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

[Jan-Frederik Rieckers <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

as a first time on-site attendee I'd like to add my 2ct here.

I have attended 3 IETFs before, but all of them only remotely. Since my 
interest was in only one working group, I have attended only the meeting 
of this particular WG and (almost) nothing else.

Although the area of interest has not changed for me, I attended a 
session in almost any slot and while I could not really contribute 
there, I have seen some interesting drafts, that I will definitely look 
into after this meeting.

Being on site instead of online definitely has pushed me to actually 
attend these sessions. If I hat participated at home I'd probably have 
only attended one or two sessions of my personal interest.

The second thing as new attendee is the mentioned hallway discussions. I 
have met a number of people here, who I would have never met if I 
attended online.
I don't have the feeling that there was a lack of on site participants 
to create a 'critical mass', but I haven't been to any other IETF 
meeting, so my sample size is 1.

When being on site, opening the gather is not really possible, and for 
the remote participants, you may try to get other work done instead of 
joining the gather.
Also, the psychological barrier to "bust in" or to actively come up to a 
person in gather is quite high for me, so being on site and just 
greeting people on the hallway and then having them invite me into their 
communication has helped me to get to know people.

I don't have a solution for the gap between onsite and gather or the 
gather participation either (maybe a few ideas but probably they only 
sound good in my head).

I don't think that the hybrid meeting was is "the worst of both worlds" 
although it definitely had potential for improvement.

But what my main take-away from this IETF was, and what I would probably 
not have learned if the IETF was completely remote:

* There are a lot of interesting people here and I want to get to know 
them. And knowing them helps you to find out who to ask.
* There are a lot of interesting topics and it is really good to look 
beyond the horizon


As Leif already wrote, the missing human interaction will probably lead 
to a distance between the participants, that could lead to a serious 
turn in the consensus principle and the discussions. If you know the 
person on a personal level and you had a drink with them, your 
discussions will more likely stay on the professional level, if this 
personal touch is missing, the discussions can get personal very quickly 
(I have experienced exactly this behavior in some other contexts already)

 From my experience the IETF is a very welcoming community and I am so 
glad that I had the opportunity to be here in person.

Greetings
Janfred
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