Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
On 3 Aug 2013 11:14, Ole Jacobsen (ole) o...@cisco.com wrote: It was never a distraction until AB started complaining about it. Been serving a useful purpose for many, many years. Procmail is your friend. +1 for that --- Roger --- Ole J. Jacobsen Editor Publisher http://cisco.com/ipj Sent from my iPhone On Aug 3, 2013, at 9:12, Heasley h...@shrubbery.net wrote: Am Aug 3, 2013 um 9:05 schrieb Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com: On 8/3/13, Patrik Fältström p...@frobbit.se wrote: On 3 aug 2013, at 08:46, Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com wrote: I prefer if you post at end of Friday (as in the end of working days of 5 in each week). However, in my comment below I will follow the week as done in world calender, start from Sunday (mornings) and ends on Saturday (nights). The day a week starts, and what days are working days in a week, differs between cultures. Many have Sunday-Thursday as working days. Many have Monday as the first day of the week. I suggested to Thomas to submit report in end of Friday (read what i I suggest eliminating the report. As it doesn't measure content quality, one's contribution can't be measured by the email they produce. So, it is only a guage of the distraction they produce. The report itself is a distraction.
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
All, If there is a serious drive to discontinue the weekly posting summary - I strongly object. I don't think its main benefit is be to stop excessive or of topic posting. I'm not saying that list managers and list owners should look at that aspect. At least for me it serves as a safety net where I can look if I missed anything and need to go back and look. /Loa On 2013-08-04 10:31, Roger Jørgensen wrote: On 3 Aug 2013 11:14, Ole Jacobsen (ole) o...@cisco.com mailto:o...@cisco.com wrote: It was never a distraction until AB started complaining about it. Been serving a useful purpose for many, many years. Procmail is your friend. +1 for that --- Roger --- Ole J. Jacobsen Editor Publisher http://cisco.com/ipj Sent from my iPhone On Aug 3, 2013, at 9:12, Heasley h...@shrubbery.net mailto:h...@shrubbery.net wrote: Am Aug 3, 2013 um 9:05 schrieb Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com mailto:abdussalambar...@gmail.com: On 8/3/13, Patrik Fältström p...@frobbit.se mailto:p...@frobbit.se wrote: On 3 aug 2013, at 08:46, Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com mailto:abdussalambar...@gmail.com wrote: I prefer if you post at end of Friday (as in the end of working days of 5 in each week). However, in my comment below I will follow the week as done in world calender, start from Sunday (mornings) and ends on Saturday (nights). The day a week starts, and what days are working days in a week, differs between cultures. Many have Sunday-Thursday as working days. Many have Monday as the first day of the week. I suggested to Thomas to submit report in end of Friday (read what i I suggest eliminating the report. As it doesn't measure content quality, one's contribution can't be measured by the email they produce. So, it is only a guage of the distraction they produce. The report itself is a distraction. -- Loa Anderssonemail: l...@mail01.huawei.com Senior MPLS Expert l...@pi.nu Huawei Technologies (consultant) phone: +46 739 81 21 64
Re: procedural question with remote participation
I attended meetings 36 through 62 in-person, missing about 1 in 4. I've never attended a meeting in asia-pacific, as about half were paid out of my own pocket, That was in the days of multicast, and I never got an mbone tunnel working, although Joe Abley and I once *saw* them in tcpdump go past us on the ethernet at ISC, but not get relayed through our tunnels. Between 63 and 80, I managed to attend 1 in 5, and this one is the first I've missed since 80. I missed it because, my WG didn't need to meet, I had no money, and it abuts an important long weekend. (I got to walk out in 3min) I have generally good experiences with our remote participation. Some problems recently: 1) the audio feed started at exactly 9:00 on Monday A problem if you need to check your equipment. I also interrupted at exactly the start time of the session, and it took me 20-30s to realize it, and up-arrow-return. 2) Slide decks were late. PPT(x) files are annoying and inconsiderate. Consolidated slide decks are wonderful, even if the agenda order is changed. 3) audio delay makes hums via jabber meaningless. John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: We regularize remote participation [1] a bit by doing the following. At some level, if remote participants expect to be treated as serious members of the community, they (we) can reasonably be expected to behave that way. * A mechanism for remote participants should be set up and remote participants should be to register. The +1. And I would pay a fee. * Remote participants should have as much access to mic lines and the ability to participate in discussions as those who are present in the room. That includes Yes... but I think it might be worth recognizing that in badly run meetings, access to the mic is a problem to those in the meeting too! Multiple roaming wireless mics, and mic-control from the chair would help here. I.e. let's use the technology for mic-line-up for everyone, local and remote. * It is really, really, important that those speaking, even if they happen to be sitting at the chair's table, clearly and carefully identify themselves. +1 * On several occasions this week, slides were uploaded on a just-in-time basis (or an hour or so after that). Agreed. I'd like to have this as a very clear IETF-wide policy. No slides 1 week before hand, no time allocation. Or we can decide that real participation in the IETF requires that people be in the room, that remote participants are involved on a what you get is what you get basis, and we stop pretending otherwise. For many reasons, I'm not enthused about that idea, but the things that I, and others, are suggesting and asking for will cost money and require some changes in the ordinary way of doing things and it is only fair to mention the alternative and suggest that it be explicitly considered. