<p>Noel! Great job! I thought the header-people annals were lost long ago. From what I recall, they should be a gold mine as source of what was actually happening through those projects. They document what went on between official meetings, and outside the realm of any formal documents that might have eventually appeared. </p>
<p>Craig - I agree with your causes for discrepancies, but there's an aspect I think you missed. Meetings were rather nebulous things. There was always a semi-formal agenda, but even more interactions, discussions, arguments, and occasionally agreements or commitments happened outside of the more formal sessions. In the corridors, at meals or the hotel bar, in the afterhours bull sessions as we also discussed where to go to eat until it was late enough that the choices were few - all were important. There were many people who were involved in such discussions but were not necessarily on the formal list of attendees. They may have worked at or near the meeting site, or been in the area for another meeting, or even have come because they knew they could find an elusive person they had been trying to contact (Hint, initials might be VGC or REK).</p>
<p>So it was common to hear something, or say something, "at the meeting" even without being recorded as an attendee. It may even be that the "meat" of a meeting actually happened outside of the formal sessions, and of course didn't appear in any minutes. During one period of the Internet meetings, the formal sessions became largely status reports, which conveyed what had happened recently. The interactions outside of the sessions, and outside of the minutes, congealed what would happen next. </p>
<p>I think that a while ago I related one such interaction that I had with Bob Kahn while hanging on a subway strap in some city. I don't think Bob was in the formal list of attendees for whatever meeting it was, but I certainly remember him as being "at the meeting". </p>
<p>If you think of a meeting as a venue, rather than as a session in a room, you might explain many such discrepancies. Whoever wrote the minutes might not have been in the hall or restaurant. Whoever said something happened at the meeting might have not been in the formal sessions. But they both remember what happened at "the meeting". </p>
<p>Meetings were messy, and not captured very well by minutes and documents. I trust recollections more, but always remembering that no one could be in every hallway, bar, and restaurant. IMHO, that was important to the success of the Net. </p>
<p>/Jack</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On May 15, 2012 10:41 AM, "Craig Partridge" <<a href="mailto:craig@aland.bbn.com">craig@aland.bbn.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
> I was troubled the by the difference between my recollection of the SMTP<br>
> history, and Craig's and Dave's, so I decided to research it a bit.<br>
<br>
Quick comment, as this is a list devoted to history. Differences between<br>
recollections are common. Also common are differences between written records<br>
and recollections. Figuring out which one is right (even between written<br>
records and recollections, where you might think the contemporary written<br>
records are more accurate) is not easy. When writing up a technical history<br>
of email for the IEEE Annals, I found the Rashomon effect was often present.<br>
<br>
A simple example: some of the early ARPANET meetings kept minutes including<br>
the list of attendees. When interviewing folks for the article, I had people<br>
tell me what they'd heard/observed/said at the meeting. Later I would<br>
find they were not on the list of attendees. I would have to puzzle out if<br>
(a) they were there and not recorded; or (b) they were confusing meetings<br>
(often easy to do); or (c) their memory simply was playing tricks (e.g.<br>
confusing what had been told to them by a meeting attendee with being<br>
there).<br>
<br>
Craig<br>
</blockquote></div>