Subject: IETF #53 Schedule Stability

From: Stephen Trowbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 11:47:02 -0700

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. In my case,
being involved with transport networks draws me into the work of
certain sub-IP working groups, but not broad participation in IETF
as a whole.

In addition, many of us are faced with ever shrinking travel budgets.
Some strategies to deal with this include:
- only attending for the relevant portions of the meeting rather than
  the full week.
- by airline tickets in advance

In the past, it has been customary that the schedule for an IETF meeting
evolves up to about a week before the meeting, which makes it difficult
to reliably book in advance for those of us with narrower focus. As a
result, I wonder whether it is possible to stabilize the agenda earlier.

As the deadline for requests is February 22, would it be possible to
stabilize the agenda (at least WG and BOF meeting times, not necessarily
WG agendas) by March 1? This would still allow for 14-day advance
purchase of airline tickets.

Thanks,
Steve Trowbridge

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 15:15:17 -0500

> 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