Re: [vmeet] what's been working/failed/tried in hubs?

Hi Christian, Dhruv, Vinayak, & all,

Interesting.  In Boston, we have tried doing some remote hubs during the
last 2 IETFs.  This has been primarily routing related WGs and hosted at
Juniper in Westford.   While they're public, I think most of the attendance
has been from Juniper folks, because they are there, hear about it more
easily, and are more interested.

In addition, we've had a couple get-togethers in Cambridge - one to
celebrate Scott Bradner's retirement and another social lunch.   We're
trying to pull together a meet-up with a few short technical presentations
and then potentially dinner afterwards.

In this area, we have a good number of experienced IETFers but reaching out
to pull new people in is more challenging.  It's also not completely clear
what will excite others enough to come to an event.  The social lunch did
have lively discussion, including of course IETF tech topics.

I'm thinking that focusing on remote hubs during IETF isn't as useful for
us, because a lot of the active folks are at IETF and the time-zone
differences are hard.

I'm also wondering about identifying/asking for community organizers to
focus on planning a few events (1 or 2 between IETFs) and think about how
to get the word out.

It sounds like this is a different approach, though very similar in some
ways of trying to add talks and interaction.

Thoughts?
Alia

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Christian O'Flaherty <oflaherty@isoc.org>
wrote:

> Hi Alia,
>
> There’s a draft that will be updated soon with some experiences and
> recommendations.
>
> Some comments inline:
>
> > I am curious about how the various IETF Hubs have been doing?
> > What activities have you tried and found useful/successful/interesting?
>
> Hubs in Latin America have been diverse:
>         Some hubs were just a small gathering for remote WG session
> participation only.
>         Some hubs were meetings with an introduction/presentation and then
> the WG session (sometimes with local explanations and discussions in
> parallel)
>         Some had a previous introduction webinar to prepare participants
>         Some hubs were organized for IETF promotion and the WG session
> itself was less important (more local activities)
>         Sometimes (in Brazil) they were organized as remote "IETF
> meetings” were the students had a WG to attend in each slot.
>         Some hubs were co-located with other events (academia) were a
> meeting room had the remote WG session
>
> > What did you try that failed miserably?
>
> In some cases the hubs had as few as three or four participants… but I
> would not consider it a failure.
> There were hubs that failed because remote participation was impossible
> (low quality) and they did something else.
>
> > Do you have a community organizer (or group of folks) pushing the
> organization
> > of the activities and facilitating?
>
> Yes… there’s always an organizer / facilitator
>
> >   Do you have different people stepping up to pull things together?
>
> Yes… I’m including Juliao Braga from Brasil who is the main one in our
> region.
>
> >
> > What is your participation like?  Is it largely experienced IETFers?
> researchers & students? interested developers?
>
> We’ve been using them for IETF engagement so they’re usually not
> experienced IETFers, mostly students and professors, some network
> operators. I’m not aware of developers but some students can count as such.
>
> >
> > Personally, I'm brainstorming a bit about what might be useful to try in
> the Boston Hub and how much to push or encourage structure.  It feels like
> some can be quite useful.
>
> Please don’t consider our experiences as “best practice”. We do have
> completely different needs and objectives for remote hubs in our region.
>
> Christian
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Alia
> > _______________________________________________
> > NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
> > http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet
>
>