Network Working Group Y. Nir
Internet-Draft Check Point
Intended status: Informational August 5, 2010
Expires: February 6, 2011
Giving Non-Working Group Presentations in IETF Meetings
draft-nir-non-wg-presentations-00
Abstract
This document proposes a new avenue for IETF meetings participants to
present ideas, results, or other information to the IETF community.
The proposal does not replace the work done in IETF working groups,
or the presentations given in area gatherings and the plenary
sessions. Instead, it allows a different track for delivering
information, gathering comments, and rallying support.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on February 6, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 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
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The 'Berlin' Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Room Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Requirements for the Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Changes from Previous Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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1. Introduction
For the past few years, we have witnessed an unusual proliferation of
so called "bar BoFs". The traditional definition of a Bar BoF has
been an informal gathering of people interested in a particular
subject, discussing what, if anything, should be done in the IETF
about this subject.
The traditional bar BoF has three major weaknesses:
o It is often difficult, especially for those who are not IETF
regulars, to find these "birds of feather" among the 1200+
participants in a particular meeting.
o Hundreds of drafts are published every day. It is often futile to
expect that even those who might be interested in the subject will
have read a draft on the subject, and be knowledgeable enough to
have a meaningful discussion on the topic without a prior
presentation.
o Not all subjects benefit from the open, free-form discussion that
is characteristic of a bar BoF. For example, presenting the
results of an experiment, or the results of measurements taken
over inter-domain traffic, is best done in presentation style with
slides and a microphone, rather than over a meal of a drink.
This document suggests an alternative avenue for presenting new ideas
or gathered data. Such things can still be presented in working
groups or in gatherings. For this version of the docuemnt, this new
avenue will be called the 'Berlin' track, after a room in IETF78 that
seems to me to be about the right size.
1.1. Conventions Used in This Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. The 'Berlin' Track
The new track will be held in one of the regular conference rooms.
Any meeting participant may give a 30 minute presentation on any
technical issue, and the precise requirements are specified in
Section 3. The requirements for the meeting room are specified in
Section 2.2.
2.1. Scheduling
Four weeks prior to the meeting, the secreteriat will publish the
schedule for the meeting, including rooms and times for the 'Berlin'
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track. While a 'Berlin' track session is as long as a regular
session (for example, 2.5 hours), Each such session is divided into
30-minute slots. The secreteriat is encouraged to schedule these
sessions in the early days of an IETF meeting, such as Monday or
Tuesday, so that follow-up discussions can take place in the rest of
the week.
A separate schedule will be published for each of the 'Berlin'-track
sessions, consisting of 30-minute slots. Any participant can request
a slot, provided that he meets the criteria in Section 3. With the
approval of an AD, the participant may request two adjacent slots, if
his presentation requires a full hour.
For each of the 'Berlin'-track sessions, the General Area AD will
appoint a chaperone, who will perform a similar function as a WG
chair in a regular session. The chaperone will introduce the
presenters, make sure that presentations end on time, and advise the
presentors and the audience about IETF procedure. To be able to do
this, it is RECOMMENDED that the chaperone will be a current of
former WG chair or IESG member, who has sufficient experience with
the IETF to be able to advise the presentors about the appropriate
next steps.
Requests can be made as long as slots are available. Having reserved
a slot, the presentor still needs to comply with the requirements in
Section 3. If the chaperone feels that the requirements are not met,
she can remove the presentation from the schedule, freeing up the
slot.
2.2. Room Requirements
The Berlin track meetings may attract varying sizes of an audience.
Therefore, the room MUST be able to hold 50 people, and SHOULD be
able to hold 70.
Like all meeting rooms, there MUST be a projector, and the chaperone
should have a computer attached, to show presentations in PDF or PPT
formats.
3. Requirements for the Presentation
General Requirements. These requirements should serve as guidance to
the chaperones and ADs when they consider if a certain presentation
is appropriate:
o The presentations MUST be related to the issues the IETF works
with. "Why we all need to be driving hybrid cars" is not
appropriate, as is "Getting a universally-standard power-plug
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shape, so that we don't have to carry stupid adapters to every
IETF meeting."
o Economics or social impacts or the Internet are appropriate
subjects, but social commentary and politics in general are not.
"Re-elect Obama in 2012 because he gets the Internet" has plenty
of venues to present, none of which is the IETF.
o Subjects need to have enough substance to warrant a half-hour time
slot and hopefully some follow-up discussion. For this reason,
adding yet another ciphersuite involving some government's
favorite algorithm to TLS is not appropriate.
o Subjects SHOULD NOT have a natural home in another working group.
A new TLS ciphersuite SHOULD be presented at the TLS working group
meeting, not at the Berlin track. If, however, the working group
chairs have passed on allowing this presentation, or if the
working group does not have a scheduled meeting in this IETF
gathering,then it is appropriate to present it at the Berlin
track.
Presentations are scheduled for 30 minutes. With a nod from an AD,
the presentations MAY be extended to 60 minutes.
