Re: WG meeting structure

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

A)

Given how i am a big fan of not regressing on support for remote
participation: If you do expect to enable discussion between
people sitting on the tables, then at least every second needs to have
a microphone in front of them. These additional microphones 
may already be a significant org issue. Also its unclear to me how
well a single camera could capture the front-row discussion
participants. I fear it is easy to regress on our remote
participation quality. But of course, there may be WGs where there
are no remote participants.

B)

A cheaper alternative approach could be a row of "panel chairs"
in front of the screen (beside the speaker cage). In such a constrained
setup, one could still quickly enough pass around a single mike and
the existing cameras would likely easily be able to program additional
pan/tilt positions to capture the panel seats. We're already using
this setup in non-WG meetings anyhow.

C)

IMHO, the primary case where i think a room setup issue
exists is when the room is too tighly packed that there is not enough
sparse space around the audience microphones for active participants
to dynamically readjust themselves around them. SO may just make
sure rooms have enough spare space and for the big ones that will be
stuff, maybe start setting up the chairs around the mike sparsely, e.g.:
don't populate a few chairs every second like this:

    
		Screen
                Speaker

    XXXXXXXXXXXXX   XXXXXXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXXXXXX   XXXXXXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXXXXXX M XXXXXXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXP           PXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXPPPPP   PPPPPXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXP           PXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXPPPPP   PPPPPXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXXXXXX   XXXXXXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXXXXXX   XXXXXXXXXXXXX   
    XXXXXXXXXXXXX   XXXXXXXXXXXXX   

M(icrophone).
P chairs would be reserved to be used when participating in discussion.

This would allow to overcome the problem that today everyboy who thinks
she may want to go to the mike occupies the first chair in every row and
creates head of row congestion.

Again:  Not necessary to bother IMHO when rooms are not full.

Cheers
    Toerless


On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 06:14:25PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:
> In part inspired by Dave Taht's thread on the IETF list; in part something
> I've been thinking about for some time.
> 
> Some of us chairs would like more discussing and less presenting in WG
> sessions. Even for the largest of WG sessions, I tend to see one or two
> dozen people coming to the mic and discussing, and the rest just visiting,
> so this is not an inconceivable idea for most WGs. Getting this accomplished
> is in part having the chairs structure the agenda somewhat differently, and
> we should really start discussing ways to accomplish that. But a practical
> tool to promote discussion is changing the room layout. The secretariat has
> already said that they're willing to set up something like this if there are
> enough takers, and I know a few chairs (including myself) who really want
> this, but I'd like to know if we've got enough critical mass to try this
> out, at least for one or two rooms:
> 
> The idea is to set up the room like this (check out this ASCII art!):
> 
>              +------+
>              |screen|
>              +------+
>   X  X  X  O +-+  +-+ O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O | |  | | O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O |T|  |T| O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O |a|  |a| O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O |b|  |b| O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O |l|  |l| O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O |e|  |e| O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O | |  | | O  X  X  X
>   X  X  X  O | |__| | O  X  X  X
>            O +______+ O
>    M        O  O  O  O        M
>       X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
>       X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
>       X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
>       X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
> 
> Basically, the idea is to have U-shaped table setup, with the screen up at
> the open end. You'd get people at the table all the way around (the Os) who
> plan to participate in the discussion. (I've also seen this done with nested
> tables for more folks in the discussion.) Rows behind (in 3 directions; the
> Xs) are for folks who plan to mostly just listen; those could fill the rest
> of the room and could probably scale to 100 or more seats depending on the
> size of the room. There would be a few wireless mics to pass around the
> tables, with perhaps a fixed mic at the bottom of the U for the WG chairs,
> and a couple of floor mics (the Ms) for folks who aren't around the table
> who happen to have comments.
> 
> How many of you be willing to run a WG session this way if the setup was
> offered?
> 
> pr
> -- 
> Pete Resnick http://www.episteme.net/
> All connections to the world are tenuous at best

-- 
---
[e-mail]