[Manycouches] many-fine-dinners --- a view on how to organize virtual meetings

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

I posted draft-richardson-shmoo-how-many-fine-dinners-01 a few weeks ago, and
had a conversation with Joel Halpern.  He identified that something "seems
wrong" to him, and I had hoped that the -01 diffs would help him track down
the "smell".

He sent these notes, and agreed to let me share them:

Joel M. Halpern <[e-mail]> wrote:
    Joel> I have read the today's version.

    Joel> The following is a bit disconnected, but maybe from ehre we can figure out
    Joel> how to get to a place we are both comfortable with.

    Joel> The goal, as stated in the abstract, makes good sense to me.  I think that
    Joel> the fact that I agree with this is why I was confused when I became
    Joel> uncomfortable with the text later on.

    Joel> I found the review of the last two meetings distracting and unhelpful. I
    Joel> think it invites argument that is irrelevant.  The one reference later in the
    Joel> document to it strikes me as largely unnecessary.

I understand.  I could move that to the end, but it felt like my
recommendations wouldn't make sense without understanding where we've been.

    Joel> I think that the last sentence of 2.1 is actually counter-factual.  I do not
    Joel> see how the meeting conflicts have been a growing issue?  We have, as far as
    Joel> I can tell, been getting better at managing the conflicts and scheduling the
    Joel> sessions.

My experience is that conflicts are up, because we can now schedule many more
sessions efficiently.  We are just doing more work and having more WGs, but
really the number of active people is not increasing that much.

    Joel> 2.2.1 is a place where I have a problem.  I work actively in a fair
    Joel> number of

[2.2.1 Encourage Virtual Interim meetings for ongoing work]

    Joel> working groups (as do you) plus external SDOs.  And I follow quite a few
    Joel> others.  Plus the process stuff.  If most working groups had bi-weekly calls
    Joel> it would be a pain.  If many of them had the calls in the US / Europe prime
    Joel> slot (which Asia can often make), it would be a disaster.  If it recommended
    Joel> monthly, I probably would not argue.  If it recommended monthly for topics
    Joel> that are receiving good email discussion and need more engagement, I could
    Joel> not object.

I did say, "twice-month" (because I never know what bi-monthly is) to
monthly.  I agree that too many meetings is a problem, but then, being unable
to attend WG meetings during IETF week due to conflicts is also a problem.

    Joel> Which relates to something I have been trying for in the WGs I co-chair. If
    Joel> someone wants an interim to discuss some topic, I push for email engagement
    Joel> first.  If we do not see discussion on the list, why should we expect useful
    Joel> discussion at an interim?

The experience of a few people is that it increases the connection within the
group, and effectively creates new deadlines.

    Joel> We then get to the meet[meat] of the document, the bulleted lsit in section 2.2.2.
    Joel> I think this misses a lot of the cases when cross-fertilization is at least
    Joel> useful and maybe necessary.  Now topics become active without any milestone
    Joel> being achieved.  Topics become "of interest" to the broader community at
    Joel> times that have nothing to do with the milestones.  So I find the
    Joel> recommendation that established WGs should not use IETF session time except
    Joel> maybe at milestones to miss most of the important cases I have seen.

Well, I wasn't trying to restrict it to milestones, but rather give an
example of when it would be important to meet.

    Joel> Which relates to my feeling that 2 parallel tracks is simply not
    Joel> enough. Maybe we could make 4 - 6 work.  But 2?  No way it is sufficient.

Fair enough, the document says "two to four"
I see 6 as the same as 8: too many.

    Joel> A tangentially related question is if we hold some meetings face-to-face and
    Joel> some virtual, then maybe the virtual ones could be more lightly scheduled.
    Joel> But that is a much more complex hypothesis.

    Joel> I hope the above at least sheds light on where we can have fruitful
    Joel> discussion of differences of opinion.


--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide