Re: procedural question with remote participation
[personal disclaimer: I have participated remotely, a few times, and I agree that it's not the same as being there, and I agree that it could be improved. But I think we need to balance the needs of remote participants, vs. the goals of physical meetings: to get work done that can only get done with direct human interaction, with real-time interactive discussion, and hallway co-mingling, etc. In my opinion being remote will *never* be the same as being there, and that's why we have physical meetings to begin with, instead of just virtual ones - ultimately I want you to come to the meeting *physically*... but I want to do as much as possible and *practical* to accommodate remote participants, because I know not everyone has the luxury to come, and I want their input regardless.] I think one challenge with this discussion, at least for me, is that it feels like the solutions being proposed are completely out of whack with the severity and nature of the problems at hand, and the people they apply to. Adding more rules and processes is about the surest way I know to annoy engineers, let alone volunteer ones. And if your right hand is sore, you don't cut it off and replace with a mechanical one, or go build a billion-dollar robot to be controlled by brain-waves. People on this list are saying things like we don't know who's at the mic, and we can't see the slides well enough, and presenters are hard to follow. ISTM there are practical and low-tech means of fixing those problems. Here're some ideas of possible solutions - but most of these boil down to either have WG Chairs do their job, or get over it: Problem-1: we don't know who's at the mic, because people forget to say their names. Solution: (a) train WG Chairs to remind people at mic, and interrupt them if they haven't said their names, (b) have jabber scribes sit next to mics, to do the same as WG chairs, (c) if chairs and scribes forget, send a chat message in jabber to remind them. Is it annoying? Sure. Will it sometimes fail to work? Sure. But every other solution will also be annoying and not always work, and this solution is very low-tech and simple. This is what happens in RAI area WG meetings, and appears to work afaict. If it doesn't work, then we go to a Plan-B in the future. Problem-2: we can't see the slides well enough, in video. Meetecho is ok, but they don't cover all meetings. Solution: we pay Meetecho to cover all WG meetings. Last time I checked, we weren't paying them anything; but if we really want that type of technology in all meetings, then it's only fair to pay them. (frankly we should be paying them now already) We also need to remind people to use reasonable font size. 10pt is bad mojo even in the physical room. That type of thing is what a WG chair should be telling people, though - we don't need slide police. Problem-3: presenters are hard to hear/follow/understand. Solution: that's life. We're a volunteer organization, not trained professional thespians. We have drafts written in plain ascii available in advance, and audio, and video, and jabber, and (hopefully) Meetecho-type service, and that's about as good as it can reasonably be. Problem-4: we want slides 7 days in advance to translate to our native language Solution: You're doing it wrong - or rather, the presenters are doing it wrong. The slides aren't a replacement for drafts, or a copy-paste of draft text. WG Chairs know this, and should remind presenters of it. As an aside, if you really need a week to translate them, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to truly *participate* interactively during the meeting - and you don't need to be real-time if all you're going to do is listen/watch - we record the whole thing for your later viewing pleasure. Problem-5: we want slides 48 hours in advance to translate to our native language, download it, etc. Solution: sounds reasonable. Have WG chairs use 48 hours as their guideline, but not as a strictly enforced rule a la I-D submission deadlines. WG chairs can figure out when exceptions need to be made, how to deal with it, etc. We don't need this in an RFC. Problem-6: if you change slides, I don't know which slides you changed Solution: it happens, and that's life. You've got to follow the speaker's words, not a published script. The point of these meetings is for real-time discussion on relevant matters that can only be handled live. Problem-7: -hadriel On Aug 8, 2013, at 10:43 AM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: --On Tuesday, August 06, 2013 11:06 -0400 Andrew Feren andr...@plixer.com wrote: ... I think this sort of misses the point. At least for me as a remote participant. I'm not interested in arguing about whether slides are good or bad. I am interested in following (and being involved) in the WG meeting. When there are slides I want to be able to see them clearly from my remote location. Having them
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Ugh. Ignore that email below - I had sent it a few days ago but somehow it got stuck in the outbox and never got sent, and the discussion is past that point now so it doesn't matter. -hadriel On Aug 12, 2013, at 12:35 PM, Hadriel Kaplan hadriel.kap...@oracle.com wrote: [personal disclaimer: I have participated remotely, a few times, and I agree that it's not the same as being there, and I agree that it could be improved. But I think we need to balance the needs of remote participants, vs. the goals of physical meetings: to get work done that can only get done with direct human interaction, with real-time interactive discussion, and hallway co-mingling, etc. In my opinion being remote will *never* be the same as being there, and that's why we have physical meetings to begin with, instead of just virtual ones - ultimately I want you to come to the meeting *physically*... but I want to do as much as possible and *practical* to accommodate remote participants, because I know not everyone has the luxury to come, and I want their input regardless.] I think one challenge with this discussion, at least for me, is that it feels like the solutions being proposed are completely out of whack with the severity and nature of the problems at hand, and the people