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

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

Hi Michael,

Nice draft covering many important topics. Thanks for writing it.

On 11/5/20, 3:35 PM, "Manycouches on behalf of Michael Richardson" <[e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]> wrote:


    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.

I found them very useful. You could move them to a running list near the end or even in an appendix, but I fear this will lead to repeating a lot of important information. The current format worked for me.

        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.

I think virtual interims are underutilized. Perhaps the formality of scheduling them is the culprit? 

        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.

Some additional comments,

Section 1.2, "IETF 108 would be best described as a sprint." 
I would classify IETF 108, and IETF 109, more like a typical IETF meeting attended remotely, which is not a sprint in my mind. You needed to pace yourself for the week, so more like a 10K :)   

Section 2.1, "Heavily conflicted (physical) meeting schedules have been a growing issue ..."

This depends on the type of attendee as well. If focused on a few WGs only, a more comressed agenda is better. For people who like to dive into everything, as is thankfully common with many long time IETFs, the packed agenda results in conflicts and difficulty checking out new things.

Section 2.2.2, "This document suggests that the IETF virtual meeting week be focused on:

I would add the hackathon and put it somewhere in the middle. One concern is that if many WGs are not meeting, fewer people will want to attend the in-person meeting and others will have a harder time to justify it. This would also hurt the Hackathon as the Hackathon alone may not be enough to justify a trip.

Section 2.2.2, "Rather than attempt to compress the schedule ..."
For me, the agenda for IETF 106 worked very well. The side meeting/free timeslot that was added plus breakfast, lunch, and dinner/post dinner were great and sufficient for this, including side meetings/BAR-BOFs, Hackdemo, etc. some of those evenings. Improved stay-for-lunch options would save a great deal of time and help facilitate as well. 

Cheers,
Charles

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