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails[ pgpvdK7D_We7W.pgp Description: PGP signature
The Friday Report
Hi Abdussalam, The IETF Chair used AB as your name in his report during the plenary. I assume that it is okay for me to call you Abdussalam. I should have used Mr Baryun as that is how it is done in some cultures. Somebody (outside the IETF) wrote that, in general, those living in richer countries appear to treat one another less kindly than their counterparts in poorer nations. In my personal opinion bullying is not okay. If you are of the opinion that you are being bullied please feel free to email me if you would like to talk to me about it. Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: Anonymity versus Pseudonymity (was Re: [87attendees] procedural question with remote participation)
On Aug 3, 2013, at 10:23 PM, Yoav Nir y...@checkpoint.com wrote: The participation in the IETF is already pseudonymous. I have a driver's license, a passport, and a national ID card, all proving that my name is indeed Yoav Nir. But I have never been asked to present any of them at the IETF. I claim to work for Check Point, and my email address tends to suggest it, but a lot of participants use gmail addresses. So, you pay cash when you register? It would probably be difficult to keep your identity secret if there were a discovery process during a patent trial. You would also have to lie on the stand, and risk severe repercussions if your lie were revealed. So yes, this is a problem, but it's not clear to me that it's a serious problem.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
--On Sunday, August 04, 2013 07:27 -0400 Michael Richardson m...@sandelman.ca wrote: ... * On several occasions this week, slides were uploaded on a just-in-time basis (or an hour or so after that). Agreed. I'd like to have this as a very clear IETF-wide policy. No slides 1 week before hand, no time allocation. I had two different WG chairs (from two different WGs) tell me this week that their WGs really needed the presentations and discussion to move forward and they therefore couldn't do anything other than let things progress when they didn't get the slides and get them posted before the session started. This is part of what I mean by the community not [yet] taking remote participation seriously. If having the slides in advance is as important to remote participants as Michael and I believe, then the community has to decide that late slides are simply unacceptable behavior except in the most unusual circumstances, with unacceptable being viewed at a level that justifies finding replacements for document authors and even WG chairs. I also note that the 1 week cutoff that Michael suggests would, in most cases, eliminate had no choice without impeding WG progress as an excuse. A week in advance of the meeting, there should be time, if necessary to find someone else to organize the presentation or discussion (and to prepare and post late slides that are still posted before the meeting if needed). If it is necessary to go ahead without the slides, it is time to get a warning to that effect and maybe an outline of the issues to be discussed into the agenda.If the WG's position is that slides 12 or 24 hours before the WG's session are acceptable, then the odds are high that one glitch or another will trigger a well, there are no slides posted but they are available in the room and the discussion is important decision. Again, I think the real question is whether we, as a community, are serious about effective remote participation; serious enough to back a WG chair who calls off a presentation or replaces a document author, or an AD who replaces a WG chair, for not getting with the program. best, john
Re: procedural question with remote participation
While I think getting slides in on time is great for a lot of reasons, reading the slides early isn't that important. What is important is that remote people see the slides at the same time as local people. For that, it seems to me that Meetecho support does exactly what is needed. You just follow the slideshow online, along with the audio. Of course, in order to have Meetecho support, you need the slides in advance of the meeting, preferably far enough in advance that it doesn't create a massive hassle for the Meetecho team. But by making Meetecho the place where the slides are presented, you ensure that everybody is on an equal footing, without engaging in punitive behavior. The main reason to want to see the slides in advance is so that the working group chairs can evaluate them to see if they will actually be a good use of time. But that's completely orthogonal to the remote participation issue.
