Re: What can IETF do? Re: Further update on COVID-19

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 4:13 PM Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On 2/26/20 12:08 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:
> > https://secondlife.com/
> >
> > ISTR the IESG had a meeting there once a few years ago.
>
> Netroots Nation had a couple of conferences gatewayed into
> Second Life.  It wasn't terrible, and that was over a decade
> ago.  Might be worth experimenting with again.
>

I could use an avatar at this point. It is somewhat ironic that I am
proposing this stuff when I can't do remote either. I can type and I can
read and I can think and thats about it. Anyway, this is the system I have
had in mind for quite a long time and is the reason I have built (and had
others build for me) some of the stuff I have in the past year.

I am a systems guy, this is not just about conferences, its about the
system.


First, lets start with Internet Drafts. I have written my own
document handler taking Markdown and Word as inputs and generating XML2RFC
as an output format.

The second half of that system is the comment forum. So the draft is
uploaded to some service. You can read through the draft and click the
pilcrow on any paragraph and a comment dialog opens up. This asks for:

1) Lightweight semantic: Agree/Disagree/Clarify/Object
2) Explanation (some text).

For IETF purposes, we don't need end-to-end security. But if we were going
to use this to provide group collaboration on bidding on RFPs or the drafts
of the quarterly SEC reports, we need that and I have designed the tools to
make that possible.

Entering a comment creates an object which has its own lifecycle. Basically
a comment is an issue and these should eventually get cleared. So when a
new version of the draft is uploaded, the editor checks off which comments
have been cleared.

So that is the sort of thing I want to replace mailing lists with. I want
the drafts to serve as the reference point for the discussion.


So now, let us imagine that an issue is raised that is more complex than
can be disposed of by a comment. Something like the discussion we are
having now. Well that is the point at which I would like to be able to set
up an ad-hoc virtual meeting to discuss that particular point. So lets say
we have a bunch of issues raised on the splunge topic:

1) Someone proposes a virtual meeting.
2) (optional) WG Chair, Editor approves.
3) Negotiation of date, time, agenda
4) Have meeting
5) Report back result

Point here is that while we talk about 'consensus', that is rarely the
relevant test. Quite often, the relevant test is 'is there a major security
hole if we do things this way' or 'what are the interop concerns'.

The type of capabilities that are relevant to a meeting of that type are
likely to be:

1) Voice
2) Screen sharing (for slides, demos, etc.)
3) Video
4) Whiteboard input (i.e. iPad + pencil or Microsoft Surface type
interaction)
5) Transcription (voice to text).

Oh and yes, we want all this on the record and to save every byte for IETF
and for Enterprise. But I can also provide an OTR version of the security
protocols.

We need to have some sort of concept of process rules. Not necessarily
Roberts Rules. But maybe everyone in the meeting starts with ten minutes to
talk and that counts down when they hold the floor. And maybe if someone is
saying something interesting people can pass some of their time to them.
And maybe we have thumbnails of everyone apart from the person with the
floor who gets full screen treatment.


So this is not quite hallway discussion but it is close. Some hallway
discussions fit into this pattern. When I go to an IETF, I know that I have
a list of folk I want to raise very specific issues with. But the other
part of it is 'serendipity'. I am not quite sure how to incorporate that
into the model yet.

One option would be a sort of Facebook like feed with some sort of curation
process that results in proposals to hold meetups or discussions. Or maybe
we have a model in which there is a large public concourse and people who
are interested go off to private meetings.


PHB