Draft Minutes of IETF 98 WG Chairs Forum

[Mirjam Kuehne <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,

Here are the draft notes from our meeting on Wednesday, 29 March. Please
let me know if anything is missing or wrong. I am sorry I didn't catch
all the names.

Kind regards,
Mirjam
========



IETF 98, WG chairs lunch
Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Agenda:

1. Website Update - Greg Wood (20 min)
Preview new website with focus on how WG Chairs (and by extension
experienced IETF participants) use the website and datatracker.

2. WGs using GitHub BoF - Paul Hoffman (15 min)
Quick report out and discussion of results/next steps from the GitHub BOF

3. Effectiveness of Newcomer Targeted programs - Karen O’Donoghue (10 min)
Summary of current list of newcomer targeted efforts.
What are some metrics for measuring how effective newcomer efforts are?
What do WG chairs think would make newcomers more effective in their
working groups.

4. Summary of Education and mentoring activities (call for volunteers)
Karen O’Donoghue (5 min)

——

1. Greg Wood: IETF website revamp
slides:
https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98/slides/slides-98-edu-sessh-ietf-website-revamp-project-00.pdf

Discussion:

One of the WG chairs said that would use a different order for the
intended website audiences that Greg had listed on his slides. The
experienced IETF participants were listed first, but he didn’t think
that should be the case. Potential new IETF participants should be first
on the list. He also asked if search engine optimisation is part of the
website revamp project?
Greg said he doesn’t think that’s the case, but will look into the
possibility of implementing it.

Greg asked the audience how often they go to www.ripe.net as opposed to
the datatracker.

Rick Taylor responded that he goes straight to the datatracker for
day-to-day WG work. He only goes to the main website to find information
about the meeting hotel etc. He added that it is not easy to find
information on the main IETF website.

Dave Black mentioned another use case for the main IETF website: He said
he actually  points people to special URLs on the website for
information about the IETF organisation, meetings etc.

Tim Chown said it is good to have a public front as long as the
datatracker stays intact. He said it looks great so far, but wondered if
there is a way to look at the current state of the new website and
provide feedback.

Greg responded that the plan is provide early access to the community
for feedback and will make it known to the WG chairs when this will be
possible.

Someone suggested to develop two front pages: one for experienced
participants and one for new people. It was also noted that quicklinks
are useful.

Justin Dean agreed with the comment that the experienced IETF community
is not the main audience for the main web site. It should focus on
potential and new contributors and should make it easier for them to
participate, e.g. teaching them about the IETF process, how to submit
drafts and how to contact people and mailing lists and how to find RFCs
and how to implement them.

Spencer Dawkins mentioned that all meeting links change from one to the
next meeting and that that requires new navigation each time.

Greg said that they will make sure that well known URLs should remain
intact.

Alexander Pelov also agreed to focus on new contributors, but added that
this is related to more than just web design. It’s about structuring
content. Design should come afterwards. He urged the development team to
avoid making the IETF website look just like any other website. There is
a spirit in the IETF and that should be reflected in the design.

John Scudder: Likes the wall of text; doesn’t need to be on the front
page though. Goes to www.ietf.org probably weekly

Alissa Cooper said that we currently don’t have any way to track usage.
We don’t know how many people visit the IETF website and how they
navigate. We don’t have any of this information, mostly for historical
reasons. That is also the case for the new website. Alissa thought that
this would be useful if we can avoid person tracking. She would like to
hear some feedback on that on the wg-chair list after the meeting.

2. Paul Hoffman: GitHub BoF
The main goals of the BoF was to allow people to ask questions. Some WGs
rely heavily on GitHub, there are some that don’t use it at all, and
there are others that are in the middle. There is a wide variety of
usages. But there are some problems with these usages. Paul encouraged
everyone to look at the presentations (one by Mark Nottingham, one by
Martin Thomson: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/98/agenda/wugh/).
Both speakers pretty much know each other from GitHub, but disagree on a
number of usage details. The biggest concern that came up during
discussion was this: now we have mailing lists for discussions. Once we
add GitHub, we’ll have another place for discussion (pull requests). So,
how do you know where to look at the conversation. Are we loosing the
benefit of having one central place (the mailing lists)?

Also, GitHub has a sharp learning curve. It’s been originally designed
for programming. But now we are using it for documentation as well.
People who work with GitHub find IETF work on it which then encourages
them to participate in the IETF. That’s a good thing and  we want those
people to participate. But it is a bit of a culture clash.

Q&A:

Someone asked if there is a way to cross-post from GitHub to the mailing
lists.
Paul confirmed that this is possible.

Pete Resnick said that he has started using GitHub now for the mtgvenue
WG. He was wondering if the other way round is also possible: posting
from the mailing list back to GitHub.

Rick Taylor asked if we should be using a third-party platform? Wouldn’t
it be better to use trac?

Paul asked if people think that tutorials are needed.

Someone mentioned that doing document development in a revision control
system is valuable. Until now one can point people to mailing list
archives. That might not be possible anymore when we use GitHub.

Niels ten Oever responded to Paul’s question and said he would love to
see more tutorials on travis, circl, httpbis and other useful tools.

Natasha Rooney said that she likes using GitHub. It has vastly improved
the entire process.

Karen asked if we need to define a process for GitHub usage.

Natasha said that she would like to develop such processes and define
how to use it, how to set it up etc.

Bron Gondwana said that if we only use home-built tools and platforms,
it is harder for people to find us.

Karen and Paul encouraged everyone to continue this discussion on the WG
Chairs mailing list.

3. Karen: Education and Mentoring Directorate
https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98/slides/slides-98-edu-sessh-chair-slides-agenda-educationmentoring-directorate-newcomer-projects-00.pdf

Karen showed the scope of the new directorate and the mail that Jari
sent out to the ietf list earlier this week. She also showed the list of
projects under the directorate.

Please note that we are always looking for input for tutorial topics and
for WG chair lunch forum topics. Please send us ideas!  What about some
more discussion on facilitating remote participation?

Pete Resnick mentioned that he got pulled into the speed mentoring and
he found it indeed useful. On the other hand he didn’t find the
newcomers meet & greet very effective. Maybe we can maybe combine the
two? BTW, the speed mentoring is also a good way for old-timers to
actually talk to newcomers.

Karen asked the room: What do you need from newcomers? What do you wish
they would know?

Paul asked if we ever reached out to people who attended only once to
try to find out why.

Karen explained that the definition of newcomers has been from first
meeting to five meetings (first timers and newcomers). We send out
surveys to newcomers. But we want to do more of that.

Barry Leiba said that he finds the meet & greet effective, but is it
effective for the newcomers? It is always too busy and too noisy. Could
we maybe combine it with the actual welcome reception. He encouraged WG
chairs to ask at the beginning if there are newcomers in the room and to
explicitly welcome them.

There were more people at the mic, but we ran out of time. Please send
your input to the list!