Re: WG meeting structure

[Mary Barnes <[e-mail]>]

I'll also add that I think our community likely has more folks with
auditory processing disorders than the general population - likely
undiagnosed because we have a lot of smart people in our demographic.    I
had a long discussion on this topic on a flight with an audiologist.  I
think this is why we have a lot of cross talk in meetings - i.e., people
saying the same thing but thinking that they aren't agreeing.

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 2:10 PM Mary Barnes <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> I think you hit the nail on the head with the point about some things
> being chair issues.  I would posit that the majority of this is chair
> issues.  IMHO, chairs should facilitate the discussion, which is easier
> with the U shape.   For example, chairs are facing the group and rather
> than looking at their email during the session or being heads-down in their
> laptop in general, chairs should be watching the group.  The chairs know
> who the key people are and there's nothing wrong with them specifically
> asking person X to share their view if they're not in the queue.  We do
> that with ADs quite frequently.  For example, the chairs can interrupt the
> queue and ask the group if anyone else, who might not even be in the queue,
> has thoughts on the specific point being discussed.
>
> We also have the fact that a lot of participants are of the ilk that they
> talk *at* people and really don't necessarily listen to what others have to
> say - i.e., their top priority is to get their point across and not to try
> to understand others' points (in many situations in my experience).   It's
> not unusual that I'll say something and then someone else says the same
> thing without acknowledging that the point has also been made.   If they
> were more active listeners, while others are speaking, then the discussion
> could be more interactive. But, I think many stand in line formulating what
> they plan to say and lose track of what others in the queue are saying.
> Obviously, facing one another is more conducive to active listening since
> the majority of communication is non-verbal.  One thought I have to
> facilitate the issue during the large sessions is to display the speaker on
> the screen.  This allows people other than the chairs or those closer to
> the front that can turn around to see the speaker.   And, maybe this is
> something that chairs already have control over with the Meetecho screen
> for remote participants?
>
> I think the suggestion to have more interims is a good one.  The only
> challenge there is time zone bias.  For example, even if you do a Doodle
> poll, the majority might be one timezone which disadvantages those in a
> completely different timezone (e.g., North America vs Asia).   One group I
> worked in had the requirement that we rotate through time zones - we picked
> a time for each major region.    The downside of course is that if there's
> no one in the timezone you're accommodating, then it's really, really
> annoying.
>
> Certainly, there are ways to improve meetings. I do think it starts with
> the chairs, then participants and then meeting room setup (and don't forget
> potential impacts of the HVAC system and staff working behind the meeting
> rooms that can have a significant impact on audio quality).    In my
> experience, you need a chair that has a lot of experience chairing meetings
> with the U-shape setup to be effective for both in room participants and
> remote -i.e., zero tolerance for cross talk.  I will also add that some
> folks have more difficulty following discussions when there are side
> discussions (which are more common with U-shape, in particular, when you're
> trying to ensure that everyone has access to a microphone.  So, you'd also
> need participants to mute the nearby microphones when they are not
> speaking.  And, actually studies show that women have this problem much
> more frequently than men -  there is research showing that the auditory
> processing in the brain of men and women is different.   So, that might
> well be why I have difficulty with this style of meeting that isn't
> extremely well managed. I've been on conference calls where there's a lot
> of folks in the room and I seem to be the only one that can't follow the
> discussion due to cross talk and poor moderation of the discussion, which
> is why I wondered and did some research about this potential difference.
> So, given that we have so few women, even if we experiment, there will
> likely be a bias in the conclusions.
>
> Regards,
> Mary.
>
> On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 1:09 PM Pete Resnick <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On 15 May 2019, at 9:14, STARK, BARBARA H wrote:
>>
>> > Maybe the experiment should be to have a small room with a table/U
>> > where only active list-participants are allowed. Stream the Meetecho
>> > from this to a large room, which now becomes a remote site. There can
>> > be a mic in the large room for people who want to talk to the small
>> > room. And a moderator/jabber scribe in the large room (who don't need
>> > to be a chair or active participant) to manage the large room mic and
>> > identify who is at the mic.
>>
>> I'm fine with this idea. I would be OK with some "cheap seats" in the
>> small room if people wanted to sit in, as it will give us some
>> additional data to the experiment.
>>
>> I think as Michael has mentioned, quite a bit of the discussion has lost
>> track of why we might want to do this: We want discussion, not "a
>> serialized set of independent one way comments". (Thanks Ole.) Too
>> often, that's what mic queues turn into, and that makes it harder for
>> the chair to  figure out what the consensus is. People facing each other
>> helps in a way that even tables all facing front do not. (See
>> contortions in the current setup.) Having the chair face the remote
>> screen to see who wants to participate helps. (Again, see contortions.)
>>
>> The problem that remote (and some local observer) participants had with
>> QUIC appears to be a chair issue: You still have to do discussion
>> management, and in this setup the chair should call out the name of the
>> person to ask them to speak, or even say, "John, Mary: Please go ahead
>> and discuss between the two of you" and interrupt and say, "Joe, did you
>> want to jump in?" Sure, that's not quite as free-flow as a free-for-all
>> discussion, but it is much better than the current state. I also think
>> that passing around a handheld mic would add a bit to the discussion
>> management, instead of doing fixed "collect all sounds" mics. I've
>> moderated sessions like this, and it does take attention and a piece of
>> paper listing topics and names of people wishing to speak on those
>> topics. No, you can't catch up on your email while chairing such a
>> session. ;-)
>>
>> My quick look over the list was a half a dozen folks thinking this is
>> worth doing, a dozen seeing problems, and a couple simply neutrally
>> commenting. Sounds like (given the small sample size) enough folks for
>> an experiment, at least with their own WGs.
>>
>> Speaking of experiments: For those of you with large rooms of folks (and
>> do look at the numbers in the agenda request sent out yesterday; they're
>> smaller than you think), it would be worth actually counting up how many
>> people participated in your sessions (including presenters), how much
>> time each of them spent speaking, and how quickly issues resolved. I
>> suspect (with my data being a huge number of anecdotes) that you're
>> being less productive in these sessions than you think you are.
>>
>> pr
>> --
>> Pete Resnick http://www.episteme.net/
>> All connections to the world are tenuous at best
>>
>>