they apply to. Adding more rules and processes is about the surest way I know to annoy engineers, let alone volunteer ones. And if your right hand is sore, you don't cut it off and replace with a mechanical one, or go build a billion-dollar robot to be controlled by brain-waves. People on this list are saying things like we don't know who's at the mic, and we can't see the slides well enough, and presenters are hard to follow. ISTM there are practical and low-tech means of fixing those problems. Here're some ideas of possible solutions - but most of these boil down to either have WG Chairs do their job, or get over it: Problem-1: we don't know who's at the mic, because people forget to say their names. Solution: (a) train WG Chairs to remind people at mic, and interrupt them if they haven't said their names, (b) have jabber scribes sit next to mics, to do the same as WG chairs, (c) if chairs and scribes forget, send a chat message in jabber to remind them. Is it annoying? Sure. Will it sometimes fail to work? Sure. But every other solution will also be annoying and not always work, and this solution is very low-tech and simple. This is what happens in RAI area WG meetings, and appears to work afaict. If it doesn't work, then we go to a Plan-B in the future. Problem-2: we can't see the slides well enough, in video. Meetecho is ok, but they don't cover all meetings. Solution: we pay Meetecho to cover all WG meetings. Last time I checked, we weren't paying them anything; but if we really want that type of technology in all meetings, then it's only fair to pay them. (frankly we should be paying them now already) We also need to remind people to use reasonable font size. 10pt is bad mojo even in the physical room. That type of thing is what a WG chair should be telling people, though - we don't need slide police. Problem-3: presenters are hard to hear/follow/understand. Solution: that's life. We're a volunteer organization, not trained professional thespians. We have drafts written in plain ascii available in advance, and audio, and video, and jabber, and (hopefully) Meetecho-type service, and that's about as good as it can reasonably be. Problem-4: we want slides 7 days in advance to translate to our native language Solution: You're doing it wrong - or rather, the presenters are doing it wrong. The slides aren't a replacement for drafts, or a copy-paste of draft text. WG Chairs know this, and should remind presenters of it. As an aside, if you really need a week to translate them, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to truly *participate* interactively during the meeting - and you don't need to be real-time if all you're going to do is listen/watch - we record the whole thing for your later viewing pleasure. Problem-5: we want slides 48 hours in advance to translate to our native language, download it, etc. Solution: sounds reasonable. Have WG chairs use 48 hours as their guideline, but not as a strictly enforced rule a la I-D submission deadlines. WG chairs can figure out when exceptions need to be made, how to deal with it, etc. We don't need this in an RFC. Problem-6: if you change slides, I don't know which slides you changed Solution: it happens, and that's life. You've got to follow the speaker's words, not a published script. The point of these meetings is for real-time discussion on relevant matters that can only be handled live. Problem-7: -hadriel On Aug 8, 2013, at 10:43 AM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: --On Tuesday, August 06, 2013 11:06 -0400 Andrew Feren
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Hi Keith, Thanks for clarifying. Put that way I agree 100%. -Andrew On 08/06/2013 02:03 PM, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/06/2013 11:06 AM, Andrew Feren wrote: On 08/06/2013 09:08 AM, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. Hi Keith, I think this sort of misses the point. At least for me as a remote participant. Actually I think the desire to get slides out early largely misses the point. Or at least, it's an effort optimizing what should be the rare case. I fully agree that slides should be easily available to both local and remote participants well prior to any meeting in which a presentation will be made. (Say a plenary session where presentations are normal and appropriate.) While speakers might like to revise their slides at the last minute, there's no reason why they shouldn't be expected to upload preliminary slides well in advance (because the key to an effective presentation is good preparation, after all) and a revised version (if necessary) later. This isn't at all rocket science, and there's no reason why it should not be done. But if we really want to make remote participation effective, we need to figure out better ways to involve remote participants in _discussions_ - not only in plenaries, WG meetings, BOFs, etc., but also in hallway and bar conversations. Having a local speaker read something from a laptop that was typed into a Jabber session by a remote participant is better than nothing. But surely we can do better. As of today when the slides are available (or if there are no slides and just talk) I can follow WG meetings quite well. Being able to actively engage in any discussion remotely is, IMO, pretty much limited to the mailing lists. Getting involved in an active discussion at a WG meeting remotely is currently difficult at best and impossible at worst. It used to be the case that Internet access at IETF meetings was flaky, either because of the wireless network or because of the network connection or both. More recently the performance of the meeting Internet access has been stellar. If we put the same kind of effort into facilitating remote participation in discussions, I suspect we could move from difficult at best and impossible at worse to works well. Of course, it might take awhile, but it's those very kinds of discussions that are so essential to broad consensus that (when it works) makes our standards effective. The fact that it doesn't work well now is not a good argument for not making it work well in the future. (We're supposed to be creating the future, after all. That's our job.) It's also the case that the fact that facilities for involving remote participants in conversation haven't historically worked well, is used as a justification for continuing to have this dysfunctional style of conducting working group meetings, thus making very poor use of local participants' time and money. I'm all for making presentation slides available to local and remote participants well before the meeting. But if we're only concerned with making presentation slides available, we're selling ourselves very short. That's the point I'm trying to make. Keith
