ineffective use of meeting time

[Christopher Allen]

"Keith Moore" <moore at cs.utk.edu>:
> I just realized that the problem-statement WG is currently providing a
> very good example of one of our biggest problems with the way we do
> work:
>
> we have precious little face-to-face meeting time.  despite this, we
> spend the vast majority of our meetings in presentations of material
> that could (in most cases) easily be published as internet-drafts and
> read by participants at other times.
>
> the one thing we can do in meetings that we can't do online is discuss
> things face-to-face, and take advantage of the increased fidelity and
> bandwidth of communication in meatspace.  this is often incredibly
> useful for reducing dissent and promoting closure. but when we try to
> do this in meetings, we are told that the agenda is full with speakers
> and that we are already behind schedule.

I too have been frustrated with this "medium" problem of conferences for some
time now, and have reduced my participation in some conferences accordingly.

There have been some interesting conferences that have taken other approaches.

   * One has no set agenda in advance of one day. Presentations are limited to 5
minutes, then there is 10 minutes of discussion. By the second day, half the
presentations were made in responses from comments the previous day. I don't
think this will scale well, but it was interesting.

   * Another conference actually tried to deliver work product. They broke into
work groups, then sub-groups of 5-7 people with a scribe/documenttor. Each
tackled a small section of a document. These sub-documents were collated and
presented, then they redivided the sub-groups into new groups of 5-7 people, who
rewrote the first drafts. What I like about this was that each subgroup really
seemed to work well -- 7 people so much more a managable number to listen to and
to be heard. And because of the 'mixing' of groups, but the end I'd had a chance
to get to know most of the people at the conference. However, like the above
conference approach, I don't know how to scale it up to IETF size.

Does anyone else have some interesting conference experience?

-- Christopher Allen