The Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo) WG in the General Area of the IETF has been rechartered. For additional information, please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs.
Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Current status: Active WG Chairs: Suresh Krishnan <[email protected]> Mallory Knodel <[email protected]> Assigned Area Director: Lars Eggert <[email protected]> General Area Directors: Lars Eggert <[email protected]> Mailing list: Address: [email protected] To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/manycouches/ Group page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/shmoo/ Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-shmoo/ The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have been mitigated by the time this group completes its work, but the experience of handling meeting planning during the pandemic has proven that having community consensus guidance at hand when dealing with novel conditions in the future is beneficial. The disruption of the IETF's typical schedule of three mostly-in-person meetings per year, is causing it to convert a number of such meetings to fully online meetings. Yet discussions about the possibility of fully or mostly online meetings had been occurring in the IETF community for years as a result of general increases in remote attendance, improvements in web conferencing services, concerns about the environmental impact of travel, and other reasons. It might therefore happen that in-person meeting participation will become less popular and that a significant fraction of participants will be remote. The meeting planning activities that the IESG and the IETF LLC engage in would benefit from IETF community consensus guidance concerning novel aspects raised by these developments. The SHMOO working group is therefore chartered to document high-level guidance and principles to the IESG and the IETF LLC. The guidance and principles will concern the following: - Meeting planning for fully online meetings. Similar to how RFC 8719 establishes guidance for the regional rotation of in-person meetings, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from having community consensus guidelines about the time zone selection, meeting length in days, and other high-level scheduling aspects when an in-person meeting must be canceled. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or more BCPs. - Meeting planning for mostly online, or “hybrid,” meetings. Meetings that have an in-person component but with significantly more remote participants than a mostly-in-person meeting need to be planned with community consensus guidelines, too. While trade-offs have often been addressed in favor of onsite attendees, the IESG and LLC would benefit from having community consensus on high-level guidance about the organization of such hybrid meetings, regarding such things as the meeting schedule, the meeting length in days, acceptable limitations on the maximum allowed or minimum expected onsite attendees, whether and how to schedule and prioritize among onsite activities such as side meetings, the terminal room, the code lounge, and others, and other scheduling aspects. - Ensuring that any fees for remote participation do not become barriers for participation. Since remote participation in mostly-in-person meetings has historically been free, IETF LLC and IESG decisions about the meeting fee structure for remote participation need to be informed by community guidelines to ensure that those for whom a fee is a barrier to participation are still able to participate. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or more BCPs. Suggestions for changing the IETF's overall funding model are out of scope. - The cadence of meeting scheduling and the mix of mostly-in-person, hybrid and fully online meetings going forward as well as the format of meetings, e.g., use of interims compared to components and length of the plenary meeting (week). The working group is expected to document the expected future meeting cadence and format as a BCP if consensus emerges to depart from the existing cadence of three mostly-in-person meetings per year. Notably, any such guidance will not become actionable until 3-4 years after it achieves consensus, given the length of the IETF meeting planning cycle. The work of SHMOO is expected to produce high-level principles, not detailed operational plans. The goal is to produce guidelines for the IESG and the IETF LLC to operationalize while ensuring they have substantial flexibility to continue to deliver and evolve the IETF meeting experience to best serve IETF participants and the Internet community at large. Specifications of details concerning cancellation criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting agenda formats and content are out of scope. Aside from fee structure, discussion of financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713 are both out of scope. Scheduling guidance for interim meetings is out of scope. Milestones: Dec 2020 - Adopt draft for High level guidelines for evaluating cancellation/replacement of in-person meetings Dec 2020 - Adopt draft for Meeting planning guidelines for replacement online meetings Dec 2020 - Adopt Guidelines for determining meeting fees for fully online meetings Dec 2020 - Adopt draft(s) specifying Technology requirements for fully online meetings _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
