Re: [108attendees] Successful IETF 108

[Mike Bishop <[e-mail]>]

You should note the term “mix.”  The prevailing view seems to be that in-person meetings have value, and we should continue to have them once circumstances permit again.  There is a valid question, however, about whether we should return to in-person meetings only as soon as the pandemic is dealt with.  We could alternatively hold fewer of them per year, supplemented with more virtual meetings; or replace one of the three with a virtual meeting; or hold virtual meetings in between in-person meetings.  (Consider the possibility of a 2+1 or 2+2 schedule rather than 3+0.)

There are compelling reasons to meet in person, as you note.  There are also compelling reasons not to – cost, carbon impact of plane travel, second-class citizenship of those who cannot travel.  As with anything where there are compelling arguments on both sides, we need to figure out how to balance the interests.

The working group is not tasked with the elimination of in-person meetings.  And frankly, if you believe it is and you oppose the idea, the working group needs you speaking up against it.  The “only” was added to side-step an acronym the IESG decided to avoid; it refers to a meeting with no in-person attendees, not to the elimination of in-person meetings for all time.

From: 108attendees <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Christian Hopps
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 10:08 AM
To: Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>
Cc: Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>; Christian Hopps <[e-mail]>; Antoni Przygienda <prz=[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [108attendees] Successful IETF 108

Given the name of the WG is "Stay Home, Meet Only Online", and one of the chartered elements is to:

- The cadence of meeting scheduling and the mix of in-person versus fully
online meetings going forward once the disruptions caused by the pandemic
have subsided. ....

I have avoided participating in this group as I assume it was founded and is filled with like-minded people with a predetermined goal in mind ... meeting only online -- it's right in the name.

I do not agree with people who want to move from in person to "meeting only online", the reasons to meet in person have been enumerated countless times on the IETF discussion list, yet the push to eliminate the in person meetings continue despite this. Who would want to have this same debate ad nauseam in a WG?

Thanks,
Chris.


On Aug 4, 2020, at 9:43 AM, Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

Hi all,

a similar discussion is currently happening on the [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]> list as part of the new shmoo working group. Maybe you want check out the discussion there (or even move it over to that list).

Mirja


From: 108attendees <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> on behalf of Antoni Przygienda <prz=[e-mail]<mailto:prz=[e-mail]>>
Date: Tuesday, 4. August 2020 at 15:00
To: Christian Hopps <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>, Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Cc: "[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Subject: Re: [108attendees] Successful IETF 108

I agree with Chris, presentations are useful in many respects.

Timeslots need to be longer simply. In BIER we tend to bring as early presos the WG item/high impact/high quality things (this of course being subjective) but idea is of course for the slot being long enough e’one that is somehow relevant can present.  The audience will vote with their feet.

Also, mike discussions have high value albeit they need be tightly managed/clipped but this once-in-three-month- interactive slot on the mike between experts/newbies/people who wandered in opens aspects often that don’t come out on the mailing list or during preso

•  Tony

From: 108attendees <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> on behalf of Christian Hopps <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 at 2:00 PM
To: Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Cc: Christian Hopps <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>, "[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Subject: Re: [108attendees] Successful IETF 108

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On Aug 3, 2020, at 10:17 PM, Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 4, 2020, at 03:27, Les Ginsberg (ginsberg) wrote:

FWIW, perhaps we should rethink the traditional meeting agenda.



Today pretty much everyone does:



•         Present the slides I published 24 hours before the meeting

•         In the time left for my slot (little to none because agendas are usually full) entertain questions/discussion



Instead, don’t present slides at all (still prepare/publish them – and have them available if needed for reference). Each “presenter” gets 10-15 minutes to simply take questions/have discussion – the interactive things that have added value when done “face-to-face”.

This would use meeting time to do what cannot be done as easily “on the list”.

There's an assumption in here that the presenting of the slides doesn't have any benefit, which I don't believe is true.

As the presenter talks through the slides they are aligning the thoughts of everybody in the room (including themselves) and hence when we get to the conversation, everybody has the cache state loaded into their brain and the conversation can be productive.  I don't think that "read the slides in advance and come with questions" will give the same alignment.

I was trying to figure out why I thought this wouldn't work well, and I think you identified the most important aspect (cache loading and aligning thoughts).

A couple addition things that presenting the slides during the meeting accomplishes, I think,

1) It allows for pulling in some experts (and their viewpoints) who might make themselves available fully during meeting slots, but aren't really so involved in the WG that they read every draft or would watch videos of the slide presentations beforehand.

2) For work that the WG ultimately will reject, it gives the authors the feeling that they were fully heard prior to that rejection. I know that this should be able to be done strictly on the list; however, human nature what it is, it sometimes helps when people actually see that other people listened to them. This might still work if there was lively back and forth during a Q&A session, but I suspect for this type of work many people wouldn't watch the premade videos b/c they suspected it wouldn't move forward, and so there'd be much less participation during the Q&A part.

In LSR we've certainly had meetings where we didn't have enough time, but that was primarily after we merged IS-IS and OSPF and hadn't figured things out. Lately things have been OK I think, up until IETF 108. For IETF 108 we didn't have enough time to run things the way we normally do -- 100m was definitely not enough time for us. For the next virtual, if nothing changes with the format (single session 100m max), we will be have to more limit who gets agenda slots, perhaps with some "if there's time" slots tacked on the end in case discussion times are not fully used on earlier presentations.

Thanks,
Chris.

I'm not saying "there's not better way", but it's worth considering the positives of the existing patterns and seeing how we can preserve them.

Bron


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  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>


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