow to check the sessions
they are
		likely to attend (just the WG or BOF session name, not the
time/date
		as those might not be known).

		- Bernie Volz
		  Process Software

		From: braden at ISI.EDU
		Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 08:44:11 -0800
		Message-ID: <199812141644.AA07059 at gra.isi.edu>
		To: IETF at ietf.org, fred at cisco.com
		Subject: Meeting room size estimation
		CC: braden at ISI.EDU


		Fred,

		As the co-chair of an IETF working group, I must confess to
some
		puzzlement about estimating meeting room size.  How can I do
this?
		I really have little idea how many people showed up in my
working group
		at, say, the last four IETF meetings.  It is always a
g**awful big
		room full of faces and a long list of names on the blue
sheets,
		but I don't keep any record of how many.  Perhaps keeping
such
		statistics is a chair's responsibility, but I was not aware
of this.
		Even if I did know, how would I extrapolate to the NEXT
meeting,
		taking into account things like the overall registration?

		On the other hand, CNRI *does* have the data necessary to
make an
		informed guess.  I know they are terribly busy, but maybe
there could
		be some two-way flow of information between secretariat and
WG chairs,
		to home in on a realistic estimate?

		It also seems that this estimate must have large error bars,
so the
		actual meeting room should be 30% larger than the
		one-standard-deviation upper bound.  A .67 occupancy works
better than
		a 1.3 occupancy, I believe.  At least, it is more
comfortable.
		Maybe with central record keeping we could even learn to do
it better.

		Bob Braden