Subject: Leading a moving target

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 11:16:47 -0400

As we talk about whether three face-to-face meetings per year is the magic
number, I suggest that we keep a few things in mind, because the definition
of "face-to-face meeting" isn't constant.

I am very gratified to see the number of hackathon participants at each
Hackathon, and the number of hackathon participants who stay for IETF
meetings, even after the hackathon is completed. The hackathons are still
fairly new - the first was in Dallas, at IETF 92, and they've grown over
time. Those are easier to do, face-to-face.

I am very gratified to see the number of side meetings announced at HotRFC
and held during the week, especially when (as in Montreal this week) it was
easy to schedule them during open time each day during the week. Those are
easier to do, face-to-face.

The IETF 105 Deep Dive on NICs wasn't as strongly cross-area as the IETF
104 Deep Dive on spherical routers, but it was still cross-area (as well as
useful). I have already had conversations about possible topics for future
IETFs. Those are easier to do, face-to-face.

I have no insight as to why there were only two Sunday tutorials, but
that's lower than usual (four Sunday tutorials  is probably usual).
Understanding whether that's a trend would be useful.

For your working group(s) - the decision about how often to meet is almost
entirely up to you. Working groups like QUIC have scheduled additional
multi-day meetings including interop testing three times per year (although
if the working group needs change, that pattern will change), while other
groups routinely skip IETF face-to-face meetings, have virtual interims,
and may schedule other ways of moving work forward as their needs dictate.
TL;DR, if you think things should be different for your working group, you
don't have to get the rest of the IETF to agree to change your behavior.

But Do The RIght Thing(s), of course.

Spencer

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 16:24:47 +0100

Spencer is right: the target is moving.

I think, looking at the numbers, this meeting is the first time that it has been reasonable to project a future with more remote participants than local participants (even if we make no further changes).

That, in itself, should be causing us to continue to make changes in our technology support for remote participation, but also to think very hard about what it means to be an IETF participant in all sorts of organisational ways. Those thoughts would automagically become enablers for the personal choice to not attend physically.

Adrian (always attempting to do the right things, but always fulfilling the promise)

From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Spencer Dawkins at IETF
Sent: 26 July 2019 16:17
To: IETF list <[email-masked]>
Subject: Leading a moving target

As we talk about whether three face-to-face meetings per year is the magic number, I suggest that we keep a few things in mind, because the definition of "face-to-face meeting" isn't constant.

I am very gratified to see the number of hackathon participants at each Hackathon, and the number of hackathon participants who stay for IETF meetings, even after the hackathon is completed. The hackathons are still fairly new - the first was in Dallas, at IETF 92, and they've grown over time. Those are easier to do, face-to-face. 

I am very gratified to see the number of side meetings announced at HotRFC and held during the week, especially when (as in Montreal this week) it was easy to schedule them during open time each day during the week.. Those are easier to do, face-to-face. 

The IETF 105 Deep Dive on NICs wasn't as strongly cross-area as the IETF 104 Deep Dive on spherical routers, but it was still cross-area (as well as useful). I have already had conversations about possible topics for future IETFs. Those are easier to do, face-to-face. 

I have no insight as to why there were only two Sunday tutorials, but that's lower than usual (four Sunday tutorials  is probably usual). Understanding whether that's a trend would be useful. 

For your working group(s) - the decision about how often to meet is almost entirely up to you. Working groups like QUIC have scheduled additional multi-day meetings including interop testing three times per year (although if the working group needs change, that pattern will change), while other groups routinely skip IETF face-to-face meetings, have virtual interims, and may schedule other ways of moving work forward as their needs dictate. TL;DR, if you think things should be different for your working group, you don't have to get the rest of the IETF to agree to change your behavior. 

Spencer

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 12:32:01 -0400

Sent from my mobile device

> On Jul 26, 2019, at 11:24 AM, Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

I was thinking about this a bit more and we could move to a lower number of meetings bottom up, but would have to be careful on commitments to venues.

Working groups could decide to skip a meeting and set objectives with an increased number of virtual interim meetings during the period of the skipper meeting.

Best regards,
Kathleen

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 12:35:40 -0400

With Adrian's post about our remote participation technology and the
growing trend to remote participation, I would like to just post a
reaction, while it's fresh in my mind, to being a remote participant for
the first time.

I would like to start by saying that I was very pleased how how well
Meetecho works. I watched the short online tutorial video (which is a bit
out of date, and perhaps should be updated) and read the support page
walkthrough of the various buttons, icons, etc., and didn't experience any
problems during the week. While I was prepared to virtually raise my hand
(I had a headset on just in case), I found that the integrated jabber
window made it unnecessary - I was able to make my comments via jabber and
the jabber scribe or WG chair read them to the room. I was also able to use
the jabber window to communicate with @Meetcho if there were any mike or
camera issues, and they were EXTREMELY responsive!

