Considerations for Having a Successful "Bar BOF" Side Meeting
RFC 6771
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(October 2012; No errata)
Was draft-eggert-successful-bar-bof (individual in gen area)
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Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6771 (Informational) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Russ Housley | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) L. Eggert Request for Comments: 6771 NetApp Category: Informational G. Camarillo ISSN: 2070-1721 Ericsson October 2012 Considerations for Having a Successful "Bar BOF" Side Meeting 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 as "side meeting", in order to stress the unofficial nature of these get-togethers. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741. Eggert & Camarillo Informational [Page 1] RFC 6771 Successful Bar BOF Side Meetings October 2012 Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6771. 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 [RFC5434] 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] (which has been obsoleted by [RFC6722]) 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 "bar BOFs" that are held in regular IETF meeting rooms with Eggert & Camarillo Informational [Page 2]Show full document text