Internet Engineering Task Force S. Krishnan
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Intended status: Best Current Practice July 8, 2016
Expires: January 9, 2017
High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
draft-krishnan-ietf-meeting-policy-01
Abstract
This document describes a proposed meeting policy for the IETF and
the various stakeholders for realizing such a policy.
Status of This Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The 1-1-1-* meeting policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Implementation of the policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Re-evaluation and changes to this policy . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Open items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Introduction
The work of the IETF is primarily conducted on the working group
mailing lists, while face-to-face WG meetings mainly provide a high
bandwidth mechanism for working out unresolved issues. The IETF
currently strives to have a 1-1-1-* meeting policy [IETFMEET]where
the goal is to distribute the meetings equally between North America,
Europe, and Asia that are the locations most of the IETF participants
have come from in the recent past. This meeting rotation is mainly
aimed at distributing the travel pain for the existing IETF
participants who physically attend meetings and for distributing the
timezone pain for those who participate remotely. This policy has
neither been defined precisely nor documented in an IETF consensus
document. The goal of this document is to provide an initial
definition of the policy, and eventually to get a consensus-backed
version published as a BCP.
2. The 1-1-1-* meeting policy
Given that the majority of the current participants come from North
America, Europe, and Asia [CONT-DIST], the IETF policy is that our
meetings should primarily be in those regions. i.e., the meeting
policy (let's call this the "1-1-1" policy) is that meetings should
rotate between North America, Europe, and Asia. It is important to
note that such rotation and any effects to distributing travel pain
should be considered from a long-term perspective. While the typical
cycle in an IETF year may be a meeting in North America in March, a
meeting in Europe in July, and a meeting in Asia on November, the
1-1-1 policy does not mandate such a cycle, as long as the
distribution to these regions over multiple years is roughy equal.
There are many reasons why meetings might be distributed differently
in a given year, and that is fine as long as the distribution in
subsequent years balances out the disruptions.
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BACKGROUND NOTE:The IETF recognizes that we have not always been
successful in following this policy over the past few years. In
fact, at the time of writing, going back 6 years the meeting
locations resemble more the previous 3-2-1 policy (9 Americas, 6
Europe and 3 Asia). This is attributable to two reasons:
o we plan meetings 3 years ahead (meaning meetings for 3 of the 6
years had already been planned when the new policy was set)
o there were some logistical issues (venue availability, cost etc.).
While this meeting rotation caters to the current set of IETF
participants, we need to recognize that due to the dynamic and
evolving nature of participation, there may be significant changes to
the regions that provide a major share of participants in the future.
The 1-1-1-* meeting policy is a slightly modified version of the
aforementioned 1-1-1 meeting policy that allows for additional
flexibility in the form of a wildcard meeting denoted as a "*". This
wildcard meeting can be used to experiment with exceptional meetings
without extensively impacting the regular meetings. e.g. these
wildcard meetings can include meetings in other geographical regions,
virtual meetings and additional meetings past the three regular
meetings in a calendar year.
The wildcard meeting proposals will be initiated based on community
consent. After such a proposal is initiated the IESG will make a
decision in consultation with the IAOC [RFC4071] to ensure that the
proposal can be realistically implemented. The final decision will
be communicated back to the community to ensure that there is
adequate opportunity to comment.
NOTE: There have not been many such wildcard meetings in the past
(with IETF95 in Buenos Aires and IETF47 in Adelaide being the
exceptional instances). How often we intend to do such meetings in
the future should also be an open topic for discussion within the
community.
3. Implementation of the policy
Once this meeting policy has been agreed upon, the policy will be
provided to the IAOC as high level guidance. Similarly, any wildcard
meeting decisions will also be communicated to the IAOC to be
implemented. The actual selection of the venue would be performed by
the IAOC following the process described in
[I-D.baker-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process].
The IAOC will also be responsible
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o to assist the community in the development of detailed meeting
criteria that are feasible and implementable, and
o to provide sufficient transparency in a timely manner concerning
planned meetings so that community feedback can be collected and
acted upon.
4. Re-evaluation and changes to this policy
Given the dynamic nature of participant distribution in the IETF, it
is expected that this policy needs to be periodically evaluated and
revised to ensure that the stated goals continue to be met. The
criteria that are to be met to initiate a revision need to be agreed
upon by the community prior to the publication of this document.
(e.g. try to mirror draft author distribution over the preceding five
years).
5. Open items
There has been some discussion on whether attracting new particpants
is one of the stated goals of this policy. This should be one of the
things to be discussed and agreed upon with the community as the
draft progresses.
This draft uses the terms North America, Europe and Asia without a
precise definition of the geographical regions. This might lead to
some ambiguities. Is this ambiguity something that is desirable or
not? Or should we redefine the regions based on other criteria such
as the distribution of RIRs (e.g. ARIN/RIPE/APNIC), the UN
statistical department's classification of macro geographical
regions?
Do we need to predefine success criteria for the wildcard meetings?
6. Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Jari Arkko, Alissa Cooper, Spencer
Dawkins, Stephen Farrell, Bob Hinden, Ray Pelletier, Tobias Gondrom,
Eric Gray, Melinda Shore, Dave Crocker, Brian Carpenter, Eliot Lear,
Andrew Malis, Olaf Kolkman, Ole Jacobsen and Yoav Nir for their ideas
and comments to improve this document.
7. References
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7.1. Normative References
[RFC4071] Austein, R., Ed. and B. Wijnen, Ed., "Structure of the
IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA)", BCP 101,
RFC 4071, DOI 10.17487/RFC4071, April 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4071>.
7.2. Informative References
[CONT-DIST]
arkko.com, "Distribution of authors by continent", 2016,
<http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/contdistr.html>.
[I-D.baker-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process]
Baker, F., "IAOC Plenary Meeting Venue Selection Process",
draft-baker-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-03 (work
in progress), July 2016.
[IETFMEET]
IAOC Plenary Presentation, "IETF 1-1-1 Meeting Policy",
2010, <https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/slides/
plenaryw-3.pdf>.
Author's Address
Suresh Krishnan
Ericsson
Email: suresh.krishnan@ericsson.com
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