Longer or more meetings?

[Jari Arkko]

Eric Rescorla wrote:

> This sort of assumes a view of IETF as a place for vendors to
> collaborate on deciding what a standard should be. Naturally, in such
> a venue, your participation is important to the extent to which you
> can bring implementors and product to the party.
>  
> However, the IETF has a tradition of not accepting this model, in
> favor of one in which we are all attempting to collaborate to do the
> Right Thing. In such an environment, what's relevant isn't the market
> throw weight of the participant but the value of their ideas.

I agree, and doing the Right Thing is very important.

However, this isn't a black and white issue. No one has suggested
a complete switchover to meetings-only process. We already have
physical meetings that cost a lot to participate particularly
if you don't reside in the US; there is a practical requirement
to devote significant amount of time if you want to participate in
any meaningful way; and our technology is in many cases quite
advanced and complicated to understand. So we are not going for
an all-free participation to a bigco-only approach!

I think we should keep the mailing list still as our official
agreement place. However, I believe we also need increased
meetings, be it teleconferences or physical ones. So the issue
is if the current ratio is right. I think it needs to be adjusted
(but not reversed).

Perhaps the teleconference approach might be good. This works well
at least for small groups such as design teams. Does someone have
experience on running it as a more open meeting for all interested
parties?

Jari