I also found Etherpad very useful when it's used. Not all WGs use it, but I
would encourage all of those that don't use it to switch to it for the live
meetings. There was a bit of trouble this meeting with duplicate Etherpads,
but that's a tooling issue that I'm sure will be addressed for the next
meeting. An excellent way to use Ethernet is prior to the meeting for the
WG chair or secretary to paste in the meeting agenda, and then the notes
for each item on the agenda can just be typed in following each agenda
topic. It's also a good practice that if anyone is going to add to the
Etherpad, they type in their name at the top of the page, so that their
text color can be attributed to them.

Being a remote participant, I did miss the hallway conversations and such.
But I didn't miss the airports, too-cold AC in the rooms, and other minor
annoyances of travel. It's certainly a trade-off.

What could be improved? This probably isn't immediately feasible, but two
cameras in each room (one pointed to the front, the other to the mike line)
would be huge. That way you can watch both ends of the conversation at
once. Also, in the Meetecho UI, it might be better to increase the size of
the camera image and have the camera image and the slides vertically placed
one on top of each other, rather than the smaller camera image over to the
side. Or perhaps that could be an option. I know that you can make the
camera image larger, but then you lose the slides.

But on the whole, being remote worked much better than I had expected, and
for that I would like to thank everyone that's been working on making this
possible, starting with the Meetecho team.

That said, my preference is still to attend in person if possible. :-)

Cheers,
Andy

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 20:07:56 -0400

Andrew G. Malis <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > cameras in each room (one pointed to the front, the other to the mike
    > line) would be huge. That way you can watch both ends of the
    > conversation at once. Also, in the Meetecho UI, it might be better to
    > increase the size of the camera image and have the camera image and the
    > slides vertically placed one
    > on top of each other, rather han the smaller camera image over to the
    > side.

I'd like all the video/camera/slides boxes to be detachable/undockable so
that I can resize them, and move them around my desktop making the most of
two monitors, sometimes three.

    > Or perhaps that could be an option. I know that you can make the camera
    > image larger, but then you lose the slides.

For extra fun, I found you can open multiple browser windows to two, even
three, different working groups to "solve" the conflict problem.  Just mute
two of them at a time.... or... try to take all three speakers in at the same
time.

How many time zones away were you?  I'm guessing three hours.
A major challenge of remote attendance (if done from a home) seems to be
convincing family (particularly small children) that you aren't really home,
or that you you need sleep at different times.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2019 11:28:53 +1000

On Sat, Jul 27, 2019, at 02:36, Andrew G. Malis wrote:
> But on the whole, being remote worked much better than I had expected, and for that I would like to thank everyone that's been working on making this possible, starting with the Meetecho team.
> 

Likewise, I'd like to echo my general pleasure with working with Meetecho. On a desktop/laptop it's great. This was my first time being a remote participant, including being a remote chair for two sessions (shoutout to my co-chairs who each ran the room perfectly and left me with very little to do other than participate), and presenting in one session.

Thankfully I was able to get a hotel in the city last night so I could be in the city and use the reliable internet at work for the session which was 2:20am-3:50am on Saturday morning for me (JMAP), because that was kind of a killer.

I also had to use the Youtube video to watch the WGCHAIRS session, since it was at 2:30am for me, and I had to be back up at 5:50am that day in order to join a session I was chairing. I found the Youtube videos very usable.

My main problem with Meetecho was trying to use it from mobile. I tried to listen to DISPATCH and the Plenary session from my phone as I was traveling, and I found that either unreliable network or switching networks was handled very badly by the Meetecho client - it would fail to add back the video stream, or the slides, or lose audio. I found myself having to log out and back in multiple times, where other video systems I've used (Skype and Zoom) on the same phone and switching networks has been much more reliable (Chrome on a Samsung Galaxy S9).

I definitely missed the hallway conversations and the social experience of IETF, and despite the support from work and family, nothing really helps you be fully present at a conference which is from midnight to 9am in your local time short of fully switching to night-shift mode - but overall it was a pretty good experience.

And of course the mailing lists work fine from everywhere!

Cheers,

Bron.

--
 Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
 [email-masked]

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2019 08:52:34 -0400

MIchael,

I was actually in the same time zone, so that wasn't a problem. But I see
the point!

Cheers,
Andy

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2019 13:37:07 -0400

Spencer,

While I agree with all of this, I'm a little concerned that we
may be missing something.  As Adrian pointed out, the number of
report participants seems to be rising in both absolute numbers
and as a percentage of participants.  That is generally a good
thing: it enables or strengthens participation of people who,
for one reason or another, are unable to attend f2f and the
diversity of IETF participants.  We also need to recognize at
least one downside: I think that someone who signs up to
participate remotely because of one or two WGs is at least a
little less likely to wander into a WG out of curiosity and end
up getting interested and participating activity than if the
same person were wandering the halls of a f2f meeting with
nothing better to do.  At least it used to work that way.

However, we should also keep in mind that the "three meetings a
year" originated at a time when remote participation didn't work
well and WG virtual interims were all but impossible.  For most
purposes and WGs, it was f2f three times a year, the mailing
lists, or nothing.  Today, as some of us think about cutting
costs and maybe increasing per-meeting attendance by cutting the
number to two a year or maybe even three in two years, efforts
to make meetings more effective and interesting are, almost
inherently, efforts to find better justification for f2f
meetings.  Probably some of those efforts would survive, or
maybe even thrive on, a less frequent meeting schedule.  Aaron's
HotRFC and PechaKucha activities are almost certainly good
examples.   On the other hand, if we need to depend on f2f
tutorials, f2f activities for mentoring/guiding, plenaries to
give our leadership a clear sense of how the community feels,
meetings for f2f nomcom interviews, etc., maybe that is a
counterargument.

