The IESG has two standing meetings which usually alternate every other week. Their key differences are summarized in the table below.
| Formal Telechat | Informal Telechat | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical Frequency | Thursday Every other week Note: back-to-back formal telechats sometimes occur before the face-to-face meeting | Thursday Every other week (if there is sufficient agenda items within 24-hours before the start of the meeting) |
| Standing Participants | IESG (required) Secretariat Liaison (IANA, IAB and RFC Editor) | IESG (required) Secretariat Liaisons (IANA, IAB and RFC Editor) |
| Additional Participants | Observers permitted without invitation (except for executive session), but not allowed to speak unless invited to do so Standing observers IETF LLC staff Authors of documents on the telechat are not uncommon observers, even encouraged. Often invited to speak up about DISCUSS positions if there is an IESG conversation. | None (without an explicit invitation) |
| Tone | Formal and minuted review and approval around the standards process | Internal IESG team meeting and discussion-based |
| Representative Agenda Topics | Standing topics IESG Action item review Document review and balloting Charter review and balloting Designated Experts approvals Other less common topics include: Approval of appointed positions Any topic can be on the agenda | Typical topics are: Anything which isn't formal approval for an artifact of the standards process related (e.g., document or charter balloting) Matters requiring longer discussion which can't easily be accommodate in the time constraints of the formal telechat |
| Workload | Up to 400 page of document review can be scheduled (exceptions possible) On back-to-back formal telechats, the second telechat may have a limit of 200 pages | Varied |
| Agenda and Meeting Materials | Yes. Public. https://datatracker.ietf.org/iesg/agenda/ | Yes. Agenda is public (as a convenience for the IESG). Meeting materials may be shared privately or access controlled https://wiki.ietf.org/group/iesg/InformalAgenda |
| Recorded? | Yes, but not made public. Meetings are recorded to help produce the meeting minutes. All recordings are periodically deleted by the Secretariat. An IESG member may ask to review a recording prior to its deletion (e.g., missed a meeting) | |
| Minuted? | Yes and public. Two types of minutes: normal and narrative https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/iesg/meetings/ | Yes, but private to the IESG https://iesg.privatewikis.ietf.org/notes |
| Expectation of Confidentiality | None. Meeting has public minutes. Exception is executive session (no minutes; IESG only; others excluded unless explicitly invited to participate) | Yes. Meeting is not public. What gets said in the meeting and artifacts shared in the meeting go no further than the audience at the telechat without prior agreement. Note1: liaisons may produce summary notes back to their respective organizations (e.g., "IAB news you can use"). Note2: public agenda and any linked materials without access control will reveal something about the meeting |
During the plenary meeting, the IESG typically has the following standing meetings:
See Schedule of IESG meetings at the upcoming plenary meeting.