meeting time

[Carsten Bormann]

> Voice is expensive for many, there are language problems, and so far we
> don't have good human-layer protocols anyway.

As a non-native English speaker, let me underscore that it is really 
hard to interface with a heat^h^h^h^hspirited discussion in a telephone 
conference.  (After ten years of AVT, MMUSIC etc., telephone 
conferences strike me as archaic anyway, but that's a different 
construction site*.)  [Problem: forgetting non-native speakers.]

The two reasonably large-scale successful standardization efforts I've 
been involved in (ISSLL and ROHC) both had *one* interim meeting that 
was absolutely indispensable.  Having two days to really force 
consensus on some of the harder to pin down issues helped tremendously. 
  The RFCs probably wouldn't exist without these.  [Problem: shifting 
guidance about interims.]

On the other hand, even with minutes, the decisions taken in these 
interims were documented less well than the ones we had on the mailing 
list (the same is true for the telephone conferences that the draft 
authors tended to have in the finalization phase).  [Problem: 
documentation requirements, meeting support for non-IETF meetings.]

By the way, it seems nobody has brought up that lots of work can be 
done at an IETF outside the formal meeting.  Maybe we can put effort 
into making this even more effective.  [Problem: IETF meeting support 
focuses on formal WG meetings.]

Gruesse, Carsten

*) It was surprising to see how little technology can actually be used 
by the firewalled-up and strangled-by-IT-policies people in some 
"technology" companies.  Accessing a CVS repository (!) was 
unsurmountable.  Maybe we have to put up a minimum technical 
requirement for effective participation that goes beyond "can send and 
receive mail".  [Problem: being inclusive to the extent of technical 
lobotomy.]