Re: meeting materials MUST be online well BEFOREthesession

 

> Yes, we could force presentations/meetings to be canceled if
> slides/agendas aren't available.  But the question is: how does this
> removal of work items actually benefit us?  It actually will 
> inhibit our
> already too-slow work process, not help it.  

> (Another option is to force them to give a talk at a 
> microphone without
> their slides; it'd still allow discussion without the presentation
> material ;-)

I think the "another option" suffers from the same problem as the
cancellation option. I do not see how forcing people to discuss things
at the microphone without the benefit of the slides they submitted
late, benefits the IETF. I think this restriction would inhibit
progress.

Working for a Chinese company whose personnel often have difficulty
attending meetings due to travel budget or visa concerns, and who
frequently utilize our tools for remote participation, I am very
sensitive to the importance of having the slides available for remote
participants. But at this point in time, remote particiants are still
a small minority in the IETF community, and penalizing the IETF
community in attendance at the meeting because the remote participants
might be inconvenienced does not make much sense to me.

If we want to be serious about supporting remote participants (and I
think we should), I think there are a lot of things besides having
slides available that are important. In Dublin, as I watched chairs
sometimes talk into their mikes, but not consistently, and chairs
counting hands but not verbally reporting the results, and people at
the mikes rushing through what they had to say rather than thinking
about how well remote participants would be able to understand them, I
thought to myself maybe every chair should be required to actually
listen to and replay their recorded sessions to see just how difficult
it is to be a remote participant in their WG. That might have a much
greater effect toward supporting remote participants than cancelling
presentations.

dbh