Re: Anonymity versus Pseudonymity (was Re: [87attendees] procedural question with remote participation)
On Aug 4, 2013, at 9:09 PM, Ted Lemon ted.le...@nominum.com wrote: On Aug 3, 2013, at 10:23 PM, Yoav Nir y...@checkpoint.com wrote: The participation in the IETF is already pseudonymous. I have a driver's license, a passport, and a national ID card, all proving that my name is indeed Yoav Nir. But I have never been asked to present any of them at the IETF. I claim to work for Check Point, and my email address tends to suggest it, but a lot of participants use gmail addresses. So, you pay cash when you register? No, I use a credit card in the name of my company's head of purchasing, so not in my name. It would probably be difficult to keep your identity secret if there were a discovery process during a patent trial. You would also have to lie on the stand, and risk severe repercussions if your lie were revealed. I would never lie at trial. But the name I use at trial doesn't go back to the IETF. So yes, this is a problem, but it's not clear to me that it's a serious problem. I don't think it's a serious problem anyway, but the IETF does not collect enough data to track you down as a condition for participation. So tracking you down becomes the lawyer's problem, not something that the IETF can give away. Yoav
Re: Anonymity versus Pseudonymity (was Re: [87attendees] procedural question with remote participation)
On Aug 4, 2013, at 3:06 PM, Yoav Nir y...@checkpoint.com wrote: No, I use a credit card in the name of my company's head of purchasing, so not in my name. Why wouldn't that be sufficient to identify you? Is the head of purchasing going to protect your anonymity? I would never lie at trial. But the name I use at trial doesn't go back to the IETF. If you came to the IETF and were working for company X, registered pseudonymously, and didn't disclose IPR belonging to you or company X, and then later company X sued someone for using their IPR, you and company X would get raked over the coals, jointly and severally; the deliberate attempt to deceive would make things worse for you. And that's the point: to provide you with a strong disincentive to doing such a thing. So whether the rules prevent you from being anonymous, or prevent you from suing, everybody's happy. (IANAL, so I'm just explaining my understanding of the situation.)
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
If there is a serious drive to discontinue the weekly posting summary - I strongly object. As far as I can tell, one person objects, everyone else thinks it's fine. Seems like rough consensus to me. R's, John
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
On 8/4/13 11:53 AM, John Levine wrote: As far as I can tell, one person objects, everyone else thinks it's fine. More to the point, the objections that are being raised appear to be bogus and based in a misunderstanding of how the IETF operates. Melinda
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
On 04/08/13 20:53, John Levine wrote: If there is a serious drive to discontinue the weekly posting summary - I strongly object. As far as I can tell, one person objects, everyone else thinks it's fine. Seems like rough consensus to me. +1 Aaron R's, John
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
On 4 Aug 2013, at 20:53, John Levine jo...@taugh.com wrote: If there is a serious drive to discontinue the weekly posting summary - I strongly object. As far as I can tell, one person objects, everyone else thinks it's fine. Seems like rough consensus to me. And the code is running… Tim
Speaking of VAT
At last week's very successful Berlin meeting, the finances were thrown of whack by the late discovery that the IETF had to pay 19% German VAT on the registration fee. At the IAOC session they said that about half of that is likely to be reclaimed from VAT paid, but the net amount is still a large number. In Buenos Aires, the VAT rate is 21% on most goods and services, with a special 27% rate on telecom services. Just saying, R's, John PS: In Vancouver last year there was a combined federal and provincial VAT, called HST, of 12%. Now they're split, with the 5% federal VAT, called GST, at 5%, and the 7% provincial sales tax (PST) applied separately.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
OK, I'll bite. Why do you and Michael believe you need to have the slides 1 week in advance? You have the agenda and drafts 2 weeks in advance. The slides aren't normative. Even when they're not about a draft in particular, the slides are not self-standing documents. They're merely to help with discussion. Not getting the slides at all is a different matter - but 7 days in advance is counter-productive. They should be as up-to-date as practical, to take into account mailing list discussions. [or at least that's how I justify my same-day, ultra-fresh slides] If you need to have them on the website 7 days in advance, you really need to get a faster Internet connection. ;) -hadriel On Aug 4, 2013, at 2:20 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: --On Sunday, August 04, 2013 07:27 -0400 Michael Richardson m...@sandelman.ca wrote: ... * On several occasions this week, slides were uploaded on a just-in-time basis (or an hour or so after that). Agreed. I'd like to have this as a very clear IETF-wide policy. No slides 1 week before hand, no time allocation. I had two different WG chairs (from two different WGs) tell me this week that their WGs really needed the presentations and discussion to move forward and they therefore couldn't do anything other than let things progress when they didn't get the slides and get them posted before the session started. This is part of what I mean by the community not [yet] taking remote participation seriously. If having the slides in advance is as important to remote participants as Michael and I believe, then the community has to decide that late slides are simply unacceptable behavior except in the most unusual circumstances, with unacceptable being viewed at a level that justifies finding replacements for document authors and even WG chairs. I