High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
draft-krishnan-ietf-meeting-policy-00

Internet Engineering Task Force                              S. Krishnan
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Intended status: Best Current Practice                     June 13, 2016
Expires: December 15, 2016

         High level guidance for the meeting policy of the IETF
                 draft-krishnan-ietf-meeting-policy-00

Abstract

   This document describes a proposed meeting policy for the IETF and
   the various stakeholders for realizing such a policy.

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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.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4

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.

   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

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   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

   o  to assist the community in the development of detailed meeting
      criteria that are feasible and implementable, and

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   o  to provide sufficient transparency in a timely manner concerning
      planned meetings so that community feedback can be collected and
      acted upon.

4.  Acknowledgments

   The author would like to thank Jari Arkko, Alissa Cooper, Spencer
   Dawkins, Stephen Farrell, Bob Hinden, and Ray Pelletier for their
   ideas and comments to improve this document.

5.  References

5.1.  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>.

5.2.  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-02 (work
              in progress), May 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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