Re: Future F2F meetings?

Ignoring any other factors around the recent TPAC meeting, I think it 
was significantly less productive than it would have otherwise been if 
we'd held it with a larger time buffer between it and any IETF meetings.

For example, the slides that I put together for the part of the 
discussion that I led were only what I could throw together the 
preceding Sunday over a couple of hours, since the IETF week offered no 
time to do so. Beyond that, I felt somewhat unprepared for the remaining 
conversations for the same reason: my attention had been towards the 
IETF meeting.

Combine this with the physical and mental exhaustion of a solid week of 
standards meetings, and I'm afraid that a face-to-face meeting 
immediately after IETF week is unlikely to yield any progress. If 
anything, the exhaustion will make people more grumpy and less in a mood 
for compromise.

Let me put a finer point on this.

First, look at this page; pay particular attention to the "Special 
Requests" column: https://ietf.org/meeting/88/requests

I count on the order of 20 IETF working group chairs who have explicitly 
requested not to be scheduled on Friday (I'm including requests like 
"schedule only on Monday through Wednesday"). While some of these have 
plausible reasons (one cites a visa expiration), the majority of them 
read like excuses to make that request. Some merely make the request 
without even trying to justify it.

Why?

Because Fridays of IETF week are less useful. Because everyone is grumpy 
and frazzled and operating at a diminished mental capacity. Because 
nothing useful happens when people are in that state of body and mind. 
It's the elephant in the room; while we don't acknowledge it much 
anymore, experienced chairs know that it means to have a meeting at the 
end of IETF week.

And then we want to stand up and choose /exactly that suboptimal time/ 
to schedule a meeting? There's no better way to bias for failure.

/a


On 12/20/13 07:35, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> I think this is a bad idea.
>
> After a week of IETF, people are brutally tired, especially since many of
> us have meetings before IETF.
>
> I am fine with a separate interim either alone or joint with RTCWEB.
>
> -Ekr
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Stefan Håkansson LK
> <stefan.lk.hakansson@ericsson.com> wrote:
>> There was so far no response to this mail.
>>
>> But in the interest of making progress, we will start to plan for a F2F
>> meeting in London (preliminary for the Media Capture TF and the WebRTC
>> WG) the weekend after the London IETF meeting (meaning that the dates in
>> question are March 7th - 9th). Let us know if you think this is a bad idea.
>>
>> The IETF rtcweb WG is also discussing a f2f meeting in late May, our
>> idea is to make this a joint meeting with W3C WebRTC WG and Media
>> Capture TF.
>>
>> Stefan for the chairs
>>
>> On 2013-12-12 13:07, Stefan Håkansson LK wrote:
>>> Sorry for the cross posting, but this relates to both the TF and the WG.
>>>
>>> We think that f2f meetings are helpful in progressing the work - it
>>> gives much higher bandwidth for the discussion. We'd like to get your
>>> view about arranging f2f meetings during the first half of next year
>>> (and our thinking is that both the Media Cap TF and the WebRTC WG should
>>> meet).
>>>
>>> - One possibility would be to have a meeting (in London) the weekend
>>> after the London IETF meeting, March 8-9 2014. The advantage would be
>>> that many of the participants in our work would be there anyway because
>>> of the IETF meeting.
>>>
>>> - Another would be to arrange a separate meeting in (perhaps) May next
>>> year, possibly jointly with the rtcweb WG of the IETF.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Would you join? Should we do one of them (which?),
>>> none or both?
>>>
>>> Stefan for the chairs
>>>
>>> P.S. I know that the WebRTC F2F in Shenzhen did not work that well due
>>> to some special circumstances - but F2F meetings are usually very
>>> productive IMO
>>>
>>>
>>