Plenary Format - discussion notes

[Leslie Daigle <leslie@thinkingcat.com>]

IESG folks,

As Geoff has noted below, an idea for re-thinking our use of
plenary time came up during the IAB teleconf this week (though
Rob tells us New Englanders will recognize the first meeting
as a "town meeting", not a "town hall meeting"...).

It's not a complete theory, by any stretch, but it does feel to
us like it might be worth more exploration.

The meeting Geoff mentions below is an informal IAB telechat
that we've been holding midway between IAB monthly meetings.
If this plenary reorg sounds like it might have legs, I'd like
to suggest that call could be an informal IAB & IESG telechat,
where interested parties could hash out more particulars for
a proposal that works for all of us.

Thoughts?

Leslie.

P.S.:  Typically, we have IAB telechats around 4-6pm US-ET, as
we are trying to stretch between CET and Asian timezones.



[Geoff Huston wrote:]
For the informal telechat on the 26th August we talked about revisiting the
IAB plenary format, developing a little further the concept that Rob
described as a "town hall meeting" on one evening and using the other
evening as an opportunity for presentation of  items that may be of
general interest and associated discussion.

I had the action to document the discussion we had on Tuesday.


  Geoff


------
IETF Plenaries - notes for further discussion

The concept we discussed was, in general terms, to hold an "open
joint IAB / IESG meeting" as one plenary evening. This session would
operate on a relatively constant agenda, using a format of:

  - introduction

  - brief (3-5 minute) status reports from:
        IETF Chair
        IAB Chair
        RFC Editor
        IANA
        (we should have a Secretariat slot as well)

     we've also had ISOC, typically as a plaque presentation to outgoing
     IAB / IESG members at the March meeting, and in Vienna we've had
     ICANN, so there may be 1 or 2 more each time in the same format of
     a presentation on status and pointer to more detail

  - items of IESG and IAB business to bring to the open meeting:

     In the past we've had Harald's finance presentation, the problem
     presentation, etc. I.e. items of IESG and / or IAB business that
     are considered to be appropriate to present to the IETF in plenary
     as part of this joint open meeting.

  - opportunity for plenary comment (open mic)
     I had suggested that this too be handled in a joint manner. IAB 
comment
     has been that this is perhaps too many people on the stage if we
continue to
     use the stage format. Other suggestions have included: 1/2 of the
IESG and
     1/2 of the IAB on the stage each time (or some other fraction), or to
set a fixed
     max time for each group to be on the stage and swap who goes
      first each time. Or something else, if you can think of another 
way to
      do the open mic thing in a rational way.


The second evening would be a plenary session that would have Harald and 
Leslie
chairing it, with content based on a presentation plus time for general
discussion
and comment. Previous presentations that appear to have worked well
in such a mode include Aaron's partial checksum presentation of July this
year, the State of Routing presentation in Minneapolis some years back, 
Steve
Deering's IP Architecture presentation at the London IETF, Patrik on
character set issues, etc. The general concept is to use a longer and 
broader
presentation than you see in WGs that attempts to motivate an issue
as one of relevance to the IETF audience. This session would also include
formal thanks to meeting sponsors, etc,.

The IAB did not discuss wether the joint open IESG / IAB meeting would
come on an earlier evening in the week than the plenary evening
session, and, to my mind there are probably good reasons to
hold the plenary session earlier in the week and the joint open meeting
near the end of the week, but is it an open issue within this overall
proposal.

------