also note that the 1 week cutoff that Michael suggests would, in most cases, eliminate had no choice without impeding WG progress as an excuse. A week in advance of the meeting, there should be time, if necessary to find someone else to organize the presentation or discussion (and to prepare and post late slides that are still posted before the meeting if needed). If it is necessary to go ahead without the slides, it is time to get a warning to that effect and maybe an outline of the issues to be discussed into the agenda.If the WG's position is that slides 12 or 24 hours before the WG's session are acceptable, then the odds are high that one glitch or another will trigger a well, there are no slides posted but they are available in the room and the discussion is important decision. Again, I think the real question is whether we, as a community, are serious about effective remote participation; serious enough to back a WG chair who calls off a presentation or replaces a document author, or an AD who replaces a WG chair, for not getting with the program. best, john
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 05/08/2013 06:54, Ted Lemon wrote: While I think getting slides in on time is great for a lot of reasons, reading the slides early isn't that important. What is important is that remote people see the slides at the same time as local people. For that, it seems to me that Meetecho support does exactly what is needed. You just follow the slideshow online, along with the audio. Of course, in order to have Meetecho support, you need the slides in advance of the meeting, preferably far enough in advance that it doesn't create a massive hassle for the Meetecho team. But by making Meetecho the place where the slides are presented, you ensure that everybody is on an equal footing, without engaging in punitive behavior. The main reason to want to see the slides in advance is so that the working group chairs can evaluate them to see if they will actually be a good use of time. But that's completely orthogonal to the remote participation issue. For remote attendees, there is a distinct advantage in having time to download store slides in advance. There are still plenty of places where real-time bandwidth is an issue and audio and jabber may be all you can get. There is another equally important reason for having them well in advance, for both on-site and remote attendees: so that participants can review them in advance, decide which of several clashing sessions to attend, and even prepare questions. This applies even if the slides summarise a draft that was available two or three weeks in advance. Things are often expressed differently in the slides. Finally: a deadline one week before the meeting is no harder to meet than one minute before the meeting. If it's a zero-tolerance deadline, people will meet it. Brian
Re: procedural question with remote participation
I'm less concerned about having slides than having the issues that need discussion clear. An agenda of documents and issues tells potential participants what they need. Slides are needed if and only if there is no document.
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
--On Sunday, August 04, 2013 19:53 + John Levine jo...@taugh.com wrote: If there is a serious drive to discontinue the weekly posting summary - I strongly object. As far as I can tell, one person objects, everyone else thinks it's fine. I do not want to be recorded as thinking it is fine. If nothing else, I think was is being reported is meaningless statistically (which doesn't mean people can't find value in it). However, I do not object to its being posted as long as it isn't used to justify personal attacks on individuals for their ranking. It seems to me that isn't quite what you said, rough consensus or not. best, john
Re: Speaking of VAT
On Aug 4, 2013, at 11:11 PM, John Levine jo...@taugh.com wrote: At last week's very successful Berlin meeting, the finances were thrown of whack by the late discovery that the IETF had to pay 19% German VAT on the registration fee. At the IAOC session they said that about half of that is likely to be reclaimed from VAT paid, but the net amount is still a large number. The usual IANAL and IANAC should not be joined by IANACPA. But a CPA at my company said that we couldn't reclaim the VAT, because the service was consumed in Germany. If others hear different from their accounting departments, I'd love to hear about it. Just another data point. Yoav
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 4, 2013, at 4:20 PM, Brian E Carpenter brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com wrote: There is another equally important reason for having them well in advance, for both on-site and remote attendees: so that participants can review them in advance, decide which of several clashing sessions to attend, and even prepare questions. This applies even if the slides summarise a draft that was available two or three weeks in advance. Things are often expressed differently in the slides. By that logic, I should also write out a script of what I'm going to say and post that 1 week in advance, along with a youtube recording of me presenting it. At least for me, most of the content/meat is verbal, not pictorial. The slides aren't a script of text I'm reading out loud. As for conflicts, I agree they truly do suck, but I wouldn't want you to pick/skip mine based on my poor slide-making abilities. In the worst case, you can review the recordings afterward and email comments/questions/flames to the list. Finally: a deadline one week before the meeting is no harder to meet than one minute before the meeting. If it's a zero-tolerance deadline, people will meet it. This would just encourage more presentations to be graphical reproductions of the drafts. I'm cool with having those types of slides as well, even well in advance - but only separate from the ones I present in a meeting. We should be encouraging email discussions to take place before the physical meeting hour... and I don't want set-in-stone slides to skip things introduced by, cover ground already covered by, or made moot by, those discussions. I don't know about other folks, but I really have changed slide content based on mailing list and in-person discussions before the meeting slot. This even happened to me just this past week at IETF 87. These aren't presentations of academic papers, corporate position statements, or tutorial classes. Real-time content and discussion is good for WG meetings. What *would* be good to have 7 days or more in advance are the Technical and OA Plenary slides. They shouldn't be changing, afaict. And that way we can figure out if we can have those nights free for other things, or if it's worth going to the Plenaries instead. But I assume those slides already are made available well in advance. (right?) -hadriel
