At 08:07 AM 12/19/2000, Frank Kastenholz wrote:
>At 09:28 AM 12/19/00 -0500, RJ Atkinson wrote:
> >We can also end the de facto practice of
> >using the sessions as tutorials and discontinue fancy prepared
> >presentations of the material already in the I-Ds. While
> >tutorials are a fine thing, they are appropriate for USENIX
> >or Interop, not IETF WG sessions, IMHO.
>
>I tried doing this in my area when I was on the IESG.
>It didn't work. The chairs and attendees want this stuff.
Nothing personal Frank, but in a general sense I'd say you weren't doing
your job well enough. Chairs serve at the discretion of the AD's. The AD's
need to choose their chairs wisely and if the chairs feel that they need to
have tutorials, then the chairs need better guidance or need replacement.
And one of the points to this thread is that we shouldn't care what the
attendees want as the IETF is not a tutorial conference. It's a working
conference and only the people who are working on the drafts should be
catered to. Others can certainly hang around and learn, but they shouldn't
be catered to.
As a chair myself I've occasionally fallen into this trap of thinking the
"audience" needs to be "presented" with the material. But I'm usually
quickly reminded that we are not there for tutorials. I think the best use
of a viewgraph is to display a list of to-do items to the group. If the
people in the room do not understand the overall architecture, they need to
read the drafts more or find out elsewhere.
