[ih] Header-people archive, etc

[Craig Partridge]

Jack, good point about the informal stuff around the meeting.  Indeed,
when I went off to find the origins of the Internet Protocol, I discovered
it was in an undocumented hallway conversation (I'd have to go dig into
my notes but recollection [warning!] says it was between Jon Postel, Dave
Reed and Danny Cohen).

Thanks!

Craig

> 
> 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.
> 
> 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).
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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".
> 
> 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".
> 
> 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.
> 
> /Jack
> On May 15, 2012 10:41 AM, "Craig Partridge" <craig at aland.bbn.com> wrote:
> 
> > > I was troubled the by the difference between my recollection of the SMTP
> > > history, and Craig's and Dave's, so I decided to research it a bit.
> >
> > Quick comment, as this is a list devoted to history.  Differences between
> > recollections are common.  Also common are differences between written
> > records
> > and recollections.  Figuring out which one is right (even between written
> > records and recollections, where you might think the contemporary written
> > records are more accurate) is not easy.  When writing up a technical
> > history
> > of email for the IEEE Annals, I found the Rashomon effect was often
> > present.
> >
> > A simple example: some of the early ARPANET meetings kept minutes including
> > the list of attendees.  When interviewing folks for the article, I had
> > people
> > tell me what they'd heard/observed/said at the meeting. Later I would
> > find they were not on the list of attendees. I would have to puzzle out if
> > (a) they were there and not recorded; or (b) they were confusing meetings
> > (often easy to do); or (c) their memory simply was playing tricks (e.g.
> > confusing what had been told to them by a meeting attendee with being
> > there).
> >
> > Craig