RE: Plenary Scheduling

[Geoff Huston <gih@telstra.net>]

Margaret,

I suppose that the primary observation is that the two nights of Plenary
appear to be not working - the Thursday evening slot does not appear to be
working at all well over the past 3 meetings, so one of the ideas was to
try and split the plenary sessions using a different dimension, attempting
to put the pro-forma and public accountability bits of the IESG and IAB
reports in one session and plenary presentations in another.

Regarding the proposed open joint IAB / IESG meeting and the reports
to this meeting:

> Why do we have all of these talks?  They are repetitive, usually
> b-o-r-i-n-g, and I'm not sure what value they offer to the community.
> Perhaps we could move each of these sections to once per year, give
> them ~15 minutes, and only ask them to give a talk if they have
> specific issues to raise that would benefit from discussion by
> the community, etc?  Most of what is presented in these sections
> on a regular basis could be better communicated via e-mail.

Accountability is a tricky thing to get right. Calling this a joint open
meeting is the IESG and IAB was, I thought, sufficient signalling that
this is not entertainment. It is a set of public reports to the IAB and IESG.
I'm sure many IETFers will find better things to do on Thursday evening, but
also it is probably the case that there are others who do want to
see the IESG and IAB and question them on certain matters.

> I think that it is a mistake to cut this time short.  One hour
> is not long enough for both IAB and IESG open mics, is it?

On Thursday evenings one hour has been more than ample in the
past.


> I have some concerns that we are spending too much time in plenary
> sessions, and that we are not using that time especially well.  Unless
> we can improve the value of the plenary time, I believe that an
> additional meeting slot would be more valuable.


The concept of the Wednesday evening was to see if it was possible
to address some of the criticism that the plenaries are becoming
ceremonial and devoid of content, and to schedule presentation(s)
that would be challenging and interesting to many.

    Geoff