Re: [IAB] BMWG Virtual Interim Meeting

[John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com>]

--On Friday, October 16, 2009 18:27 -0700 Dan Wing
<dwing at cisco.com> wrote:

>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org 
>> [mailto:wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf Of Andrew
>> Sullivan Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 1:11 PM
>> To: James M. Polk
>> Cc: Working Group Chairs; IESG Secretary; bmwg at ietf.org; Dave
>> Thaler Subject: Re: [IAB] BMWG Virtual Interim Meeting
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 03:00:58PM -0500, James M. Polk wrote:
>> > however, Oct 30th is 10 days from the IETF meeting, which 
>> is awfully  
>> > close, don't you think?
>> 
>> FWIW, my personal opinion is that if WGs could complete most
>> of what they actually have to do in interims, prior to the
>> Big Giant Meeting, we might have some hope of beating back
>> the steady expansion of the IETF meetings into two weeks.
>> Especially in case the meetings are held virtually, in which
>> case the Internet weenies have to eat their own
>> Internet-virtual-environment dog food.  Which can't possibly
>> be a bad thing, can it?
> 
> +1.
> 
> And IETF could spend its time staying relevant this way -- do
> the work between meetings, and spend the meetings to figure
> out new work that is done between meetings.
> 
> If we really want to do work during the meetings we need 4-5 
> meetings a year instead of 3.  The meetings create deadlines,
> as is  obvious by the onslaught we are about to enjoy with
> Monday's upcoming -00 cutoff.

Dan, Andrew,

While I don't agree with the above, partially because I think
the IETF still benefits tremendously from the informal
intra-area and inter-area drop-ins, cross-calibration, and
cross-fertilization that come with meetings -- things that an
isolated WG-specific interim will never have-- if we shifted to
doing most of the work in "interims", it might be easy to cut
the big "everyone gets together in the same place" meetings to
twice a year or maybe even three in two years.  That would save
a lot of money and travel wear-and-tear for participants and
their organizations.  What it would do to the budget, at least
absent astronomical registration fees, is another matter, but I
hope we don't need to have "more attendance at more meetings"
drive our decision-making.

      john