Re: [111attendees] Hybrid meetings (was: Re: test)

[Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On 2021-7-26, at 15:51, John C Klensin <[e-mail]> wrote:
> --On Monday, 26 July, 2021 10:38 +0300 Lars Eggert
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> effort has been put into this for some months now, via a small
>> secretariat-led team made up of some secretariat and LLC
>> staff, NOC members and some occasional IESG involvement.
> 
> Lars, I hope I misunderstand the combination of the above and
> what you said earlier.  It sounds like you discouraged IETF
> participants from digging into that issues, citing the SHMOO
> charter,

that has not been my intention, per my earlier email.

> but are then telling us that another, mostly-secret,
> team has been convened to discuss issues and work out details,
> presumably so the community can be presented with either an
> announcement or a detailed plan for ratification so we can
> quibble over details but have no impact on the overall plan.

With all due respect, your earlier email urged us to take action with regards to a plan for hybrid meetings. I'm somewhat surprised that you would now be alarmed that a discussion around understanding the conditions for such meetings has already begun. Maybe that is because your presumption above is incorrect; i.e., that the community would not be able to have impact on the overall plan.

My one-sentence summary of the current state of discussions in that small team, which have been somewhat stalled in recent weeks due to IETF 111 ramping up, is that the goal has been to understand the boundaries of what kind of hybrid meeting would be feasible to support organizationally, financially, procedurally, from a tools perspective, etc. (And of course Meetecho is involved, even if I didn't name them explicitly.)

I expect that once there is a clearer understanding of these boundaries, their rationales and related tradeoffs, it will enable a structured discussion in the broader IETF community about what kind of hybrid meeting we want to hold.

> And despite many comments recently --on this list and others--
> about hybrid meetings, unless I have missed an announcement, I
> think it is concerning that the existence of such a team has not
> been announced before this and that its charter, membership, and
> scope are not public, and so on.

You didn't miss an announcement. This has very much been an operational due diligence activity. While in retrospect I could have announced this to the community in some form, it didn't occur to me that this would be considered something out of the ordinary, or otherwise unexpected.

> I do not, however, believe
> that justifies waiting until we are "surprised" by a hybrid
> meeting setup or opportunity and then unveiling plans that have
> been made without community review and then instituting them
> without time for the community to have input into more than the
> details.

I hope what I wrote above convinces you that this is not what is happening.

> Constructive (I hope) suggestion, with apologies for the short
> time frame: Could we get a short report from the current team,
> focusing on their understanding of main issues rather than
> details?  Could we get it Real Soon Now, either in writing or in
> a plenary presentation, or both?

Unfortunately, that will not be possible on such short notice. Many of the involved individuals are busy supporting all aspects of IETF 111 and I won't ask them to reprioritize their duties for the week.

When there is a more complete understanding of the operational considerations for hybrid meetings, I'd be happy to schedule such a presentation and Q&A, however, either as a interim or as part of a regular IETF meeting.

Thanks,
Lars