Subject: Re: IETF #53 Schedule Stability

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 14:18:17 +0100

Stephen,

" I expect that there are more and more people like myself who 
  are drawn in for some aspect of the work, rather than a broad 
  interest in internet. "

Humm... apparently you are alone ;-) 

but from my point of view this translates a real issue... how
can we reconcile people with narrow focused scope with the 
global IETF philosophy understand the impact on the INTERNET,
IETFer first think to the global consistency and ubiquity of 
the IP protocols; this translates IMHO some mis-understanding 
of the IETF in general, its WG efforts and results impact on 
the INTERNET.

more practically i think that pre-agenda are going in the
direction you point out but i am completely OPPOSED to that:
because how can we determine the discussion time we would 
need if we don't know 1) the number of submitted I-Ds and 
the issue they could raise on mailing list 2) how they can
impact each other so for instance it might be better to put
WG X meeting before WG Y meeting (cross-WG discussion are
paramount importance in the current INTERNET environment)

see we in Minneapolis,
- dimitri.

Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> > As the scope of the work in IETF increases, I expect that there are
> > more and more people like myself who are drawn in for some aspect of
> > the work, rather than a broad interest in internet.
> 
> And what this means is that there are more and more people in IETF
> who are not aware of the broader impact of their work on other
> Internet areas.  So we have more and more groups working at cross-
> purposes to one another.
> 
> Travel budgets are the least of our problems.  What we really need
> to do is stop using narrowly focused WGs as a method of avoiding
> discussions between parties that have conflicting interests.
> 
> Keith
> 
> -
> This message was passed through [email-masked], which
> is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
> Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:00:27 -0500

> the issue they could raise on mailing list 2) how they can

If you know what you're doing, it's engineering.  If you don't,
it's research. ;)

In general, we really can't tie down the agenda *too* tightly
because we don't know what the show-stopping issues are (if we
did, we'd not need to have the meeting, right?) I'm sure we've
*all* seen meeting agendas for a single hour-long meeting end
up totally incorrect because one item suddenly ends up taking
far longer than originally budgeted.

> paramount importance in the current INTERNET environment)

If you already know beforehand that X and Y correlate, it's not
that hard to deal with.  The problem is that you can't pre-schedule
the random discussions in the hallway - I can think of a *number*
of Big Name People on this list, who could be put together for
30 mins or so, and will produce an important insight for *some*
working group.

Unfortunately, nobody knows *which* working group. ;)

(Not that I've ever actually *made* it to an in-person IETF meeting ;)
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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From: Stephen Trowbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 07:43:55 -0700

Dimitri,
> paramount importance in the current INTERNET environment)

I think this is my point. You should know not only the number,
but the content of IDs by today. Then with
a full week to consider how they relate, what the reaction is on
the mailing list, and what is the sensible
ordering of discussions, you can still have an agenda in time
to avoid that the telecom/datacom industry gives a big gift of
$$ to the airline industry. The only way this is not the case
is if people do not follow the rules, or if people are not
attentive to consider the submitted IDs and their relationships
in a timely manner to form the agenda.
Regards,
Steve