RE: WG meeting structure

["Valery Smyslov" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Pete,

what I've been always liking in IETF room setup is that the floor mics
make discussion self-organized - those who want to discuss form a line
and speak one past one, making easy for listeners to identify who is
speaking and to follow the discussion. Yes, it makes the discussion 
slower than it could be if people can speak from their seats.

But the problem, as I see it, with your suggested setup is that 
if there are more than a few folks willing to speak (each with
his/her own mic), then there is usually a need for some moderator,
who will give them a right to speak. Otherwise we'll hear either noise 
or mostly only most active (or quick) speakers. The WG chairs can be 
moderators, but any moderation is somewhat subjective and you
need to indicate a willingness to speak to moderators (e.g. sitting
for a long time with hand raised). 

And I participated remotely in a QUICK session with such room setup 
(that was a few meeting ago). From my recollection I had somewhat 
bad experience from it, because I had hard time trying to identify who was 
speaking (folks often forgot to introduce themselves and jabber scribe
didn't help much since he/she probably had the same problem)
and as far as I remember sometimes it happened that speakers talked simultaneously,
making impossible to understand them for remote participants.

So, I believe this setup is suited for small groups with 3-5 active speakers.

Regards,
Valery Smyslov.


> 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