Re: [113attendees] hybrid meetings: the worst of both worlds

My experience of the meeting was that I had several really important
conversations that I hadn't planned to have, nor would have had if we
hadn't met. So it was definitely a net positive for me. The hallway
conversations are precisely the thing that we miss being remote. I like the
"gather area" idea, but I think it probably needs a bit more thought, and
we'd have to arrange it so that people who didn't want to be on camera
weren't accidentally captured, while still making it something you'd run
into randomly. A difficult conundrum.

As to the actual WG meetings, I am realizing that one of the main purposes
of these meetings is to trigger hallway discussions. I don't think that was
ever as obvious to me as it's been this time, because before this it was
just what happened normally. IOW, not that the sessions don't matter at
all—they do—but the synergy of sessions triggering discussions is what
makes in-person IETF meetings what they are.

Leif, I suspect that I was luckier than you were about which people with
whom I needed to talk to showed up in person. Of course having most people
show up in person makes that less of a crap shoot.

On Fri, Mar 25, 2022 at 5:09 PM Robert Moskowitz <rgm@labs.htt-consult.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On 3/25/22 11:57, Antoine FRESSANCOURT wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
>
> This was my first in person IETF meeting and while I enjoyed meeting people in person in the hallway and put a face on names I see on the mailing lists, I think the « official agenda » part of the meeting would have been a better experience online than onsite:
>
>
> - the chat is not available on the mobile site for meetecho and lots of discussions occur there. « Oh it is discussed in the chat » is frustrating when you are in the room.
>
>
> Before all of this many of us used a jabber client to be talking during
> the session.  You can always use whatever system you have with a jabber
> client/server and go to jabber.ietf.org.
>
> And I used a separate jabber client (pidgin), so I was one of many that
> were logged in twice.
>
>
> - often we couldn’t see the face of people talking remotely
>
>
> - in many WG meetings, I had the impression to attend reporting that could have been an email while actual technical discussions on items of the WG were pushed to the mailing list for the sake of a lack of time.
>
>
> The last point might be the one that puzzles me the most. What is the point meeting in person to push discussions on online tools ? And why do we need to have WG activity reporting as slides rather than an email ?
>
> My 2 cents,
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Antoine FRESSANCOURT
> Email: antoine.fressancourt@huawei.com
>
> *From: *Leif Johansson<leifj@sunet.se>
> *To: *113attendees<113attendees@ietf.org>
> *Subject: *[113attendees] hybrid meetings: the worst of both worlds
> *Time: *2022-03-25 14:36:43
>
>
> I spent the week onsite in Wienna...
>
> As usual the arrangements are great and the local host made this a very
> nice experience.
>
> And then there is the hybrid meeting thing... imo hybrid works well as
> technology and completely sucks on a human level.
>
> This statement may be controversial and/or unpopular in the IETF where
> we're all about the tech but...
>
> - hybrid means there is not enough folks onsite to create critical mass
> for the "hallway track"
> - remote-participation is arguably better for the technical WG process
> than onsite at this point
> - remote is really bad for the informal discussions (gather is very
> disappointing imo)
>
> The most efficient WG were where most of the contributurs had decided to
> show up onsite.
>
> The most important discussions I had were (as usual) not in a WG meeting.
>
> Maybe the IETF needs to rehink the purpouse of onsite meetings.
>
> We have made the remote experience so good that the "professionalized"
> aspect of churning out RFCs doesn't really need onsite.
>
> However, an IETF with no human interaction might be professional but it
> won't be efficient.
>
>         Cheers Leif
>
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> --
> Robert Moskowitz
> Owner
> HTT Consulting
> C:      248-219-2059
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>
> There's no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets
> the credit
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