RE: DISPATCH Virtual Meeting

["STARK, BARBARA H" <[e-mail]>]

As note-taker in yesterday's ADD WG ...

From: Bron Gondwana

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, at 02:12, Ben Campbell wrote:


On Mar 24, 2020, at 10:08 AM, Christer Holmberg <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

Hi,

>We failed to make sure everyone was introduced by their full names when speaking. We have this issue in person too, of course,
>but it seemed easier to forget in the faceless forum but is probably even more important to remember.

While I agree it is good to explicitly introduce the speakers, it was possible to see who was speaking by looking at the WebEx attendee list which shows where the audio comes from.

I imagine that the note takers had enough to keep up with without having to constantly look at the WebEx GUI to see who is talking.

Speaking as a note taker, I didn't find it particularly hard - I have a 2-screen setup though, so I had webex up on one screen with the webex chat window open, and the speaker name appeared at the top of that.  The hard part was people who had their "name" as something other than their actual name (Mark Nottingham as the QUIC working group, and some others who had email address rather than name) - but I could have easily noted what I saw there instead of the actual name and corrected to the name list later if I was struggling.

I also used 2 screens and found it really easy to get the speakers' names from WebEx. Much easier (and with more accurate spelling) than transcribing the spoken form of names. It's really helpful if people make sure to provide WebEx with their full name. And chairs of other WGs should log out of their WG accounts before connecting to an interim meeting for a WG they aren't chairing - to avoid appearing in WebEx as "<WG name> working group".

Where I missed something, others added it quickly too - having collaborative note taking is mostly nice (unless someone else starts taking ALL the notes like someone did in Tx, so I just left them to it).

Things I noticed:
*         Webex losing the slides or losing partial audio is a massive usability failure - if you don't know for sure that everyone is getting the same stream then you have the nightmare situation of "can everyone hear me / see" and needing 150 ACKs.  Ouch.
*         I couldn't see where on Etherpad to coordinate the colours back to the identity of the person typing, which made it hard to contact them outside Etherpad to coordinate who's writing what - instead having to just write notes inline for the other authors!
Since people usually don't bother identifying themselves in Etherpad, it probably wouldn't have made a difference, for you to have known that there is a button on the upper right of the Etherpad screen where you can enter your name (so people can see who that color is). I did think about identifying myself there. But I didn't, because it was mostly just me. I probably should have.
*         There was a lot of interesting stuff happening in the Jabber chat which wasn't seen by those who weren't there.  This makes the Webex-by-itself experience a significantly degraded understanding compared to Jabber.  I feel like there would be some value in someone speaking a summary of what happened in Jabber to the Webex at the end of each presentation.  It wouldn't take that long to get the summary out there - both key points made and a "feel of the room", e.g. in DISPATCH there was a large set of "the problem space should be solved, we don't think CLIENTID is the right solution" responses on Jabber, but those in Webex wouldn't have heard that sentiment so clearly.
I do sometimes put notes about jabber chatter into the minutes, when it seems particularly relevant. Even if it's just something like "<robust jabber conversation on this topic>". But I find it's also true in F2F IETF sessions that being in the jabber room (even when physically present) is an essential part of the experience.
Overall I think this has gone really well given the short notice..  Massive Kudos to both the secretariat and the rest of the IETF team for making it happen so smoothly, and to the chairs who really rose to the occasion and ran smooth remote meetings.

I also thought it went quite well.
I do have a comment for people who intend to speak (especially presenters) -
Consider doing whatever you can to ensure good quality audio is coming from you. For example, try to use wired Ethernet directly to your edge router (I moved my laptop and a monitor into the room where my router is so I could connect with Ethernet even though I wasn't speaking - because I didn't want to lose connectivity or have self-inflicted bad audio while taking minutes), use a headset that you've tested out and know works well, ask other family members to avoid bandwidth-consuming activities, etc.