stds-802-16: Re: Agenda

["Roger B. Marks" <marks@boulder.nist.gov>]

>It seems that we will have more than usual conflicts on our time next week,
>with many of the same people involved simultaneously with TG3 MAC issues, TG1
>MAC issues, TG3 PHY and Traffic proposals etc, WHUMAN PAR / 802.11 issues and
>the unresolved ISTO stuff. I hope that you will be trying to do some creative
>agenda building, rather than relying on the normal process of "like it or lump
>it". I made some suggestions at the Denver meeting, lets see some new
>initiatives.
>
>David Trinkwon


David,

I understand that people who are interested in multiple projects 
would like to see the Session agenda structured to allow them to 
participate in more than one. On the other hand, it will be a very 
busy week for all. Based on your request, I have taken another hard 
look at the situation. The best I can do, I am afraid, is to 
apologize for the fact that this problem is beyond my ability to 
solve.

The current schedule 
<http://ieee802.org/16/meetings/mtg10/agenda.html> gives each of the 
Task Groups the following allocations:

Monday:     2 hours
Tuesday:    8 hours (assuming 2 hours for lunch and breaks)
Wednesday:  6 hours (assuming 2 hours for lunch and breaks)
Thursday:   5 hours (assuming 2 hours for lunch and breaks)
TOTAL:     21 hours

If necessary, groups can use Tuesday night, and possibly part of 
Monday night (though an important WirelessHUMAN session starts at 
8:30 pm Monday). The social takes up Wednesday night. {By the way, 
the 802 organizers have run short of meeting rooms and have still not 
100% committed to providing space for all of this.}

Now please consider some of the activities for the week. Without 
specifying the details of each group's agenda, I can take a good 
guess based on the contribution that have come in:

*TG1 has about 600 comments to resolve in order to prepare for 
initiating a letter ballot. We will run the MAC and PHY groups in 
parallel to maximize the time, but the MAC team has the bulk of the 
comments (around 500, which comes down to about 150 seconds per 
comment). The resolution of each comment, including votes when 
necessary, has to be fully documented. In addition, 9 contributed 
documents have been received; these will reduce the time available 
for comment processing. In summary: TG1 will be busy.

*TG2 has many comments to process in order to prepare for initiating 
its own letter ballot. It also expects to address some serious issues 
arising from documents that do not recommend specific changes. This 
may require the group to write quite a bit of new text. LIke TG1, TG2 
will need to provide a fully documented change list.

*TG3 has received 24 contributions. Around 18 of these are PHY 
proposals to be evaluated. If, for example, these were to be handled 
on Wednesday, each would have 20 minutes, including questions and 
setup time. The evaluation criteria and scoring system still need 
work, channel and traffic modeling papers need to be discussed, and 
four contributions were made regarding TG3 considerations for the 
MAC. I've probably forgotten some other things too.

*WirelessHUMAN has a very full plate, as I have indicated in other 
messages. This revolves around discussions with other Working Groups 
and subsequent PAR revisions. The Study Group may also find itself 
engaged in a number of discussions with voting members of the 
Executive Committee. The 5 pm PAR deadline on Wednesday is critical. 
On Thursday, the group needs to find time to prepare a Call For 
Proposals, as described in the PAR.

Then there is the 802.16 Plenary activity. I've allowed two hours 
each on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If we can find a way to give 
some back to the Task Groups, we will. However, we have a lot of 
major issues to address.

I know of two ways to allow people to increase their multi-project 
participation:

(1) Hold "joint sessions". The problem here is that each Task Group 
has orthogonal requirements and a brutal task list. In my mind, any 
joint session means that at least one group basically suspends its 
work during that time. Speaking for TG1, we have very little spare 
time for this. If other groups want to do it and think they can fit 
it into their schedule, they may. However, I can't accept the role of 
coordinating it; Task Groups will have to do it on a bilateral basis.

(2) Arrange the agendas so that people can duck out of one meeting 
when they aren't interested and be sure that something interesting 
will be happening in another room. Again, there is no way I can 
predict who will be interested in what. Furthermore, much of each 
group's agenda is sequenced based on external requirements or 
internal logical ordering needs, so there isn't much flexibility.

The bottom line here is that I am not going to attempt to coordinate 
the schedules of the Task Groups. If individual Task Groups want to 
work something out with each other, they may, but I am personally 
concerned that each group has too much on its plate and no time to 
spare.

What we CAN do to help is to make the Task Group agendas available on 
the server, keep them updated, and stick to them. I hope the Task 
Groups will cooperate.

Regards,

Roger