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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 of such side meetings to consider the benefits of holding their get-togethers in much less formal settings, and to also consider alternative means to develop their ideas.
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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, ISOC sessions, 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 to determine community consensus. Nevertheless, the phrase "bar BOF" is commonly used in the community when talking about such informal get-togethers that are held to discuss potential new work. [RFC4677] (Hoffman, P. and S. Harris, “The Tao of IETF - A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force,” September 2006.) 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 classroom-style seating, agendas with lengthy slide presentations, use of microphone lines, and even formal consensus calls. And, perhaps most importantly, a distinct lack of drinks.
This document argues that this recent trend is not helpful in reaching the ultimate goal of many of these get-togethers, i.e., to brainstorm about a technical topic that may eventually lead to new IETF work. It encourages the organizers of these unofficial side meetings to consider the benefits of holding such get-togethers in much less formal settings.
Finally, it is important to remember that many participants are extremely busy during an IETF meeting. Although having a side meeting to discuss an idea in an informal face-to-face setting is attractive, the scheduling of such meetings is therefore very difficult and needs to happen weeks if not months prior to the meeting itself. Conference calls, email discussions, wikis and other ways for interacting are also effective at developing ideas.
A good rule of thumb is that side meeting to discuss and develop a proposal for new IETF work should include the necessary participants to achieve that purpose, and no more. Smaller meetings are usually more successful than larger meetings.
Hence, it is often useful to limit attendance carefully. Publicly broadcasting an announcement for a side meeting on a particular topic, e.g., on an IETF mailing list, is therefore not usually a good method of inviting the desired set of participants.
One reason is that if the announcement happens to attract a large response, the logistics of organizing a get-together for a larger group quickly becomes very difficult. Small groups fit comfortably around a table at a bar or a restaurant, or can find a quite corner in an IETF hallway for a discussion. Larger groups require dedicated meeting facilities, which are limited during IETF meetings, and they generally require much more careful planning in order to get work done.
When publicly announcing a side meeting, it is often not even possible for the organizers to determine how large the resulting get-together will be, forcing them to over-provision for the "best" case of a substantial attendance, even in cases where this turns out to be not necessary. And even when a large group comes together, it often mostly consists of "tourists" who do not actively participate in the get-together but whose attendance requires finding larger rooms and makes the interactions between the active participants more cumbersome, e.g., because microphones need to be used in larger rooms.
In the initial stages of developing a proposal for new IETF work, the ability to brainstorm, i.e., to have direct, interactive and high-bandwidth discussions between participants interested and experienced in the topic area, is tremendously important. This is clearly much more easily achieved in a smaller setting, where half-baked ideas can be dissected and developed. This is often not possible in a larger group. Even worse, a badly run large meeting can sometimes "poison the waters" for a proposed idea by convincing the broader community that the proposal is confused, not ready or otherwise uninteresting.
It is important to understand that in the IETF, proposals for new work are judged based on their technical merits and on whether there is enough energy and interest in the community to complete the work in a timely manner. This happens in the relevant working group, if one exists, or else during an official BOF session. How many warm bodies fill a room during an unofficial side meeting has no influence on this decision, and is not a good metric for reporting interest in a topic to the community or to employers. Discussions about new work are often controversial, and people do like to watch fireworks...
As the colloquial name "bar BOF" implies, such get-togethers are traditionally held in bars or restaurants. Recently, there has been a distinct shift towards holding such meetings in regular IETF meeting rooms. One reason for this trend has been discussed in Section 2 (How to Invite); namely, that an uncontrolled broadcast announcement requires over-provisioning of facilities.
A likely second reason for this trend is that the booking of an IETF room currently requires approval by an Area Director. The reason for this is simply to make sure that IETF-paid rooms are used for meetings that in the widest sense are IETF-related. However, the approval of a room request has been known to sometimes be reported as Area Director "support" for the topic of the meeting to the community or to employers. No such support is expressed or implied when Area Directors approve room requests! Many routinely say "yes" to every incoming request as long as there are meeting rooms available (and there are typically lots of meeting rooms available).
Holding "bar BOFs" in IETF meeting rooms does not make them any more official or valid than get-togethers that happen in other places. Participants have recently begun to list the times of some "bar BOFs" on a wiki page, but that does not make them part of the official IETF agenda or otherwise changes their unofficial status.
