Considerations for Having a Successful "Bar BOF" Side Meeting
draft-eggert-successful-bar-bof-08
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Network Working Group L. Eggert
Internet-Draft NetApp
Intended status: Informational G. Camarillo
Expires: March 1, 2013 Ericsson
August 28, 2012
Considerations for Having a Successful "Bar BOF" Side Meeting
draft-eggert-successful-bar-bof-08
Abstract
New work is typically brought to the IETF by a group of interested
individuals. IETF meetings are a convenient place for such groups to
hold informal get-togethers to discuss and develop their ideas. Such
side meetings, which are not reflected in the IETF meeting agenda and
have no official status, are often half-jokingly referred to as "bar
BOF" sessions, to acknowledge that some of them may eventually lead
to a proposal for an official IETF BOF ("birds of a feather" session)
on a given topic.
During recent IETF meetings, many such "bar BOF" get-togethers have
been organized and moderated in ways that made them increasingly
indistinguishable from official IETF BOFs or sometimes even IETF
working group meetings.
This document argues that this recent trend is not helpful in
reaching the ultimate goal of many of these get-togethers, i.e., to
efficiently discuss and develop ideas for new IETF work. It
encourages the organizers to consider the benefits of holding them in
much less formal settings, and to also consider alternative means to
develop their ideas. This document also recommends that the
community abandon the term "bar BOF" and instead use other terms such
"side meeting", in order to stress the unofficial nature of these
get-togethers.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
Eggert & Camarillo Expires March 1, 2013 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Successful Bar BOF Side Meetings August 2012
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on March 1, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
1. Introduction
A typical IETF meeting is full of sessions of different kinds. In
addition to official IETF and IRTF sessions listed in the meeting
agenda, such as working and research group meetings, area meetings or
plenaries, many other unofficial meetings take place. These include
meetings between IETF participants from one organization or company,
design team meetings, Internet-Draft editing sessions,
interoperability testing, directorate lunches and many others.
Some of these unofficial get-togethers are organized by individual
participants with a common interest in initiating new IETF work of
some kind. New IETF work often fits into an existing working group
and does not require an official "birds of a feather" (BOF) session
to determine community consensus. Nevertheless, the phrase "bar BOF"
has commonly been used in the community when talking about such
informal get-togethers that are held to discuss potential new work.
[RFC4677] characterizes a "bar BOF" as
"(...) an unofficial get-together, usually in the late evening,
during which a lot of work gets done over drinks. Bar BOFs spring
up in many different places around an IETF meeting, such as
restaurants, coffee shops, and (if we are so lucky) pools."
During recent IETF meetings, "bar BOFs" have become increasingly
indistinguishable from official IETF BOFs or sometimes even IETF
working group meetings. The symptoms of this trend are unofficial
Eggert & Camarillo Expires March 1, 2013 [Page 2]
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