Re: [103attendees] Remote participation in Plenaries

[Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,

Sincere apologies again for messing this up. I realize this is hugely frustrating.

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.

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.

Apologies,
Alissa

> On Nov 7, 2018, at 9:35 PM, John C Klensin <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> IESG,
> 
> As someone (whose name I didn't catch and whose voice I didn't
> recognize, but many thanks) noticed just before the plenary
> ended, I submitted a question via Jabber with "MIC" in front of
> it shortly after the IESG took the stage.  What then happened is
> probably more important than the question itself, which I will
> come back to.
> 
> We claim to want to be welcoming to newcomers.  There was a good
> deal of discussion about that subject during the IESG part of
> the plenary, all of which I think was helpful.   However, as
> costs of meetings and logistical complications rise, it is
> important to understand that many newcomers will participate
> remotely before attending their first meeting(s) and that
> others, especially those who are not supported by companies or
> organizations with unlimited resources, will do some meetings
> remotely early in their IETF careers.  We also claim to be
> supportive of remote participation, but that needs to be more
> than just having the right technology in place.   Similar to the
> comments that were made about experienced people treating each
> other roughly in discussions having a bad effect on newcomers
> and observers and discouraging involvement, having a plenary
> with no effective way for remote participants to ask questions
> or make comments sends a negative message about whether such
> participation is really desired.   Noting that this is not the
> first time in recent years at which questions arriving via
> Jabber have been ignored in a plenary (at least this time, it
> was caught although much too late) or given no attention, a
> relatively experienced IETF participant is likely to respond, as
> I am doing, by getting on the mailing list.  Someone who is new
> and trying to understand whether it is possible to participate
> effectively in the IETF may, instead, make an obvious inference
> and just go away.   From that standpoint, an oversight about
> Jabber input (whether in a plenary or a WG session) is at least
> as problematic as experienced participants and old friends
> calling each other bad names in a WG session.   If the assorted
> mentoring/ guiding programs for f2f participants are going well,
> it may be worse because, by midweek, f2f newcomers may know at
> least one or two experienced people whom they could go ask what
> is going on (or who might spontaneously be approached by those
> people with an explanation).   We have no such support for
> remote newcomers, despite repeated suggestions.
> 
> However, there is another aspect to what happened that may be
> equally important.  Alissa apologized for forgetting to get a
> Jabber scribe.  I appreciate the apology and agree that she
> shouldn't have overlooked it.  But the problem is _NOT_ her
> fault.  Anyone in the room could have noticed the omission and
> called it to her attention.  No one did.   Anyone in the room
> who was following the Jabber feed (and I recognized several
> people on the Meetecho participant list who where clearly there)
> could have noticed either the absence of a designated scribe
> (any time in over two hours) or the question (only one hour
> before that was noticed and read) and brought it to the
> attention of whomever was at the front of the room at the time.
> One of the IETF's important features and big advantages over
> other SDOs is that we claim to function as a community (not
> just, e.g., a collection of representatives of companies) and
> mostly succeed at that.  But that makes these kinds of glitches
> a community problem, not an IETF Chair, IESG, or, in the case of
> WGs, a WG Chair problem.   If someone notices and doesn't speak
> up on the theory that it noticing is someone else's job, that is
> a community failure.   If a newcomer notices and speaks up, I
> hope we can promise a round of applause (at least).
> 
> The question itself was about the current status of so-called
> internationalization work in the IETF and, in particular, the
> status of the recommendations from the BOF on processing that
> work at IETF 102.  I know at least some of the answer; my reason
> for asking is that I wanted to get a reaction from the IESG
> because internationalization issues are not confined to the ART
> area much less whichever ART AD is currently holding the short
> straw.  Others may reasonably disagree but I think that, if we
> are serious about attracting a diverse set of participants from
> around the world, internationalization work is really important.
> If we give it minimal attention, we are sending another kind of
> message.   Missing the window of the IESG part of the plenary
> largely defeated the purpose of the question.
> 
> Unfortunately, there were two additional problems after the
> question was read.  First, the person reading it wasn't sure I
> was the one who asked it.   I was using Jabber over Meetecho.
> Due to our participant login procedure, Meetecho knew exactly
> who I was and was displaying "John Klensin" (not some initials
> or nickname that could be confused) next to the text in the chat
> panel.  If that information isn't making it through to other
> Jabber/XMPP clients or systems, there is a bug that is worth
> tracking down and fixing.   Then, I gather someone, I presume
> from context one of the ART ADs, answered the question from the
> floor.  But I couldn't hear the answer or the identity of the
> person answering at all.  The audio was very good through all of
> the rest of the meeting so I have to assume that either the
> question was answered away from the microphone, the floor mics
> had been shut down, or the feed from the mics to Meetecho had
> been disconnected.  Or course, by the time I could get something
> equivalent of "no audio" typed into the Jabber room, the meeting
> was over (even if I assumed that, by then, someone was watching
> and would report).     If the problem was something that could
> have been noticed and reported from within the meeting room, the
> comments earlier in this note about community responsibility
> apply.
> 
> Not the IETF's finest moment.
> 
> best,
>     john
> 
> 
>