I agree with some of your points, thanks, comments below, On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Keith Moore <mo...@network-heretics.com>wrote:
> > > http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/07/a-diverse-ietf/ > > Also, I wanted to let everyone know that tomorrow in the Administrative > Plenary, Kathleen Moriarty and Suresh Krishnan will be talking about what > they have uncovered so far in their efforts in the diversity design team. > I'm looking very much forward to their report. Their efforts will help us > understand where we have room to improve - often by much :-) - and what > kinds of actions we can take to improve our inclusiveness. > > This is something that I've struggled with for years. A big part of the > "problem" (from one point-of-view) is that we've become so geographically > diverse in our choice of meeting sites that we've drastically raised the > cost of attending meetings on a regular basis - everyone has to travel a > lot to so (though people in North America still have an easier time of it). > And while there are clearly things that could be done to reduce meeting > costs, we'd be doing very well to reduce total trip cost by more than say > 15%. > > But earlier today I realized that the problem isn't just the cost of > attending meetings - it's the value that we get in return for those > meetings. I've been taking notes about how ineffectively we use our > meeting time. Most of what I've observed won't surprise anybody, but > here's a summary: > > WG meeting sessions aren't scheduled to encourage discussion, but to > discourage it. At meeting after meeting, in several different areas, I > see the lion's share of the time devoted to presentations rather than > discussion. > > Similarly, WG meetings generally aren't run in such a way to facilitate > discussion, but to discourage it. It's only Tuesday afternoon and I've > already lost count of how many times I've heard a meeting chair tell people > that they have to stop discussing things because there are more * > presentations* to do. > I think I was told that IESG is in charge of management of the meeting, so we should ask it to clarify its position, WHY it was done that way? However, I mentioned that time management was not done well in MANET WG in previous meetings but no one cares of my comments. I hope your will get through to IESG. > > Rooms are set up not to facilitate discussion, but to discourage it. The > lights are dim, the chairs are facing forward rather than other > participants, the projector screen (not the person facilitating a > discussion, even if someone is trying to facilitate a discussion) is the > center of attention. The chairs are set so close together and with so > few aisles that it's hard for most of the attendees to get to the mics. > The "microphone discipline" which was intended to facilitate remote > participation ends up making discussion more difficult for everybody who > has paid to be on site. > I mentioned before that I was discouraged while I was remote participant, but seems like even some f2f participants get that feelings from time to time. The management of meetings should respond to your comments (not a person but the body, which I expect IESG). > > In the vast majority of WG sessions, everyone has his nose in a laptop. > (me included). This is because the information being presented at the > moment is generally not valuable enough to occupy the attendees' attention. > The attendees are there for one of two reasons - either they're just > trying to absorb some low-value information while still doing something > else that is more useful, or they're waiting for some opportunity to > actually interact - either within the context of that WG meeting or > afterward (perhaps because the best way to catch a particular person is > often to show up at a WG meeting that that person is attending.) > I usually will blame the IETF chairs to do better attraction to participants including remote ones on jabber. > > All of these things have been standard practice, in IETF and elsewhere, > for so long, that hardly anyone questions them. They have to be that way > because they're habit, and even if one or two people try to change things > (and I realize some ADs are trying), they have to contend with the mindless > habit-driven decisions of everyone else involved. > We can change meetings management, and I don't think there is a standard practice for management of this meeting and others. We need an RFC for how to best manage the meeting, which can update from time to time, however, I mentioned to the venue selectors to be involved because selecting venue affects the meeting management capacity. > > Well, please excuse my candor, but f*ck habit. We can't be effective > engineers if we let bad habits continue to dictate how we work. > You keep repeating habit as it is not good, but I think we need it, but we need management to make people's habit in the direction of the IETF habits :-) AB > > ------ > > > My expenses for this meeting are around USD 2.500. Some are paying more, > some less, but if we multiply average expense times the number of people > attending, that's a tremendous amount of money. Add that value is dwarfed > by the value of the people's time that is being spent here. > > We are spending this time to travel to meet face-to-face, not so that we > can see PowerPoint all day for a week, but so we can interact. > Presentations, for the most part, do not help. They get in the way. > > Visual aids can help to facilitate a discussion, but they should be as > brief as possible, and the room setup, meeting schedule, etc. should not be > optimized for the visual aids. They should be optimized for discussion. > > For 80% of most WG meetings, the lights should be bright, the participants > should face each other. If there's a person facilitating the discussion > that person should be the center of attention. If we're going to use > microphones, the rooms should be set up to allow everyone in the room to > have easy access to them. We should have several microphones, again > facing each other, so that several people can have a conversation without > everyone having to queue up. > > And maybe, in addition, we need to provide better places for people to > hang out and work while trying to get an opportunity to interact with > specific people. The terminal rooms are generally placed in > out-of-the-way corners, but the most effective places to interact with > people are in the hallways. > > > Keith > >
