[Manycouches] virtual meeting weeks (was: Re: [irsg] IETF 109 Preliminary Agenda)

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

(moving musings manycouchwards as Adrian asked:-)

Hiya,

On 19/10/2020 19:49, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> This thread (re-)opens the question of the value of a full virtual meeting.
> 
> There is unquestionable (to me) value in the plenary session, and a few of
> the agenda-slot meetings are widely attended.
> 
> But it seems that the main draw of an in-person meeting is the interactions
> in the corridors and after people have spoken at agenda sessions. Also the
> ad hoc gatherings to advance topics. 
> It seems to me that most/all of this was missing at IETF-108 and is likely
> to be missing at IETF-109.
> 
> So what is left between the packed one-week agenda and a sparse three-month
> schedule of "interims".
> 
> Maybe the only benefit I can see is that rather than having to be out of bed
> every week for a poorly-scheduled interim, I can be out of bed for a whole
> week for the IETF week. I am not sure that is an advantage, especially when
> weighed against agenda clashes (at IETF-108 I tried listening to multiple
> audio streams at once, and it fried my poor brain).
> 
> So I'd like to see a renewed discussion of why we are doing this to
> ourselves.

Me too. Some more reasons:

- a packed week of these conference calls is boring as hell
under the current circumstances, (though mightn't be as bad
if it were once/year alongside two f2f meetings, when
things return to more normality)
- those of us lucky enough to be able to afford travel (in
more normal times), being on-site, benefit from not having
the usual workload we have at home (meaning both $dayjob
and domestic duties) - I reckon there must be way fewer of
us who can ignore that whilst physically at home than who
can afford to travel in normal times. IOW, I wonder if the
population of IETF regulars that can devote themselves
fully to a virtual IETF meeting week is always going to be
smaller than could travel to a f2f meeting. I'm not sure
how much smaller though, but I'd guess quite a bit smaller,
as it's just a lot harder to ignore local tasks.

The combination of both of the above seem to me to imply
that if we have to continue with only virtual meetings
we might lose key participants over time and maybe
especially those who'd otherwise be involved in many
things. That seems like a bad thing.

Now it could well be I'm wrong about the above but if
not I think it might also imply the kind of re-think
Adrian's asking for before we do the same again for
IETF110.

> 
> (And yes, this discussion should probably be in schmoo)

Done! :-)

> 
> (And, oh yes, what about the funding model)

Yeah. I'd love to see some thought-experiment models for
meeting e.g. twice a year f2f with concalls in between
(for when things are back to more normal) and for other
ways to not go bust whilst we can't have f2f meetings in
the meantime. Has anyone done something like that?

Cheers,
S.

> 
> Adrian
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WGChairs <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Michael Richardson
> Sent: 19 October 2020 18:01
> To: David Noveck <[e-mail]>
> Cc: Working Group Chairs <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: IETF 109 Preliminary Agenda
> 
> 
> David Noveck <[e-mail]> wrote:
>     > It never occurred to me that there were people who would attend the
> entire
>     > 12Am-6Am meeting and had no expectation of people attending an
> expanded
>     > version of that.  It now appears that there are such people but I
> expect
>     > there will be very few.
> 
> Yes, there are many people who attend a meeting almost every single session,
> and often have conflicts.
> 
> Some of them are Area Directors (IESG), and IAB.
> But, many of them are just active members.
> 
> If your WG does not require or experience interactions with people outside
> some specific working set, then I recommend not dealing with this time zone.
> Hold a virtual interim meeting.  Hold a series of them.
> 
> The CELLAR WG, of which I'm co-chair, has met only once at an IETF meeting,
> for instance.
> It's a group of ~8 to ~12 people who are very github/ML focused, and who
> mostly work on these documents outside of their day$job.
> 
> {typing this in an editor that is saving it's files over NFSv4, btw}
> 
> --
> ]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks
> [
> ]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        |    IoT architect
> [
> ]     [e-mail]  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails
> [
> 
>