Re: [103attendees] Remote participation in Plenaries

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Alissa,

Thanks for the detailed responses.

--On Thursday, November 8, 2018 07:41 +0700 Alissa Cooper
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi John,
> 
> Sincere apologies again for messing this up. I realize this is
> hugely frustrating.

As I indicated in an earlier note and Ole Troan and others have
reinforced, your memory and related actions should be only the
first available mechanism.  While I'm hugely appreciative of
Alice for stepping in, the observation that no one else felt the
need and responsibility to step in much sooner -- either to
remind   you or just to read the question -- suggests to me that
we have developed a bit of a cultural problem in which IETF
participants feel less personal and collective responsibility
for the smooth functioning of the IETF than I think we need to
survive.  Maybe that is another sort of educational problem, but
I think it is more than that.

> As mentioned in the other threads, I suspect the lack of
> attention to the jabber channels more broadly is due in part
> to greater reliance on the remote queue. If people assume that
> more remote participation will be via audio/video and that
> chairs will manage the queue, perhaps fewer of those in the
> room are joining the jabber rooms or looking at them when they
> do.

But, as discussed at much more length in threads you have seen
but that I deliberately forked from the IETF and Attendees lists
to minimize what some would consider noise on the latter two, I
believe that the only people who know how the Meetecho remote
queue facilities and how to use them are WG Chairs who happened
to attend the right training session(s), current or relatively
recent members of "the leadership", people who have figured
things out in the process of doing remote presentations, those
who have chosen to carefully read Meetecho documents or go
through their training materials, and people who have either
been told by one of the above groups or figured it out by
accident.    Those groups together are a rather small fraction
of the IETF participant community and an even smaller fraction
of the community of participants who almost never attend f2f
IETF meetings.   At least in sessions I've been at in recent
years, there certainly are no regular WG announcements about how
to best participate remotely that point to Meetecho.  Generally
the only announcement is from the Jabber scribe about "MIC"
prefixes.

The other problem is that some of us have had bad experiences
with the remote queue facility -- not the technology but with WG
Chairs ignoring that queue or, more often, treating it in a way
that seems unfair relative to microphone lines in the room and
in-room back-and-forth conversations.   Absent some clear
messages that those problems have been solved, someone who has
been burned in that way may be a bit reluctant to go back.
These threads, if people are reading them, may be at least
partially solving that notification problem and raising general
awareness so maybe we should be glad that things did not go
smoothly Wednesday evening.

> Huge thanks again to Alice Russo for coming to the mic to
> relay the question. I see that Benjamin has followed up and
> obviously we can continue the discussion on the list as
> necessary even though we missed the opportunity in the plenary.

My thanks, again, to Alice.  As I (and I think Sandy) mentioned,
the in-room problem was compounded by the microphone Alexey (?)
was using being off or turned all the way down as far as
Meetecho was concerned.   That raises a meeting venue question
of whether "hotel/venue staff are going to operate AV equipment
themselves" goes on the immediate showstopper list that should
cause us to drop the venue from consideration if we can't
negotiate it away.   I can certainly remember other occasions in
which venue staff operating AV gear has left us without
functional remote feeds; I suppose we should be grateful that
this time was not worse.

I'm not going to try to get back to the substantive question
on-list before this week is over and most participants have had
a change to get home and, where relevant, recover from jet lag.
That isn't an indication that I think it is less important than
other things, only that I want to try to be realistic about the
bandwidth of those who are in Bangkok or covering more sessions
than I am.  However, I tried to ask the question at the plenary
for the same reason I participated in asking for the IETF 102
BOF.  While it is perfectly reasonable for the IESG to decide
that the ART Area should take the lead, i18n topics and issues
have the potential to interact with several of our Areas.  I see
the topic(s) as being of some urgency, more urgency than the
speed at which we seem to be moving to address them suggests.
I wanted to try to understand whether the IESG shares that sense
of urgency.  If it does not, I think it is important that the
community understand your reasoning because it may affect the
course of some protocol development work as well as who chooses
to invest time in IETF work rather than looking elsewhere.

best,
    john