Re: Next steps towards a net zero IETF

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

(trying to a shift this to admin-discuss, as requested --
although I question  the wisdom of that decision for which see
separate note -- again while not cutting off the ietf@
discussion until others shift too )

Another remote participant response, building on Kathleen's
response in the hope that something useful can be learned from
similarities and differences.  It may be relevant that she and I
are in the same time zone and, indeed, live within several
miles/km of each other...


--On Saturday, April 1, 2023 07:13 -0400 Kathleen Moriarty
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Greetings!
> 
> Earlier in the thread, there was a request to hear from remote
> participants. I remained remote for this meeting as the
> distance to travel added too much away time in total. I am
> planning to be in San Francisco. 

In my case, the issue was less too much time away but concerns
about travel time, costs, some COVID concerns, and, yes, carbon
footprint.

> In the past, I did stay up all hours to attend meetings. This
> was because of a direct responsibility as an AD at the time.
> For this meeting, I attended all sessions where I was a chair
> or presenting. I had co-chairs in the room or this would not
> have been possible. 

I no longer have any formal leadership responsibilities at the
IETF (pain-in-the-neck and voice-from-the-rough don't count) and
was not even signed up for any presentations, so, if I were
using the logic I deduce from the above, I would have gotten
much more sleep this last week. 

I was not able to switch my personal time onto that in Yokohama,
with several commitments during the week in local business
hours.  With some remote meetings, I've been able to do that
switch and the time zone shift has not been much more of a
problem than attending in person.  Neither arrangement will be
true for everyone remote at every meeting so, if the information
is useful, we should be concerned about blanket generalizations.

I did attend all of the sessions I considered very important,
including a few side meetings (on this subject and others) and
the plenary, but my threshold for "important" went way up and I
did miss one session in which I intended to participate because
I was just too tired to do a meeting at 3:30AM local time after
ones between midnight and 3AM.   I believe that meetings halfway
around the world (twelve hours time difference plus or minus a
few) are always going to cause different remote experiences and
related decision-making than ones only a few time zones away.
As an extreme example, IETF 114 (in the same timezone) posed an
almost entirely different set of challenges to attend remotely
than IETF 116.
>...

> I'm going to watch the recordings of meetings that happened
> in the very late hours and of course something is missed. 

For most of the sessions I did not attend but consider
interesting, I will not watch the recordings.  Instead, I
persist in the -- official and told to newcomers but probably
outdated -- belief that I should be able to get everything I
need from the mailing list, minutes, and published I-Ds.  When
those are insufficient or contain pointers elsewhere, I will
typically ask myself how much I really care --about the topic
and about WGs that care enough about either the supposed rules
or about remote participants-- to spend the time to dig into
those other materials.  The answer is, more often than not,
"no"... and a strong temptation to appeal decisions to appeal
decisions to hold Last Calls on the grounds that the behavior of
the WG was systematically exclusionary wrt a broad range of
participants and perspectives.

> I do think we can achieve more remotely, but we need to work
> together for that to be possible.

Let me say that differently and more strongly.  Most paths to
significantly less carbon impact (much less "net zero") pass
through "more remote", whether that be individuals staying home,
reducing the number of in-person meetings, or encouraging
organizations -- particularly, IMO, the LLC and ISOC-- to
carefully consider how many people they need to have present f2f
(and, where appropriate, how to organize things to reduce that
number without significantly reducing effectiveness).  If "more
remote" is going to work, the community and its decision-makers
need to get much more serious along many dimensions.  They range
from a need for ADs to push hard to get minutes out quickly (not
let them drag out for a few months); to getting much more
serious about people (especially ones who do not have large
images on-camera) carefully announcing their names each time
they start to speak; and many other things, including
recognizing that there now seem to be two types of
"side-meetings".  Stated extremely, one type involves local,
narrow interest, or quasi-social events. The others are meetings
that provide information for (or that might lead to) IETF
decision making even if the group involved is some sort of task
force or LLC effort.  The latter either need to be treated as
IETF efforts, with adequate attention to the needs of remote
participants or they don't need meeting time.  Treating them as
"side meeting" to avoid cluttering up the main agenda may be
fine, but, for that type of session, deciding that "side
meeting" means that remote participation need be no better than
"best effort" should not be... at least if meaningful remote
participation is important.

> Michael's suggestion for plenary meetings makes sense. I
> also appreciate WGs that meet frequently in between meetings
> as that lessens the need for travel too. The only problem with
> that (for me) is that I have a standing conflict with one of
> them and gave to decide each week what to attend.

This may or may not be a net-zero issue but, because all-remote
interim meetings inevitably involve the sort of schedule
conflicts Kathleen identifies and some would-be participants
with day jobs having unreasonable time zone conflicts, I think
it would be far better for broadly based, inclusive, IETF
specification development if we focused much more on mailing
lists, probably with the IESG pushing back on WGs with multiple,
even regularly scheduled, interim meetings.  That difference
probably has zero net effect on carbon impact, but it is
helpful, IMO, to keep looking at the whole system.

> I do think we can do better. We have to be willing.

Indeed.  And, if we are not willing, we should probably be
asking ourselves hard questions about whether we are
inadvertently limiting the diversity of participation and
diversity of technical inputs enough to reduce the IETF's
overall effectiveness as well as providing disincentives to
remote participation and f2f meeting reduction.

best,
   john