Re: [112attendees] Plenary last week - missed

[Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>]

Hi Alex,

 

to clarify the process: I as IESG member proposed an idea to the IESG. The IESG has so called informal telechats where we discuss various topics. This topics was discussed on Aug 19, shortly after IETF-111. The IESG decided to propose an experiment and asked Lars as the IETF chair to send the message cited below in order to ask for community feedback (https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/z3FZnHmcuxDevC4BkmoY8I89yPk/). There was some discussion on e.g. the [e-mail] list but the IESG also received quite some feedback directly (Thanks to all for that! That was really, really helpful and good number of replies). The IESG evaluated the feedback and decided to go ahead with this experiment for IETF-112. This was announced by the IETF chair on Nov 3 (https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/RwtWwcaSYg0QMpvTW5kdTTYtQpY/).

 

Next steps are the evaluation of this experiment as outlined in those emails, provide this evaluation to the community, and the collect community feedback if we should repat this experiment for the next meeting (in case we end up online-only again), adapt the experiment somehow, or consider it a failure.

 

If you want to further discuss the outcome of this experiment, I recommend to wait for the evaluation as this might provide you a more complete picture. However, feedback is of curse always welcome and you can also send any time email directly to the IESG at [e-mail].

 

Mirja

 

 

From: Alexandre PETRESCU <[e-mail]>
Organisation: CEA
Date: Wednesday, 10. November 2021 at 11:49
To: Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>, Robert Moskowitz <[e-mail]>, "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [112attendees] Plenary last week - missed

 

Mirja,

Thanks for the reply and for the private message that I read carefully.

Le 10/11/2021 à 10:23, Mirja Kuehlewind a écrit :

Hi Alex,

 

please see one comment below.

 

From: 112attendees <[e-mail]> on behalf of Alexandre PETRESCU <[e-mail]>
Organisation: CEA
Date: Wednesday, 10. November 2021 at 00:14
To: Robert Moskowitz <[e-mail]>, "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [112attendees] Plenary last week - missed

 

To me, this organisation of 2-week and Plenary in the first week was not a problem of finding the time to attend - I could.

When I registered I even noted the previous week as being the IETF week.  I prepared the Monday before in order to attend, and got ready with microphone and headset.  Then I realized it was the hackathon, not the WGs.  I thought I made a mistake and that the IETF week was this_ week - all WGs are now.  When, in fact, the IETF is on 2 weeks now: both weeks were valid.

Before, I was very much used to one-week IETFs.  I knew that usually some hackathon or early meetings happen the week before, or even before that.  But from that to put the Plenary a week before is a large change in what IETF meeting meant to me.  The change was too sudden.

I am not sure why they made the change so sudden.  Maybe to shake up some people like me and tell there is something new about IETF, or something like that.

As I said, this idea came out of the shmoo discussion at the last meeting. 

One or a few people could emit many ideas during a discussion, but only the usual way of last calls make that into a consensus.  There was no LC AFAIRemember.

 

I then proposed this idea for discussion shortly after during one of the next IESG calls and the first request for community feedback was send out Sep 2 (see https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/z3FZnHmcuxDevC4BkmoY8I89yPk/).

 

Sorry, I dont understand: the URL points to a message from Lars in his quality of IETF Chair.

I do not udnerstand this process: you as AD propose something to IETF Chair based on a personal estimation of what might constitute a great idea being discussed (Plenary in 1st week), and then that gets into practice right away?  It seems too fast to me.

(I do not mean to point to names of person, but rather as a roles: AD, IETF Chair, etc.  I wrote the names just to make these are the right names and avoid impersonal anonymous speak, for the sake of clarity).

We also discussed the concern that, even though we tried to get this information out as early as possible, that not all people might notice in time. I think that is a risk that you always have when you change something for the first time. 

YEs,it is a risk some times, I agree.  And things shoult move forward indeed.

 

We did discuss holding the plenary before or after the IETF week.

 

Where was that discussed?  Not in shmoo WG I believe(?)

 

For the experiment this time we decide to have it before but there were different opinions. However, as I already said I think the underlying problem is that we don’t have effective ways to reach the whole community at the moment and that’s something we are working on to improve.

There was really no intention to shake of any people. And again, I’m sorry that you missed it. As you can see in the mail cited above, one of the evaluation criteria is to achieve “little or no reduce in plenary attendance”. In another mail you said that “only” 345 people participated in the plenary. If you look at the attendee numbers of previously plenaries, this is about the usual attendance.

 

I agree with the fact that earlier Plenaries saw approximately same number of attendance.  However, in terms of terminology one can legitimately ask whether 345 out of 1200 makes for a Plenary or for something else.

Some of the Plenaries of covid times, especially the first one, were also very low attendance, but I think the number overall of registered participants to the IETF meetings was relatively low as well (800?). 

And, it is not because all the Plenaries of all times had a total average of 30% participation (speculation) that the meaning of the word Plenary can not  be questioned.

A Plenary is where all go, not just 30%.  In my humble oppinion.

Alex

 

However, the IESG will provide a more detailed analysis as part of the evaluation of this experiment after the meeting.

Mirja

 

And me who thought not be surprised and dreamt about making plans of work of planning various kinds of online meetings or hybrid meetings... in shmoo WG!  It's not in shmoo WG that these things happen, even though they do things about online meetings.

To end my rant about this: it is destabilizing.

Alex

Le 09/11/2021 à 23:06, Robert Moskowitz a écrit :


--
Alexandre Petrescu
[e-mail], tél [phone]
I am one of those that remember Megan with her country kitchen triangle on Monday morning trying to get all of us out of the breakfast area and into the opening plenary....

Of course then many mornings started off with something or other other than a work session.  Or so my old memory tries and tells me.

IEEE 802 tends to start off with an opening plenary to "set the stage" and then a mid-week to look at what was done etc.

Spanning two weeks can be a problem.  Fortunately, my time was rather open and could just miss the ASTM weekly Thursday UAS Remote ID session, as I will this week.  At least I will make the Friday afternoon meeting.  We REALLY need to finish up the current version so we can start in delayed items on the next version...

Meetecho and Jabber work pretty well for me.  Gather this time around is really a problem.  The HotRFC was a bust:  too many people packed together and Gather just could not figure out who to connect to.  Forget about the problems with the videos, Gather itself busted.

7am ET just does not work for me; I am out from 6 - ~8am 6 mornings a week.  Being F2F, I handle this differently, but at home I don't.  Just my schedule issue.  Thanks CFRG chairs for putting my slot for when I get back in.

I kind of like the asia timeslot.  I basically worked 3rd shift!  Quite strange.

Enough rambling.  Got home things to do this evening.

Take care all.  Hope to be "seeing" you around in this virtual setup and soonish in person.  Like before I retire (negotiating a contract for another year. Yea!)?

Bob

On 11/9/21 12:43 PM, Alexandre Petrescu wrote:

I missed the Plenary last week, because I didnt expect it there.

This time IETF meeting is so strange.  It spans two weeks time with importnat things in the first week, including the Plenary, but the WG meetings are in the second week.

All these discussions we had in shmoo WG about online or not online and I did not see any sign about Plenary being in the first week.

All these discussions about which 3-4 time slots are best around the world, which UTC ways to refer to them, etc, and I missed the Plenary.

Sigh...

Alex