RE: [IAB] BMWG Virtual Interim Meeting

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

--On Friday, October 16, 2009 20:46 -0700 Dan Wing
<dwing at cisco.com> wrote:

> 
>> 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. 
> 
> I don't agree there is a cause and effect that if WG's get
> work done between meetings it would reduce the big in-person
> meetings.  Is there experience you can share where this 
> occurred?

One answer is that I'm a firm believer in Parkinson's Law -- in
this case, we make more meeting time and the number of meetings
we "need" to hold and their agendas increase to use it up.  On
that basis, I'm not convinced that any of interim meetings,
multiple meetings per WG at IETF, Friday sessions, are a good
idea.  On particularly bad and cynical days, I believe we might
be better off with an ISO-like rule in which WGs and projects
are given a specific amount of time to get a standard together
and out the door; a possibility of one extension if it can be
justified; and then shutdown and discontinuation of the project.


But you read what I said differently from what I intended.  You
got "if WG's get work done between meetings it would reduce the
big...".   What I tried to say is that, if most of the work
shifted to the interim meetings, then it would be possible for
the community to reduce the number of large meetings somewhat
without loss of productivity.  No cause and effect, just
opportunity.

Of course, even without interims, we do have some data about a
related set of work patterns.  We have WGs who get a lot of work
--most of  their work-- done on mailing lists and WGs who get
most of their work done either at meetings or immediately before
them.  My somewhat subjective observational impression is that
the former demand fewer meetings/hours at IETF than the latter.
It wouldn't be too hard to actually measure if we cared enough
(i.e., thought we could do something useful with the data).

     john