Re: IETF WG meetings and remote participation

[Victor Kuarsingh <[e-mail]>]

Melinda,

Your are right, we seem to have come back to how to manage remote
participation.  I am hoping this discussion does not die off and we do have
enough desire to address the challenge once and for all.

I agree we need to look at structural changes, but I think this falls into
a few categories.  I list this in order of importance (based on my
opinion).

(1). Full Group Support.  Having managed remote participation for large
groups at the day job, the ability to do this successfully starts with all
participants agreeing and being respectful that the meeting will have
remote participants.  This is the most important part of the equation.  If
the people in the room are not ready to participate in a manner which
allows remote folks to be engaged, than it's likely not going to work out
very well.

(2). Chairs.  As many have noted, how the chairs structure the conversation
will have significant impact on how the meeting flows.  This includes both
the topics in general, and remote participation.

(3). Tools.  I think having the right tools is important, but many tools
can be made to work.  I don't have strong opinions here as to which
specific tools we use; however, from day-job experience, tools that are
simple to use, get the job done are a great start.  Complexity does not
always beget success here.  We may also want to consider that not all
participants may have the same level of technical experience as others, so
"easy to use" should be top of mind.  Having the best technical solution is
less important, IMO, than tools everyone can use.

regards,

Victor K








On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 5:26 PM Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> It seems inevitable that any discussion of meeting logistics will
> devolve into a discussion of presentations during working group
> sessions.  At this point I think this pattern goes back several
> decades and while there are some working groups that manage meeting
> time, and particularly discussion, very well, in general I doubt very
> much anything is going to change without structural changes to how we
> meet.  It would be excellent to see some proposals around that.
>
> I have been in some sessions where discussion and participation by
> remote participants went very well.  I don't have a sense of how
> well that would scale, but I do think that managing multiple queues
> is likely to get messy and may lead to some participants feeling
> as if they've been treated unfairly.
>
> Melinda
>
> --
> Melinda Shore
> [e-mail]
>
> Software longa, hardware brevis
>
>