Re: [Manycouches] Daniel presentation @ 113 - virtual interim meetings

["Charles Eckel (eckelcu)" <[e-mail]>]

Great points Eliot. This thread and my experience in shmoo and in running the IETF Hackathons has taught me that in addition to a wide range of opinions, participants in IETF efforts have a wide range of working styles, circumstances, and preferences, and that these change over time. Some people would almost certainly benefit from fewer in person meetings and be more productive and successful in their IETF efforts. Some would suffer, and others would disengage entirely.

Many of us experienced benefits as a result of IETF 113 being held in person. This was true for everyone I encountered in person and for several who were remote. I suspect some remote participants found it more difficult to engage than at previous online only meetings. As an in person participant, I found it more challenging to follow two sessions in parallel and to participate in active chat sessions in Meetecho while using my laptop in a meeting room than I did when at home with my detached keyboard and two large monitors.

One of the greatest challenges faced with online only Hackathons was facilitating the mixing people and ideas and the sharing of knowledge and expertise that occurs so naturally when we come together in person. It was fantastic to add this valuable element back to the Hackathon. Running code created and improved at each Hackathon is valuable, but so are the exchange of ideas, the extension of human networks, and the building of new friendships, respect, and trust. Meeting in person for large chunks of time made this all possible again.

I believe we should focus on continuing to make remote participation better, not only for the remote participants but for those engaging with remote participants while they themselves are participating in person. Few people participated in person at IETF 113 than at previous in person meetings. A number of factors contributed to that. COVID played a part as did reduced travel budgets. The more important it was to someone to participate in person, the more pain and risk they were willing to endure. By continuing to improve the remote experience, we will shift the tipping point between deciding to participate in person vs remote. Personal, work, and world circumstances will change with each meeting. My hope is that rather than explicitly aiming to reduce the number of in person meetings or apply other one-size-fits-all requirements for all IETF efforts and participants, we simply continue to do what we can to provide people with better options for when and how they participate.

Cheers,
Charles

On Apr 12, 2022, at 11:48 PM, Eliot Lear <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:


Hi John,

Your note ties to Mark Nottingham's draft about the scheduling of virtual interims.

I'll just add that "dropping in" is something that could be better facilitated by virtual interims because there are less chances of conflicts.  That's because there are so many simultaneous tracks at an in-person IETF meeting.

I'm not sure I agree with you about not holding in-person interims.  I firmly believe that the RFC Editor Future Development Program could have accomplished its work about a year sooner than we did, had we been able to meet in person.  Of course, the chairs couldn't even begin to contemplate such a meeting due to COVID.  But I will note that almost all of our progress was made in high bandwidth settings, and conversely almost none of the serious issues we faced got resolved over email.  Now, that may have been the nature of the work.  The program wasn't a working group, and in particular it largely didn't address technical problems.

Still, what I take from that is that once one has a good starting point, there are phases of work within a working group where high bandwidth access is very important, and one hour every three months isn't going to cut it.  If there are substantial amounts of issues to be discussed, then a two or even three day face to face seems appropriate.  I think the httpbis working group demonstrated that with great success.

Was there a mono-culture in that working group? Maybe so, but the alternative would be that not only would http3 not be on the way, but likely http2 would still be in process.  And we certainly didn't have a mono-culture in the RFC program, and we had plenty of interims.

I'm not saying that every dispute can be resolved just due to an in person meeting.  Sometimes, other factors come into play.  For those who particpated in webrtc, it seemed that an evolution of thought and process was required.  I think I saw some of that in the RFC program as well.

Eliot

On 13.04.22 05:17, John C Klensin wrote:


--On Tuesday, April 12, 2022 14:41 -0700 Fred Baker
<[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]> wrote:






On Apr 12, 2022, at 8:51 AM, Joel M. Halpern
<[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]> wrote:

Trimmed, to comment on one possibility raised by Eliot.
Joel

On 4/12/2022 11:29 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
...


 * Mandatory virtual interim meetings at a certain tempo


...

Actually, I would prefer fewer virtual per-WG interim
meetingss.   As a person who participates in a lot of IETF
working groups, and also in other SDOs, regular virtual
interim meetings are a pain.  Regular virtual interim
meetings in the sweet spot that people like for international
calls makes everything collide.  Having interims when there
is actually a need for discussion on a specific topic makes
good sense.  But interim meetings at a "certain tempo".
Please, no.

Yours,
Joel


I concur. The point of plenary meetings is, in part, to
justify the travel expense, and the point of meetings at all
is to enable people to talk with each other face to face.
Regular face to face interims would mean that many people
would simply not find the expense justified, and virtual
interims prevent the face to face conversations that need to
be had.


To take this a step further, one of the IETF's main strengths
lies in the ability of people to look in on and participate in
work outside their main area of expertise, activities that often
start on a drop-in basis.  I think we could continue (or resume)
that with fewer meetings a year as long as we renew our strong
commitment to doing most of our work on mailing lists and to
focus there and on occasional meetings.  At least for the WG's
I'm following (fewer than years ago, see below), many virtual
interims often act as substitutes for that mailing list work,
possibly leading to getting more work done but at the price of
broad participation (at least sometimes due to the choice of
times for those meetings).  Except, perhaps, for people with
unlimited travel budgets and the ability to spend most of their
time on the IETF, f2f interims would likely be even worse,
resulting in participants making tradeoffs between traveling to
and participating in those interims because the are most
involved with (or sponsored for) the WGs holding them and other
WGs to which they could be contributing broader perspectives
and/or the plenary meetings themselves.

I think we could get by with two, or possibly even one, f2f
plenary meeting a year without much damage... but only if we
recommitted to trying to get as much done as possible on mailing
lists, minimized the number of interims (with no f2f ones except
under the most unusual or circumstances), and thought carefully
about some all-online plenary-type sessions.

I think it would also be wise to think carefully about how much
work we are taking on and, in particular, how broad the
commitment needs to be to spin up a WG.  Especially with fewer
f2f meetings and more reliance on interims that people need to
be really committed to the WG to attend (even online), we could
easily see increasing numbers of WG where almost all of the
participants share a single point of view on the relevant issues
and how they should be addressed.  The IETF adds almost no value
to such groups other than endorsements of their conclusions.
Perhaps things have evolved to the point that people want the
IETF to be in that business, but I'm not enthused.  In any
event, I think we need to consider the possibility that an IETF
that needs to rely on fewer traditional in-person meetings -- no
matter the mix of online and hybrid ones--   simply cannot
sustain the amount and quality of work on which the IETF built
its reputation.

In addition, if we go in that direction, or even stay with the
current "hybrid" model, I'd encourage the IESG to think about
reinstating a meeting pattern we dropped many years ago, I
believe under pressure from too many WGs.  That was to start the
meetings of with a Monday morning plenary that summarized
important issues for the week and even included reports from
each Area about what they were doing and focusing on.   HotRFC
has taken over a bit of that job, but I suggest is a patch
rather than a replacement for an opportunity for the community
to get a general understanding of what is being worked on and
for individuals to make decisions about how to invest their time
(ideally with a less crowded agenda).

best,
   john



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