At IETF 119, the IESG is planning an experiment with ALLDISPATCH – the union of all the various dispatch functions into a single meeting. This is meant to solve five problems. First, proponents often have trouble figuring out where to dispatch something that spans multiple areas. Second, each Dispatch session aggravates scheduling because they have large target audiences, and consolidating them in a single time slot will simplify that problem. Third, participants with cross-area expertise, who provide valuable input for dispatching, find it difficult to attend multiple dispatch sessions. Fourth, today dispatch meetings sometimes result in routing to a different DISPATCH, which wastes months. Fifth, there is a common practice of “Dispatch Shopping'' in which proponents attempt to discover the least rigorous venue, which consumes agenda time and can result in lower-quality work admitted into the IETF.
Proposal Summary >From 0830-1130 on Monday of IETF119, there will be an ALLDISPATCH meeting that replaces DISPATCH, SECDISPATCH, and GENDISPATCH. Meetings of other working groups with dispatch functions – RTGWG, TSVWG, OPSAWG, and INTAREA – will not execute their dispatch functions in this cycle. Thus, ALLDISPATCH will be the sole venue for Dispatch functions at IETF 119 for all areas (including the new WIT area). Note that the dispatch function is only necessary when the IESG and/or proponents need community input on the disposition of proposals for new work. Non-dispatch processes for placing work remain in place. We expect the *DISPATCH chairs to do their usual good work in making sure presentations are properly scoped for the dispatch questions, and to reach out for expertise to other areas when necessary. When in doubt, ART area DISPATCH procedures will be in place. The chairs of DISPATCH, SECDISPATCH, and GENDISPATCH will work together to build the agenda, with oversight by the IESG. Those chairs will agree among themselves (adjudicated by the GEN AD, if necessary) who sits at the chairs’ table in Brisbane. Proponents must submit an internet-draft prior to the IETF 119 cutoff date (4 March 2024) to be considered for ALLDISPATCH. Formally, it will be a joint session of DISPATCH, SECDISPATCH, and GENDISPATCH. Other events will be scheduled in the Monday first slot (0930-1130) with IESG approval only. There will be a new [email protected] mailing list for ongoing discussion of the proposals. Tentatively, each topic will receive 10 minutes for the presentation and for clarification questions, and 10 minutes for discussion. This means 9 topics can be addressed. There were 10 topics across all three DISPATCH meetings at IETF 118, so the IESG believes this is appropriately resourced. ALLDISPATCH topics MUST NOT also be on the agenda of a WG meeting at IETF 119, unless the topic is directly dispatched to that WG in the session. The IESG asks working group chairs to ensure that this is so. This experiment has no impact on HotRFC, assessments of research proposals clearly destined for a Research Group, or anything else orthogonal to previous iterations of dispatch. Evaluation Criteria There are subjective criteria for consideration at the conclusion of the experiment: 1. Did the chairs have undue difficulty building an agenda and/or trading off interest in various areas? 2. Was it easier or harder to minimize the number of conflicts in the schedule relative to IETF 118? 3. What is the response to post-meeting survey questions about conflicts and the ALLDISPATCH session itself? 4. Did the work presented receive feedback of quality equal to or better than might have been received at an area-specific dispatch meeting? Comments Any comments about the proposed experiment should be directed to [email protected] no later than 28 November 2023 with the subject line “ALLDISPATCH”. The IESG plans to announce the result of this consultation no later than 1 December. Martin Duke Transport AD On Behalf of the IESG
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