Re: Feedback from IETF 120 Vancouver post-meeting survey

[Alexander Stein <[e-mail]>]

On 9/2/24 6:28 PM, Kyle Rose wrote:

> This is not a good analogy because IETF participants are not children 
> and are not compulsory school attendees. We are adults who have the 
> freedom to choose our own modes of participation so long as those do 
> not overly interfere with the official proceedings.

I believe I understood the intent of Eliot's comment, but also relate to 
your perspective as you describe too, Kyle. To further stretch the 
metaphor with my own experience: in a graduate school language course I 
had a more traditional teacher, raised in an environment where I 
(presume?) it was acceptable for a teacher of younger students. Still, 
he jokingly (and maybe to him as a sign of affection and playfulness) 
tossed chalk at me and my fellow students who were not paying attention 
or not understanding the content. This teacher did this to masters 
degree and PhD candidates. At the time, I thought this style was 
passionate and "fun." "Adult me" now realizes how this really favored 
more neuro-typical students who enjoyed some kind of confrontation and 
verbal disagreement (including me) at the expense of others. Others were 
often silent because of the teacher's brashness.

Academic, volunteer, and professional environments (I see IETF as a 
mixture of both) require these different communication styles and media 
for collaboration as Kathleen, Jon, Tim, MCR, and others put forth: it 
has value to make space for that, at least to me. Doing it in a focused 
way to not derail the chat participants as if I am talking "quietly" in 
the room is a challenge, but I try to consider that. I would love if but 
automatic integration were possible as some suggested, but I have worked 
in platforms far less integrated and unified than IETF systems as they 
are now, be it standards org or some other type. I am pleased you can 
read and write to Zulip from MeetEcho client in its native web 
interface. I do not know if others feel as lucky as me in that regard, 
even as-is Datatracker/MeetEcho/Zulip/etc. integration is well above par.