Considerations for Having a Successful Bar BOF Session
draft-eggert-successful-bar-bof-00

Abstract

During recent IETF meetings, bar BOF ("birds of a feather") sessions have increasingly become 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 bar BOFs (i.e., to eventually initiate new IETF work). It encourages the organizers of bar BOFs to consider the benefits of holding such get-togethers in much less formal settings.

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1.  Introduction

A typical IETF meeting is full of sessions of different kinds; bar BOF ("birds of a feather") sessions being one such kind. [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 increasingly become indistinguishable from official IETF BOFs or sometimes even IETF working group meetings. This is especially true for bar BOFs that are held to encourage new IETF work on a specific topic. The symptoms of this trend are 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 bar BOFs (i.e., to eventually initiate new IETF work). It encourages the organizers of bar BOFs to consider the benefits of holding such get-togethers in much less formal settings.

2.  How to Invite

A good rule of thumb is that a bar BOF should include the necessary participants to achieve its purpose, and no more. Smaller meetings are usually more successful than larger meetings.

Hence, it is often useful to limit attendance carefully. Broadcasting a bar BOF announcement 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 larger groups 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.

A second reason for limiting attendance is group interactions. Experience shows that discussions among groups of more than, say, a dozen folks tend to start requiring explicit moderation, especially when the participants are unfamiliar with one another. This adds cumbersome overheads that lengthen the duration of the session, making it consume more of the most valuable commodity of many IETF attendees - time.

Often, it is 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 oftentimes mostly consists of "tourists" who do not usefully participate in the get-together but do require finding larger rooms and whose attendance can make the interactions for active participants more cumbersome, e.g., because microphones need to be used in larger rooms.

Even bar BOFs that intend to drum up interest in new IETF work can benefit from controlling attendance. In their initial stages, these efforts benefit tremendously from direct, high-bandwidth feedback from IETF participants experienced in related areas, which is easier to receive and discuss in a smaller setting. Secondly, a badly run large meeting can sometimes "poison the waters" for a while for the proposed idea by convincing the broader community that it should not progress, where a smaller, more concentrated meeting may have been productive.

3.  Where to Meet

As the name "bar BOF" implies, such get-togethers were 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 requires Area Director approval. This approval of the 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.

Holding bar BOFs in IETF meeting rooms does not make them any more official or valid than bar BOFs that happen in other places. And IETF meeting rooms often do not provide the most supportive environments for a successful bar BOF.

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 and slows a discussion down.

Another reason is more pragmatic. Because the organizers of bar BOFs can only use IETF meeting rooms during times when they are not otherwise in use, bar BOFs often happen during lunch slots, dinner time, 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. It is unlikely that bar BOF 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 bar BOF. IETF meeting rooms offer neither.

4.  How to Meet

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 includes 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 bar BOF 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 bar BOF in a way that emulates running a working group session is not very productive. 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 a IETF meeting room is likely going to shift the dynamics sufficiently so that better interactions and results become possible.

5.  Conclusions

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.

6.  IANA Considerations

This document raises no IANA considerations.

[Note to the RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]

7.  Security Considerations

This document has no known security implications.

[Note to the RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]

8.  Acknowledgments

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.

Lars Eggert is partly funded by [TRILOGY] (, “Trilogy Project,” .), a research project supported by the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program.

9. Informative References

Author's Address