Fred,
I agree with your remarks.
Basically, we need
1. cheaper airfare ( we need 21 days )
2. some of us cannot stay for the whole week
so knowing the full agenda earlier is a good thing.
abbie
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Douglis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 3:58 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: earlier agendas
>
>
> Before the last IETF meeting I asked some IETFers in my
> company about the
> rationale for having the final IETF schedule so close to the
> meeting date that
> one can't necessarily get a reduced-fare ticket for the days
> one would want to
> be there. I heard back that this is indeed a dead horse, so
> I guess I'm
> beating it publicly this time....
>
> Perhaps a while back it was a given that people could afford
> the time and
> money to attend IETF for the entire week, and therefore the
> specific agenda is
> not so important. And various people say how important the
> cross-fertilization is, and how terrible it would be if
> people went to the
> IETF meeting just for a WG meeting or two and then went home.
>
> I've heard this viewpoint before, and I sympathize, but I
> think the whole scale
> of the IETF has shifted dramatically, and the IETF should be
> pragmatic. When
> there were 500 people attending, and they could all come for
> a week and know
> everything that's going on, that was fine. But the economic
> realities can
> impinge on a company's ability to send dozens of people
> across an ocean (or
> even halfway across a continent) for a week at a time (though
> I do grant that
> if you do it for a week, at least you can get the cheap
> airfare :), and the
> people who participate have ever-increasing other demands on
> their time.
>
> Has anyone done a study to get an idea of what fraction of
> attendees currently
> stay for what fraction of time? This might shed some light
> on the subject.
> It's one thing to decree that it's a good idea, and it's
> another thing to
> recognize that in practice maybe that's not the way it works
> anymore...
>
> BTW, I also heard that WG/BOF chairs would kvetch if they had
> to ask for a
> slot earlier. I can't buy this whatsoever -- if the whole
> schedule were known
> well in advance to start and end two weeks earlier, where's the pain?
>
> Fred
>
>