Re: The Friday Report (was Re: Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org)
First, I'd like to highlight something that is important. There is no inherent preference to posting a lot, a moderate amount, or none at all. Everything depends on context. If you are providing useful input and furthering the discussion, a lot of mails is ok. And no mails can be a problem, too, if you were supposed to participate, such as when you are an author of a document on the topic. For instance, when I look at Thomas' report, if I don't appear there I probably should have paid more attention. In other words, you should not look at how much people post on lists alone… and no matter what you post, please be considerate of other people, avoid repetition, stay on topic, etc. Secondly, don't we have better things to do than to argue about e-mail list summary reports? Several people find them useful. I'm sure there is something in the Internet that still needs fixing :-) Jari
Re: Speaking of VAT
At last week's very successful Berlin meeting, the finances were thrown of whack by the late discovery that the IETF had to pay 19% German VAT on the registration fee. At the IAOC session they said that about half of that is likely to be reclaimed from VAT paid, but the net amount is still a large number. The usual IANAL and IANAC should not be joined by IANACPA. But a CPA at my company said that we couldn't reclaim the VAT, because the service was consumed in Germany. If others hear different from their accounting departments, I'd love to hear about it. Ray said the tax guys told him the IETF would get back about half of the VAT it paid. That's unrelated to what anyone can reclaim. My understanding is that Germany has reciprocal VAT agreements with a bunch of countries so if your employer is in one of those countries it may be able to reclaim, but since the US isn't one of them I haven't looked in detail. R's, John
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/04/2013 09:20 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: Finally: a deadline one week before the meeting is no harder to meet than one minute before the meeting. Disagree. I often end up updating stuff late in the day and that should continue to be fine. Secondarily, its my impression that people are as usual taking all this too seriously. If we cumulatively do our best and if that works ok, then overall, we're ok. Improving on current practice is a fine thing too. But claiming or implying that the imperfections of current practice are disastrous for the IETF or for all remote participation seems overblown to me. And only something potentially disastrous ought imply even considering a zero-tolerance anything in a volunteer organisation. So I'd say working on ways to make remote participation better while not making f2f participation more of a pain would be the way to go. S.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
We're all different, and for my purposes, in all honesty, having slides unavailable until 45 seconds before a session start hasn't been an issue as a remote participant. It's definitely aggravating as a chair, though, since we need to get those uploaded via the meeting materials manager. Overall, though, I'd say my feelings about this are substantially similar to Stephen Farrel's: So I'd say working on ways to make remote participation better while not making f2f participation more of a pain would be the way to go. And it's unclear to me that having slides available a week before a session would improve remote participation much. Melinda
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 3, 2013, at 7:25 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: First, probably to the when meetings begin part, but noting that someone who gets onto the audio a few minutes late is in exactly the same situation as someone who walks into the meeting room a few minutes late -- announcements at the beginning of the session are ineffective. Jabber appears to have some way of setting a banner/announcement thing that shows up when you first join a jabber session, because I've seen such a thing on occasion. I don't know if it's defined in some standard way in XMPP or a proprietary extension. But assuming it's either standard or defacto and popular, we could put the NOTE WELL in it (or a URL to a NOTE WELL). Likewise for the IETF web pages with the audio links, so that you see the NOTE WELL before clicking the audio link. Or even have an annoying pop-up if you prefer. (ugh) We regularize remote participation [1] a bit by doing the following. At some level, if remote participants expect to be treated as serious members of the community, they (we) can reasonably be expected to behave that way. * A mechanism for remote participants should be set up and remote participants should be to register. The registration procedure should include the Note Well and any other announcement the IETF Trust, IAOC, or IESG consider necessary (just like the registration procedure for f2f attendance). Sure - to *participate*, i.e. have a chance at the mic. Not to listen/watch/read. * In the hope of increased equity, lowered overall registration fees, and consequently more access to IETF participation by a broader and more diverse community, the IAOC should establish a target/ recommended registration fee for remote participants. That fee should