Re: WG meeting structure

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

Mary Barnes <[e-mail]> wrote:
    > 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.

It would be interesting to have a survey of IETF contributors to understand
what time is best for them.  Despite time-zone issues there are some other
issues with AV online meetings:
  1) some have no microphones/headphones at work
  2) some have microphones at work, but no quiet space
  3) some have too many state firewalls to permit them to work at home,
     in the evening.
  4) differences in work week days

I wonder if we could add this to the next meeting survey?

    > 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.

So the prediction is that if we try this with people who haven't done it
before, then it will fail.  But how can we get trained better if we don't try
it?  Can we go learn how to do this elsewhere?  (where?)


--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
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