Re: WG meeting structure

[Mary Barnes <[e-mail]>]

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
>
>