I just hope we can consider the downsides of making meetings
more interesting and desirable to attend at the same time we are
doing that and remember that those downsides include making the
IETF more homogeneous and less diverse and broad if f2f meeting
involvement is effectively a requirement for effective
participation (rather than, e.g., just commenting on work).
I'm also concerned that, at precisely the time remote
participation is rising, f2f meeting and WG interims may have us
sliding toward treating the rule about consensus on mailing
lists as something to which we need to play lip service but not
really take seriously.

Finding The Right Thing to Do may be a little more complicated
in this case than seems obvious.

    john

--On Friday, 26 July, 2019 11:16 -0400 Spencer Dawkins at IETF
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> As we talk about whether three face-to-face meetings per year
> is the magic number, I suggest that we keep a few things in
> mind, because the definition of "face-to-face meeting" isn't
> constant.
> 
> I am very gratified to see the number of hackathon
> participants at each Hackathon, and the number of hackathon
> participants who stay for IETF meetings, even after the
> hackathon is completed. The hackathons are still fairly new -
> the first was in Dallas, at IETF 92, and they've grown over
> I am very gratified to see the number of side meetings
> announced at HotRFC and held during the week, especially when
> (as in Montreal this week) it was easy to schedule them during
> open time each day during the week. Those are easier to do,
> face-to-face.
> 
> The IETF 105 Deep Dive on NICs wasn't as strongly cross-area
> as the IETF 104 Deep Dive on spherical routers, but it was
> still cross-area (as well as useful). I have already had
> conversations about possible topics for future IETFs. Those
> are easier to do, face-to-face.
> 
> I have no insight as to why there were only two Sunday
> tutorials, but that's lower than usual (four Sunday tutorials
> is probably usual). Understanding whether that's a trend would
> be useful.
> 
> For your working group(s) - the decision about how often to
> meet is almost entirely up to you. Working groups like QUIC
> have scheduled additional multi-day meetings including interop
> testing three times per year (although if the working group
> needs change, that pattern will change), while other groups
> routinely skip IETF face-to-face meetings, have virtual
> interims, and may schedule other ways of moving work forward
> as their needs dictate. TL;DR, if you think things should be
> different for your working group, you don't have to get the
> rest of the IETF to agree to change your behavior.
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2019 16:01:47 -0400

On 7/27/19 1:37 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

> We also need to recognize at
> nothing better to do.

It's actually possible that it works, to some degree, the other way:

Last week while I was attending remotely, it seemed easier to peek in on 
multiple WG sessions and get a sense of the room, than it has been at 
past meetings when I was physically present.   For instance:

  * Clicking on a link in the agenda is easier than finding where a
    particular group is meeting and walking there (and disturbing those
    present when entering and/or exiting a physical room);
  * Watching the meeting remotely is considerably less frustrating than
    sitting in a cold room full of air conditioner noise and/or
    inattentive people (not every meeting, of course, but we've all seen
    meetings like that);
  * It's much easier to consult I-Ds and other supporting materials
    while sitting in one's office (especially if one has multiple
    monitors) than on a laptop while physically present;
  * It's easier to queue up for meetecho or type something into a chat
    window than it is to wriggle through narrow aisles of seats to queue
    for a physical microphone;
  * If there's a need, it's easier to multitask between WG activities
    and other activities while remote, though I actually found it easier
    to stay focused on a WG meeting while remote than I typically do in
    person;
  * And of course one can more easily keep an eye on multiple meetings
    at the same time when remote than when physically present.

At some past IETF meeting at which I was physically present, I realized 
that I could attend meetings "remotely" (from the hallway or terminal 
room) more effectively (get more out of the meeting and with less 
stress), than I could if I were present in the room.   (However I tried 
to limit this to meetings in which I wouldn't want to say anything.)

One important thing to note about my experience from last week: I live 
in the same time zone as Montreal.   When a meeting is held at a very 
different time zone than I live, I find it much more difficult to attend 
remotely.    I don't deal well with time zone changes anyway, but for me 
it's easier to do if I physically travel to the different time zone than 
if I stay at home.

One of the odd things I found myself thinking in response to the "we 
gotta stop meeting like this" thread is that, in a way, it makes _more_ 
sense to physically travel to meetings at distant longitudes, and 
remotely attend meetings in near longitudes, than vice versa.

Keith

---

From: Mark Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2019 08:48:16 +1000

> One of the odd things I found myself thinking in response to the "we gotta stop meeting like this" thread is that, in a way, it makes _more_ sense to physically travel to meetings at distant longitudes, and remotely attend meetings in near longitudes, than vice versa.

I have the same experience. I’m 1 or 2 hours ahead of most Asian venues and with a +8 hr flight to them
I’ve been attending remotely.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742              INTERNET: [email-masked]