reflect the portion of the registration fee that is not specifically associated with meeting expenses (i.e., I don't believe that remote participants should be supporting anyone's cookies other than their own). * In the interest of maximum participation and inclusion of people are aren't attending f2f for economic reasons, I think we should treat the registration fee as voluntary, with people contributing all or part of it as they consider possible. No questions asked and no special waiver procedures. On the other hand, participation without registration should be considered as being in extremely bad taste or worse, on a par with violations of the IPR disclosure rules. I don't agree - I go to the meetings physically, but I *want* remote people to participate. It's to everyone's benefit that they do so, including the physical attendees. I don't want to charge them for it. Making them register (for free) is fine, but don't make them pay money. Don't even make them feel guilty. The people who can afford the time and money to go to the physical meetings still get their money's worth. * I don't see a practical and non-obtrusive way to enforce registration, i.e., preventing anyone unregistered from speaking, modulo the bad taste comment above. But we rarely inspect badges before letting people stand in a microphone line either. Sure there is. Have the current [wg-name]@jabber.ietf.org jabber rooms be for open access lurking, from any XMPP domain, and not allow microphone representation in the WG by simply having jabber scribes ignore such requests in those rooms. And have separate rooms that require registering, like [wg-name]@members.ietf.org or whatever, where you have to have a registered account on 'members.ietf.org'. I assume XMPP servers support such a policy? It would be a free account, but require filling out the blue-sheet type information, verified email address, etc. Or maybe even have it all in the same current jabber room but only accounts with members.ietf.org as the domain portion are represented at the mic by the jabber scribes. In return, the IETF generally (and particularly people in the room) needs to commit to a level of seriousness about remote participation that has not consistently been in evidence. In particular: * Remote participants should have as much access to mic lines and the ability to participate in discussions as those who are present in the room. That includes recognizing that, if there is an audio lag and it takes a few moments to type in a question or comment, some flexibility about the comment queue is closed may have to be in order. For some sessions, it might require doing what ICANN has started doing (at least sometimes), which is treating the remote participants as a separate mic queue rather than expecting the Jabber scribe (or remote participant messenger/ channeler) to get at the end of whatever line is most
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 04/08/13 23:37, Melinda Shore wrote: We're all different, and for my purposes, in all honesty, having slides unavailable until 45 seconds before a session start hasn't been an issue as a remote participant. It's definitely aggravating as a chair, though, since we need to get those uploaded via the meeting materials manager. Overall, though, I'd say my feelings about this are substantially similar to Stephen Farrel's: So I'd say working on ways to make remote participation better while not making f2f participation more of a pain would be the way to go. Thanks for pointing this out. And it's unclear to me that having slides available a week before a session would improve remote participation much. On top of it, we probably are familiar with such scenes that many presenters get suggestions from WG peers about their work and upgrade their slides day before the WG meetings. For diversity, we need to take remote participants seriously. At the same time, we should also care for the IETFers who are submitting their work. Thanks, Aaron Melinda
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 8/4/2013 3:10 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: OK, I'll bite. Why do you and Michael believe you need to have the slides 1 week in advance? You have the agenda and drafts 2 weeks in advance. The slides aren't normative. Even when they're not about a draft in particular, the slides are not self-standing documents. They're merely to help with discussion. Not getting the slides at all is a different matter - but 7 days in advance is counter-productive. They should be as up-to-date as practical, to take into account mailing list discussions. [or at least that's how I justify my same-day, ultra-fresh slides] If you need to have them on the website 7 days in advance, you really need to get a faster Internet connection. ;) I'm a TSV AD, but I'm sending this note wearing no hat (someone last week asked me why I wasn't wearing a cowboy hat if I was from Texas - no, not even a cowboy hat). I read through the discussion on this, and I'm only responding to Hadriel because his post was the last one I saw before replying. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), but I have been sponsored for several years by a company that sends a sizable number of folks to IETF who are not native English speakers. Having slides early helps non-native English speakers (I believe I've heard that some slide decks are translated into other languages, although I wouldn't know, because I read the slides in English). After his first IETF (Paris/63), Fuyou Maio said to me, understanding spoken English is the short board in the water barrel (the idea being that your effectiveness at the IETF is limited by your ability to quickly parse spoken English). The folks I talk to get plenty of chances to translate spoken English during QA, and don't need additional practice translating the presentations in real time. Yes, I know people say things that aren't on their slides, but if what's on their slides doesn't help other people understand what they are saying, they probably shouldn't be using those slides. In the mid-2000s, I remember an admonition for chairs