RE: WG Interim Meeting Opportunity in January 2009

["David Harrington" <ietfdbh at comcast.net>]

> I will say that I'm a little troubled we need four meetings a year
to
> get the work done.  How come we can't get more work done
> asynchronously?  The Montreal meeting on v4/v6 did seem to get a lot
> done, so I get why the interim seems like a good idea.  But it bugs
me
> that we can't be more effective with the time we are already
spending
> at meetings.


Some of the most effective interims I have attended were held on the
Fri-Sat (and possibly Sun) weekend following an IETF meeting, in the
same location. During the week, we discussed the background of the
open issues. In the interim, we actually work to achieve solutions to
the issues, with the smaller number of very-interested people who
choose to stay for the interim.

The most effective interims also have white boards, and tables and
sesating organized to encourage interaction rather than class-style
with one person (at a time) presenting powerpoint slides to an
audience of many. This reminds me of the earlier days when we used
transparencies and markers to get real work done at the IETF; we seem
to have lost some of that ability to have interactive discussions with
just-in-time pictures to illustrate discussion points.

Much time is spent providing powerpoint status reports to casual
attendees. If we keep the status presentations in the first part of
the week, companies only interested in monitoring what is happening in
WGs, rather than contributing to the solutions could schedule shorter
travel times, and the end of the week could focus on interim-like
solution sessions.

If we want to aggregate interims and minimize additional travel, it
would make sense to allow interims directly after the IETF week. 

David Harrington
dbharrington at comcast.net
ietfdbh at comcast.net
dharrington at huawei.com