In hallway discussion about this, it was suggested to me that part of
the problem is that some folks can not figure out how to socialize their
ideas.
If ideas are really preliminary, sitting down with 4-6 other folks who
are skilled and informed on the particular topic to discuss the idea,
and try to firm it up makes good sense. The IETF is a very good place
to do that. That is what the traditional Bar BoF was for.
If the idea is that unformed, it is probably not a good idea to invite
70 of your unknown compatriots to come discuss it with you.
Conversely, if the idea is better formed, write an I-D. Then either
create a mailing list, or ask the leadership for help creating a mailing
list. Ask the relevant chairs to pass on an email about the email lsit.
Have discussion on the email list.
This is the known recipe for getting to a successful BoF. It works.
Conversely, having a large number of informal, large "BarBoFs" to try to
drum up interest in a topic is not good for the community. Folks need
time to talk to eahc other individually about many topics. Folks should
be allowed time to eat sane meals and get some sleep.
We can not ban all such meetings. But we need to remind people that
culturally, this is the way that the IETF has found to be effective.
This leads to two suggestions:
1) If there is no I-D and no mailing list, then no, you can not have a
room suitable for 50+ people.
2) When requests come in for actual BoFs, and the request includes
supporting indications of interest, and claim that a BarBof indicates
interest should be ignored by the leadership.
Yours,
Joel
Yoav Nir wrote:
On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:45 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
Yoav Nir wrote:
Who's "folks"? A lot of people come to an IETF meeting, and are
only following one or two of the working groups. That does not mean
that they sit in their hotel rooms for the rest of the meeting.
Instead, they pick what looks like interesting meetings, and go
there, with the hope of catching something interesting.
That's a really good point, actually. I've also made a
point in the past of attending at least one session
completely unrelated to what I'm working on, in hopes of
learning something or getting new ideas or new associations
or something. But still, it seems to me that there are
two somewhat but not quite orthogonal questions here: 1)
whether or not the increasing formalization of the bar
BOF reflects an increased expectation of attendance in
order to participate/advance work in the IETF, and 2) what
a working group meeting is.
I'll pass on answering #2, but as for #1, I think the bar BoF "institution" is mis-used as a working
group of last resort. If I can't present my idea at a regular working group (because of time constraints or
because it doesn't fit the charter of any current WG), and I can't present it at the area gathering (for lack of
space), adding a "bar BoF" to the wiki seems to be the only way. In the end we don't get a lot of
discussion - merely a presentation + Q&A session. And still the "right" people are often not there.
So formalizing a bunch of presentations is a good thing, although I think it needs to be done differently.
Formalizing a bunch of people throwing ideas around (the "true" bar BoF) is not a good thing.
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