to write out the questions the chairs are taking a hum on, to accommodate non-native English speakers (and to write out all the questions before taking the first hum, to accommodate anyone who agrees with the second choice but prefer the fourth choice when they hear it after humming). I'm having a hard time making the a week early or you don't present case for slide cutoffs, because we DO talk during the meeting week - and in groups RTCWeb, with a Thursday slot and a Friday slot, we had time to talk a lot. If the cutoff was for presentations of new individual drafts, that's a different question, so there might be some way to make non-Procrustean improvements(*). I agree with the chairs looking at slides for sanity point. I'm remembering more than one working group where we chairs got presentations that included about a slide per minute for the time allocated to the topic - noticing that even one day before saved us from the ever-popular we can't talk about this presentation because we don't have time moment. During IETF 87, I had reason to consult the proceedings for the non-workgroup-forming RUTS BOF (Requirements for Unicast Transport/Sessions at IETF 43, minutes at http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/43/43rd-ietf-98dec-142.html#TopOfPage) http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/43/43rd-ietf-98dec-142.html#TopOfPage. This was the applications-focused wishlist for transport from 1998, when COPS, RADIUS, L2TP, HTTP-NG, SIP, NFSv4, SS7, IP Telephony and BGP4 were all trying to figure out whether they needed to (continue to, in some cases) rely on TCP for transport, or do something else. I'm remembering that there were slides, and I would love to have them to refer to, but *none* of the slide decks made it into the proceedings. That was pre-Meeting Materials page, but even my experience with the Meeting Materials page was that it's easier for slide decks arriving late to go missing than for slide decks that arrived early. As I reminded myself while starting to present v4 of the chair slides in TSVAREA and realizing that what Martin was projecting was v1 (only a day older), getting slidesets nailed down early limits the number of times when you're surprised at what's being projected. I love consolidated slide decks. I bet anyone does, whose laptop blue-screened while hooking up to a projector in the late 1990s. Nothing good happens during transitions, whether switching laptops or switching presentations :-) None of this should be taken as disagreement with proposals to experiment with room shapes, whiteboards, , etc. that I heard last week. None of this should be taken as evidence of love for an unbroken stream of presentations of drafts that aren't tied to issues discussed on mailing lists, or as disagreement with the idea that presentations aren't always the best way to communicate at the
Re: Speaking of VAT
On Aug 4, 2013, at 11:47 PM, John R Levine wrote: At last week's very successful Berlin meeting, the finances were thrown of whack by the late discovery that the IETF had to pay 19% German VAT on the registration fee. At the IAOC session they said that about half of that is likely to be reclaimed from VAT paid, but the net amount is still a large number. The usual IANAL and IANAC should not be joined by IANACPA. But a CPA at my company said that we couldn't reclaim the VAT, because the service was consumed in Germany. If others hear different from their accounting departments, I'd love to hear about it. Ray said the tax guys told him the IETF would get back about half of the VAT it paid. That's unrelated to what anyone can reclaim. My understanding is that Germany has reciprocal VAT agreements with a bunch of countries so if your employer is in one of those countries it may be able to reclaim, but since the US isn't one of them I haven't looked in detail. The IAOC posted an FAQ on the subject at: https://www.ietf.org/meeting/87/vat.html See the links in the FAQ related to non-European countries that can reclaim the VAT. Ray IAD The Google English translation of the list is: Andorra Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Antigua and Barbuda Korea, Republic of (as of 1 January 1999) Australia Croatia (as of 1 January 2010) Bahamas Kuwait Bahrain Lebanon Bermuda Liberia Bosnia and Herzegovina (1 January 2006) Libya British Virgin Islands Liechtenstein Brunei Darussalam Macao Grand Cayman Island Maldives China (Taiwan) (1 July 2010) Macedonia (from 1 April 2000) Gibraltar Netherlands Antilles (30 April 1999) Grenada Norway Greenland Oman Guernsey Pakistan (from 1 July 2008) Hong Kong (PR China) Solomon Islands Iraq San Marino Iran Saudi Arabia Iceland Switzerland Israel (from 14 July 1998) St. Vincent and the Grenadines Jamaica Swaziland Japan Vatican Jersey United Arab Emirates Canada United States of America (USA) Qatar R's, John
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Regarding the need for presentations early to get them translated, and the non-Procrustean[1] improvement of having cutoffs for presentations of new drafts: new drafts are still submitted 2 weeks in advance, and ISTM that a real non-Procrustean tactic would be to let the WG chairs do their jobs. If you've got a 40 page slide-deck chock full of text, giving a detailed tutorial on some mechanism, it's a different situation from the norm. (and I'd argue you're probably doing it wrong, but ymmv) But those appear to be the exceptions, not the rule; and WG chairs can handle push-back for exceptions if they need to. We don't have to create new draconian rules. But for the general case, the truth is that Fuyou Maio is right - you really do need to be able to parse English quickly to truly participate effectively in an IETF physical meeting. And you need to be reasonably swift in either reading it, or following the speaker's words. It's not nice to say, but it's the truth. Real-time direct human communication is why we have the physical meetings to begin with, instead of only mailing lists and virtual meetings. (and for cross-wg-pollination, and for cookies) The good news is the mailing lists and drafts