Remote only meetings? [Re: Concerns about Singapore]

[<[e-mail]>]

Having just participated remotely for this IETF 95, and having thought
about what I was missing while doing so, I feel that nothing can really
replace the actual IETF face-to-face meeting experience. We can strive
to do as much as possible to make remote be equal as possible
participant, but remote participation can never be a 100% substitute for
100s of colleagues spending an intense week together in the same
location focused morning, noon, and night; while eating, drinking,
meeting, relaxing, on the engineering of the Internet.

Why would we want to get rid of such a rich source of inspiration and
invention?

I don't see that meetings aren't working well, instead I think we're
trying to make them work even better through enhanced remote
participation (e.g., meetecho, remote hubs, etc).

Thanks,
Chris.


Rich Kulawiec <[e-mail]> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 03:17:39PM +0300, Yoav Nir wrote:
>> I don???t believe that this technology exists.
>
> People have remote meetings all day, every day.   Lots of technology
> exists, more is being invented all the time.  Perhaps (to follow
> on your mention of Meetecho in 1995) if 20 years had been invested
> in making it work for the IETF then it would be working by now.
>
>> Yeah, perhaps, some day when we???re all wearing virtual reality
>> headsets and our avatars are hanging out in a virtual venue, and we all
>> have sufficient equipment and bandwidth to handle all that. We???re not
>> there yet.
>
> Nor is there any need to go there.  Meetings do not require VR.
>
>> Virtual meetings with the technology we have today makes it very hard
>> for people with mediocre English to follow the discussion.
>
> That's (a) not a very big problem and (b) a solvable problem.
>
>
> What I'm hearing is a lot of we've-always-done-it-this-way.  Well,
> that's not working very well except for the privileged elite few
> (most of whom are backed by corporations).  And I understand
> that those with plenty of money and time and freedom have gotten
> comfortable with how-things-are-done.  It's an easy thing to do,
> I've done it myself.   But it doesn't serve the long-term interests
> of the IETF or the Internet well.
>
> ---rsk