Re: [108attendees] Successful IETF 108

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

I teach meditation online (totally different world) and we have really fruitful discussions all the time. What it requires is a moderator and a bunch of people who are willing to respect the moderator. As soon as you get into Pundit Mode (where the loudest talker just keeps talking and never shuts up) you are in trouble, but if someone were to do that in one of my classes, I would just mute them. This is much easier to do online than in person, because we don’t give chairs control of the mics at in-person meetings. Of course, they’d have to be willing to use it for it to make a difference. 

The irony is that the tools to do this have been available for years in e.g. Zoom, but we do not use Zoom—we use MeetEcho. We use MeetEcho (I presume) because they work hard for us making in-person meetings sort-of work for online attendees, but it’s nowhere near the state of the art for fully-online meetings. The fact that we continue to use unsuitable tools is a real and major cost.

> On Aug 4, 2020, at 12:16 PM, Joel M. Halpern <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> There is a distinct difference between enabling conversation and disabling the mic queue expectation.
> 
> I observed several times that the chairs could and did enable multiple people to speak if there was a conversation.  All the chairs and participants had to do was be a little deliberate in taking down the last speakers permission, so if there was interaction it could occur.
> 
> However, having "I speak when I choose" as the default mode would move the interaction in a direction that although i perfectly capable of competing in I consider undesirable when I do it and harmful to many other people's ability to interact.
> 
> Yours,
> Joel
> 
> On 8/4/2020 11:55 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
>> On 8/4/20 11:31 AM, [e-mail] wrote:
>>>> let go of the control culture and open the mic(s) up.  and i do not mean just a controlled mic queue.  no queue and let it be chaotic.  and yes, we will talk over each other until we figure out that does not work; or maybe it will!  after an hour or three, folk will figure out how to take turns or whatever works.  we might even have <gasp!> conversations about a speaker's work.
>>> 
>>> That suggestion, while still potentially a joke, would distinctly favour:
>>> 
>>> - Those that speak English as a first language
>>> - Those with good connectivity
>>> - Those inclined to filibuster
>>> - Especially: all of the above combined
>>> 
>>> Ergo, I do hope that it isn't being taken as a serious suggestion by anyone reading it.
>> I took it as a serious suggestion, and an excellent one at that, even acknowledging the limitations you cite.   I assume that the Jabber channel would still be available and it's been used in the past to overcome some connectivity issues.   A Chair is still necessary to prevent filibusters.
>> Also, I assume that the mic queue would still be available for situations in which many people wanted to speak at once, and the Chair could require people to use it in such situations.   But being able to speak back-and-forth quickly without having to reserve media access each time is, in my experience, a very useful optimization that can save a great deal of time and help a working group converge on useful solutions far more quickly than otherwise.
>> Keith
> 
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