A draft MUST exist for each presentation, providing further details
about the problem, the proposed solution, or the information conveyed
in the presentation. An AD can waive this requirement. It is also
RECOMMENDED that a mailing list be set up for the issue.
The presentor requesting a session MUST be attending the IETF
session, at least on a one-day pass. An AD may waive this
requirement, if they believe the presentation to be particularly
interesting to the IETF, but the requirement SHOULD NOT be waived for
presentations proposing work items or work groups.
The slides for the presentation MUST be sent to the chaperone, who
will upload them to the IETF website, similar to the slides for
working group presentations.
About half the time should be spent on presentation, with the
remainder left for questions and answers, and for finding a number of
people who would like to participate in a future working group. It
is up to the presentor to decide the proper mix, but the present-and-
run style is considered bad form in the IETF, which is founded on
open discussion.
It is highly recommended to use this presentation as an opportunity
to get a list of people who are interested in the subject and get
them to sign up for the mailing list. It is also RECOMMENDED to find
a small group of people, who may have good ideas on the subject, and
schedule a proper bar BoF or hallway meeting with them. They can
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later be the beginning of a working group.
To summarize, this is an approximation of how a presentation should
go:
o Chaperone presents the subject (0.5 minutes)
o Presentation, including the problem and what can be done (15
minutes)
o Questions and Answers (10 minutes)
o Polling the room, how many are interested in this (1 minute)
o Show a slide with the mailing list address, and invite people to
sign up (0.5 minutes)
o Ask who would like to meet for a bar BoF (0.5 minutes, find 4-6
people)
o Find a good time for the bar BoF (2 minutes)
o With 1 minute to spare, the next presentor walks up to the front
of the room
4. Examples
This section is not meant to be normative. It holds listings for
some hypothetical presentations, with a short explanation about why
they are the way they are.
o Title: A multi-homed variant of FTP
o Time: Monday, 10:30 (30 minutes)
o Presentor: J. Doe
o Draft: http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-doe-ftp-mh-01.txt
o Slides: http://www.example.com/slides/mhftp.pdf
o Mailing List: http://www.example.com/ml/mhftp.html
o Abstract: Today many computers have multiple connections to the
Internet, such as wireless LAN and 3G. We leverage this to allow
multiple connections to be used simultaneously, so that file
trasfers get the cumulative bandwidth.
This is classic IETF presentation. It can probably be presented in a
few slides, it is technical in nature, and there are both a draft and
a mailing list. The presentor will undoubtedly be grilled during the
Q&A session, but might be able to find 4-5 people who will think this
is worthy enough to join him in the hotel lobby later to talk about
this. No AD involvement is required.
o Title: SNA Primer for TCP/IP Folks
o Time: Tuesday, 10:00 (60 minutes)
o Presentor: J. Smith
o Slides: http://www.example.com/slides/sna.pdf
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o Abstract: SNA is a network architecture quite different from
TCP/IP. In this session we will learn the fundamentals of SNA,
and compare the two architectures.
SNA is a big subject. Without getting into the messy subject of
whether it is open or proprietary, the IETF is not the standards body
that deals with it. That is why some AD has waived the requirements
for draft and mailing list, and allowed the presentation to take a
full hour.
o Title: The Writing is on the Wall: World Peace through Facebook
Interaction
o Time: Canceled by chaperone
o Presentor: J. Jones
o Slides: http://www.example.com/slides/pax_facebook.pdf
o Abstract: Today, when everyone has a facebook profile, and can
'friend' anyone in the world, universal peace is finally at hand.
What diplomats in the United Nations have never been able to
achieve in closed session meetings, will very soon be done in a
bottom- up fasion. In this presentation, we will explain how.
Whatever the merits of this idea, it is not technical, and it is not
really about the Internet. While 'J. Jones' deserves a soap box just
as much as anybody else, an IETF meeting is not the right venue for
this.
o Title: Using the Camelia cipher in GDOI
o Time: Canceled by chaperone
o Presentor: J. Kwan
o Draft: http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-kwan-camelia-gdoi-00.txt
o Slides: http://www.example.com/slides/camelia-gdoi.png
o Abstract: This draft adds the camelia cipher as a possible
encryption algorithm for GDOI keys, both KEKs and TEKs.
This draft certainly has merit, but there are two reasons why it
should not be in the 'Berlin' track. First, it is very narrow in
scope - it's just like adding ciphersuites to TLS, and does not have
enough substance for a presentation, and even less for discussion.
In fact, it is very likely that the only reason for submitting this
draft, was to get an IANA number assignment when it's published. The
other reason that this is not appropriate, is that this subject has a
natural home in the MSEC working group. It can be a 5-minute
presentation there. Given all of this, it does not make sense to
waste a 30-minute slot of the 'Berlin' track on this presentation.
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5. Security Considerations
There are no security considerations for this draft.
6. Changes from Previous Versions
First version
7. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
Author's Address
Yoav Nir
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.
5 Hasolelim st.
Tel Aviv 67897
Israel
Email: ynir@checkpoint.com
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