themselves are in plain ascii which should make language translation software easier to use, and the physical meetings are voice/video/jabber recorded so you can get them translated afterwards to listen/watch/read, and once you do you can always raise objections/issues in email afterwards and try to reverse any decisions made in physical meetings. That's better than any other international standards body I've ever participated in. (IEEE, 3GPP, ETSI, ATIS) Some have a more strict submissions in-advance policy, but even for them their physical meetings require high-level English abilities to participate effectively, in practice. I don't see a realistic alternative to that, while still getting things accomplished in a timely manner. It's easy to say those things since I'm a native English speaker [2], and not a nice concept in general... but if we're honest with ourselves I think we have to recognize the unvarnished truth. Obviously there are exceptions - the 40 page slide-deck full of text is an exception. But those appear to be uncommon cases, afaict. -hadriel [1] It's ironic you use the word Procrustean in an email about non-native English speakers needing translation. If you'd asked me what the word meant, I'd have guessed it either meant those who enjoyed the edges of bread or pizza, or those who advocate Earth plate tectonics theory. [2] well, technically English is not my native language, but I learned it at a young enough age to cover that up... mostly. On Aug 4, 2013, at 7:10 PM, Spencer Dawkins spencerdawkins.i...@gmail.com wrote: On 8/4/2013 3:10 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: OK, I'll bite. Why do you and Michael believe you need to have the slides 1 week in advance? You have the agenda and drafts 2 weeks in advance. The slides aren't normative. Even when they're not about a draft in particular, the slides are not self-standing documents. They're merely to help with discussion. Not getting the slides at all is a different matter - but 7 days in advance is counter-productive. They should be as up-to-date as practical, to take into account mailing list discussions. [or at least that's how I justify my same-day, ultra-fresh slides] If you need to have them on the website 7 days in advance, you really need to get a faster Internet connection. ;) I'm a TSV AD, but I'm sending this note wearing no hat (someone last week asked me why I wasn't wearing a cowboy hat if I was from Texas - no, not even a cowboy hat). I read through the discussion on this, and I'm only responding to Hadriel because his post was the last one I saw before replying. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), but I have been sponsored for several years by a company that sends a sizable number of folks to IETF who are not native English speakers. Having slides early helps non-native English speakers (I believe I've heard that some slide decks are translated into other languages, although I wouldn't know, because I read the slides in English). After his first IETF (Paris/63), Fuyou Maio said to me, understanding spoken English is the short board in the water barrel (the idea being that your effectiveness at the IETF is limited by your ability to quickly parse spoken English). The folks I talk to get plenty of chances to translate spoken English during QA, and don't need additional practice translating the presentations in real time. Yes, I know people say things that aren't on their slides, but if what's on their slides doesn't help other people understand what they are saying, they probably shouldn't be using those slides. In the mid-2000s, I remember an admonition for chairs to write
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 8/4/2013 8:36 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: Regarding the need for presentations early to get them translated, and the non-Procrustean[1] improvement of having cutoffs for presentations of new drafts: new drafts are still submitted 2 weeks in advance, and ISTM that a real non-Procrustean tactic would be to let the WG chairs do their jobs. If you've got a 40 page slide-deck chock full of text, giving a detailed tutorial on some mechanism, it's a different situation from the norm. (and I'd argue you're probably doing it wrong, but ymmv) But those appear to be the exceptions, not the rule; and WG chairs can handle push-back for exceptions if they need to. We don't have to create new draconian rules. Oh, I wouldn't dream of having rules about that. What I was trying to say in my not-enough-sleep-last-week way was that I was imagining so many justifiable exceptions (chair slides, on-the-fly hums, reports from design teams and hallway conversations the day before) that having rules wouldn't help, so, agreed. But for the general case, the truth is that Fuyou Maio is right - you really do need to be able to parse English quickly to truly participate effectively in an IETF physical meeting. And you need to be reasonably swift in either reading it, or following the speaker's words. It's not nice to say, but it's the truth. Real-time direct human communication is why we have the physical meetings to begin with, instead of only mailing lists and virtual meetings. (and for cross-wg-pollination, and for cookies) Right, but Fuyou was talking about *spoken* English being more challenging than written English (if you can't *read* English fairly quickly, drafts and mailing lists are impenetrable, and you're done in the IETF). I'm told that it's easier for non-native English speakers to read slides than to parse spoken English for anyone who talks faster than I do. I'm not saying that should override other considerations. I was responding to a question several people asked, if anyone would benefit from having slides early (for the purposes of this e-mail, 24 hours early would be plenty early enough). Other people provided other answers, and I hadn't seen that answer go past. Thanks, Spencer p.s. I DID footnote Procrustean with a definition, but that's perfectly reasonable to point to as not helpful for non-native English speakers - please feel free to keep me relatively honest.
