RE: IETF 107 and Corona Virus? - timezone

["Roni Even (A)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Christian,
I agree with your points, I was pointing out the time zone issue and the "virtual jetleg" but as you mentioned having long virtual conferences has other issues

I have been part of the video conferencing industry since the early 1990's with special focus on multipoint sessions.
One the selling points for video conferencing for the enterprise market was the reeducation in travel (cost) and being "green" solution.
It turns out that there is a reductions of travel when modern telepresence are deployed but it did not replace business travel. It had to do with the type of the meeting. 
For short meetings (couple of hours) one on one or small group meeting it works well.  The problem starts for couple of days conferences with multiple presentations and many participants.
The point you made about the audio quality is on aspect. When you are in a f2f situation you have eye contact, and can see every gesture which is part of the communication. The telepresence systems (see CLUE WG) try to address it by enabling "life size" view of the meeting attendance and having means to focus on the speaker and having directional microphones that can pick the audio from the active speaker. The points you made about the QUIC interim demonstrate the problem of feeling outside of the meeting as a remote participant, it has to do with the layout of the meeting, one room with many people and the structure of the meeting which is not like an IETF session when there is a presenter and questions are handled at the mic, so you can hear and see the active speaker. In the QUIC interim sitting situation everyone speaks from his place it becomes harder to follow.
As for having an IETF meeting as a virtual meeting, it can be by using a number of sites each with multiple participants , this mode requires good video and audio infrastructure in the meeting rooms and a conference moderator that will manage the right to speak.  A more challenging case will be if the idea is to allow anyone who wants to join to do it and have multipoint video conference. Today with meetecho we support remote presenters and remote participants having the working group chair serve as moderators, still most of the participants are local, this will  not scale well if instead of having a room with 100 local participants and about 10 form remote we will have 110 remote participants .
 
So there are two issue with virtual meetings: different time zones ("virtual jetleg") and the quality of the experience. I hope that in the near future with VR technology will allow for large multipoint conference and that the Internet Infrastructure will provide the members with the bandwidth needed for such application. 

Roni Even


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Christian Huitema
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 7:49 AM
> To: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: IETF 107 and Corona Virus? - timezone
> 
> I recently attended several Quic interim meetings remotely --2 days of
> interop and 2 days of meeting. Couple of other meetings as well. Yes, it can
> be hard, and Yes it does feel like jet lag without the jet, and Yes it has some
> impact on family life. But as John Klensin said "different people react in
> different ways." Overall, I find that less hard than traveling to another
> continent for a short meeting. I don't have to spend a day traveling each
> way, so "without the jet" is actually nice. I have way fewer chances of
> catching an unexpected germ in the plane or in transit. I am probably more
> awake for the meeting than if I was recovering from jet lag.
> 
> Of course it is not ideal. When you do that, you are a tiny spoke to a big hub.
> This is asymmetric, and it has effects. Inserting yourself in the conversation
> requires some practice. The remote audio is a best effort service provided by
> volunteers, so you cannot really blame them for the glitches. But then you
> have to compensate for by relying on chat rooms and other tools. And you
> do miss the most of the little breakaway sessions and discussions around
> lunch and dinner.
> 
> On the other hand, the Quic WG also organized "Virtual Interop"
> sessions, and I found that those worked really well. Pick a calendar date, and
> have people join progressively through the day or two as their time zone
> permits. Every team was putting a version of their software online for others
> to tests, doing frequent updates as issues were found and fixed. There is
> always enough overlap between the time zones to give each pair of teams to
> test against each other, discuss potential issues with the spec, etc. This is not
> a "hub and spoke" model, the configuration is symmetric for all participants.
> 
> It may be that the Virtual Interop scenario worked well because we were
> doing a lot of software development and Interop testing -- good old
> fashioned rough consensus and running code. But dedicating a day for
> "rolling sessions" and discussions of specifications could also work.
> Putting decks or videos on line, dedicating rolling time slots to discussing
> drafts and issues, etc. That might be worth trying.
> 
> -- Christian Huitema
> 
> On 2/16/2020 12:04 PM, avri doria wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > When I remote attend meetings in another timezone, I think of it as
> > jet lag without the jet.
> >
> > avri
> >
> >
> > On 16-Feb-20 03:29, Stewart Bryant wrote:
> >> We all suffer from and recover from jet lag in different ways, and the
> same with adapting to antisocial work shifts, but I find the TZ argument
> strange.
> >>
> >> If you want to attend the whole meeting, then shifting your day is no
> worse than what first responders such as the police service do every week
> here in UK.
> >>
> >> At least with doing a time shift rather than a trip you do not need to worry
> about the dehydration and stress of a long flight.
> >>
> >> Stewart
> >>
> >>> On 16 Feb 2020, at 07:37, Roni Even (A) <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> One issue to consider about having  an entirely virtual meeting is what
> are the implication on participants in different time zone.
> >>> Attending  few scattered session may not be a big issue but if one wants
> to attend many sessions it becomes a problem.
> >>>
> >>> My personal experience when trying to attend a QUIC WG Interim
> meeting in Japan was very bad.
> >>>
> >>> 1. The meeting time for me was from 2:00AM till 10:00 AM. (9:00-17:00
> in Japan) for three days.
> >>> 2. I used the lunch break to try to catch some sleep, due to lack of
> >>> enough time to sleep 3. Starting at 2:00 AM did not provide enough time
> to have a healthy night sleep before starting my daily attendance.
> >>> 4. The recovery from the "jetlag" was much slower than when attending
> the meeting in person.
> >>>
> >>> My conclusion was that I will try to avoid as much as I can this mode of
> participating from remote in a meeting that takes a couple of days in which I
> have to attend multiple sessions.
> >>> It is not healthy.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> One other advantage of a f2f meeting is the "official" and
> >>> non-official off line sessions/meetings that I find very productive
> >>> while attending the IETF meeting
> >>>
> >>> If a full virtual meeting will happen and use Vancouver time zone
> >>> than daily meeting from 9-18 will be 19-4AM for me
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Roni Even
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Andrew
> >>>> Alston
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2020 8:48 AM
> >>>> To: [e-mail]
> >>>> Subject: IETF 107 and Corona Virus?
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi All,
> >>>>
> >>>> I am just wondering if there are any thoughts on the status of the
> >>>> IETF 107 meeting in light of the corona virus.
> >>>>
> >>>> Particularly in light of the fact that for safety reasons mobile
> >>>> world congress has been cancelled and we're seeing other events
> >>>> being cancelled in light of this as well.  Should it be considered
> >>>> a safe and responsible move to go ahead with this meeting or should
> >>>> we be looking at an entirely virtual meeting in light of the situation?
> >>>>
> >>>> Andrew