IETF meeting rooms clearly do not provide the most supportive environment for side meetings that require brainstorming on a new technical proposal. One reason is that the classroom-style seating often present in IETF meeting rooms tends to spread people out in rows, all facing towards a front presenter: good for presentations, bad for discussion. Because IETF meeting rooms tend to be large, and people have a natural tendency to spread out, holding a meeting there often requires microphone use, which is cumbersome, slows a discussion down, and leads to "question-answer" dialogs between two people, which is much more ineffective than a group discussion around a restaurant table.
Another reason is more pragmatic. Because the organizers of unofficial get-togethers can only use IETF meeting rooms during times when they are not otherwise in use, such side meetings often happen during breakfast, lunch, dinner or later in the evening. This prolongs the time during which IETF participants are stuck in the same rooms they're stuck in for the rest of the day, and it prevents them from having a regular and at least somewhat relaxed meal. Anecdotal evidence exists that at least one Area Director has not been able to set foot outside the IETF hotel for a stretch of several days during IETF-77. (IETF-77 was held in Anaheim, CA, and the food options in and near the hotel were, let's say, of severely limited quality.) It is unlikely that participants in the consequential mental and bodily state will make productive contributions to a "bar BOF" or, in the case of Area Directors, will be extremely receptive towards new work proposals.
Food, drink and a relaxed atmosphere in which to have a discussion are an essential part of a successful side meeting, because they often need to happen during meal times. IETF meeting rooms offer neither.
Several of the recent "bar BOFs" that were held in IETF meeting rooms emulated official IETF meetings to a degree that made them indistinguishable from a regular working group meeting for the average IETF attendee. This included detailed agendas, lengthy presentations, organizers who refer to themselves as "bar BOF chairs", emulating blue sheets, and even hums and other consensus calls.
It is not clear as to why this has been happening. One attempt at an explanation may be that holding a get-together in an IETF room and having the organizers behave like chairs behave during regular IETF sessions is causing a Pavlovian stimulus in the attendees. Another explanation attempt is that an IETF meeting room simply doesn't allow many other forms of discussion.
Whatever the reason for this development is, it is reasonably obvious that running a side meeting with a focus on making quick progress on a technical proposal in a way that emulates running a working group session is not very productive. Working group sessions follow a certain procedures due to larger audiences, the need to establish formal consensus, etc. that a side meeting can do without.
Because the reasons for organizing such a get-together are diverse, this section is not making more specific suggestions, other than to note that meeting outside of an IETF meeting room is likely going to shift the dynamics sufficiently so that better interactions and results become possible.
This section collects assorted recommendations on holding "bar BOFs" that at the moment do not warrant their own section. Those recommendations are:
"Bar BOF" organizers are encouraged to rekindle the original spirit behind "bar BOFs" and organize them outside IETF meeting rooms, at venues with food and drink, for smaller groups and in a way that does not needlessly mimic the way official IETF sessions are conducted.
It can often be useful to discuss proposals for new IETF work face-to-face in an informal setting, but conference calls, email discussions, wikis and other means for interactions are also effective at developing ideas, especially given the scheduling difficulties when busy individuals are involved during an IETF meeting.
Finally, it is important to remember that all side meetings during an IETF week are purely informal and have no official status whatsoever.
This document raises no IANA considerations.
[Note to the RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]
This document has no known security implications.
[Note to the RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]
The name and title of this document have been chosen to resemble those used by Thomas Narten for his guidelines document on holding a successful BOF [RFC5434] (Narten, T., “Considerations for Having a Successful Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Session,” February 2009.), as a sign of appreciation for a document that has proven to be invaluable many times over.
Several folks provided feedback and input on this document, including Fred Baker, Gonzalo Camarillo, Spencer Dawkins, Adrian Farrel, David Harrington, Cullen Jennings, and Dan Wing.
Lars Eggert is partly funded by [TRILOGY] (, “Trilogy Project,” .), a research project supported by the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program.
| [NOTEWELL] | “Note Well,” http://www.ietf.org/about/note-well.html. |
| [RFC4677] | Hoffman, P. and S. Harris, “The Tao of IETF - A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force,” RFC 4677, September 2006 (TXT). |
| [RFC5434] | Narten, T., “Considerations for Having a Successful Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Session,” RFC 5434, February 2009 (TXT). |
| [TRILOGY] | “Trilogy Project,” http://www.trilogy-project.org/. |
| Lars Eggert | |
| Nokia Research Center | |
| P.O. Box 407 | |
| Nokia Group 00045 | |
| Finland | |
| Phone: | +358 50 48 24461 |
| Email: | lars.eggert@nokia.com |
| URI: | http://research.nokia.com/people/lars_eggert |