Re: procedural question with remote participation
--On Tuesday, August 06, 2013 11:06 -0400 Andrew Feren andr...@plixer.com wrote: ... I think this sort of misses the point. At least for me as a remote participant. I'm not interested in arguing about whether slides are good or bad. I am interested in following (and being involved) in the WG meeting. When there are slides I want to be able to see them clearly from my remote location. Having them integrated with Meetecho works fine. Having slides and other materials ... Let me say part of this differently, with the understanding I may be more fussy (or older and less tolerant) than Andrew is... If the IETF is going to claim that remote participation (rather than remote passive listening/ observation with mailing list follow up) is feasible, then it has to work. If, as a remote participant, I could be guaranteed zero-delay transmission and receipt of audio and visual materials (including high enough resolution of slides to be able to read all of them) and that speakers (in front of the room and at the mic) would identify themselves clearly and then speak clearly and at reasonable speed, enunciating every word, I wouldn't care whether slides were posted in advance or not. Realistically, that doesn't happen. In some cases (e.g., lag-free audio) it is beyond the state of the art or a serious technical challenge (e.g., video that is high enough resolution that I can slides that have been prepared with 12 point type). In others, we haven't done nearly enough speaker training or it hasn't been effective (e.g., people mumbling, speaking very quickly, swallowing words, or wandering out of microphone or camera range). And sometimes there are just problems (e.g., intermittent audio or video, servers crashing, noisy audio cables or other audio or video problems in the room). In those cases, as a remote participant, I need all the help I can get. I'd rather than no one ever use a slide that has information on it in a type size that would be smaller than 20 pt on A4 paper. But 14 pt and even 12 pt happen, especially if the slides were prepared with a tool that quietly shrinks things to fit in the image area. If I'm in the room and such a slide is projected, I can walk to the front to see if if I'm not already in front and can't deduce what I need from context. If I'm remote and have such a slide in advance, I can zoom in on it or otherwise get to the information I need (assuming high enough resolution). If I'm remote and reading the slide off video, especially low resolution video, is hopeless. More generally, being able to see an outline of what the speaker is talking about is of huge help when the audio isn't completely clear. Others have mentioned this, but, if I couldn't read and understand slides in English easily in real time, it would be of even more help if I had the slides far enough in advance to be able to read through them at my own pace before the WG session and even make notes abut what they are about in my most-familiar language ... and that is true whether I'm remote or in the room. And, yes, for my purposes, 48 hours ahead of the WG meeting would be plenty. But I can read and understand English in real time. If the IETF cares about diversity as well as about remote participation and someone whose English is worse than mine is trying to follow several WGs, 48 hours may not be enough without requiring a lot of extra effort. That is not, however, the key reason I said a week. The more important part of the reason is that a one-week cutoff gives the WG Chair (or IETF or IAB Chairs for the plenaries) the time to make adjustments. If there is a nominal one week deadline, then the WG Chair has lots of warning when things don't show up. She can respond by getting on someone's case, by accepting a firm promise and a closer deadline, by finding someone else to take charge of the presentation or discussion-leading, or by rearranging the agenda. And exceptions can be explained to the WG on the mailing list. With a 48 hour deadline, reasonable ways to compensate are much less likely, the Chair is likely to have only the choice that was presented this time (accepting late slides or hurting the WG's ability to consider important issues) and one needs to start talking about sanctions for bad behavior. I would never suggest a firm one week or no agenda time rule. I am suggesting something much more like a one week or the WG Chair needs to make an exception, explain it to the WG, and be accountable if the late slides cause too much of a problem. There is some similarity between this and the current I-D cutoff rule and its provision for AD-authorized exceptions. That similarity is intentional. --On Monday, August 05, 2013 13:36 -0500 James Polk jmp...@cisco.com wrote: At 12:38 PM 8/5/2013, John C Klensin wrote: Hi. I seem to have missed a lot of traffic since getting a few responses yesterday. I think the reasons why slides should be available well in advance
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Well, I've worked remotely for 16 years and in most meetings I don't get to see the slides until the meeting starts. Usually I can only see them via some conferencing tool. Sometimes I get a copy in mail the week after. So I think the IETF is already doing pretty well at making materials available, and insisting on getting slides far in advance of the meeting is beyond what most people get in reality outside of the IETF. I would call this a SHOULD not a MUST.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 8/8/2013 7:53 AM, Scott Brim wrote: Well, I've worked remotely for 16 years and in most meetings I don't get to see the slides until the meeting starts. Usually I can only see them via some conferencing tool. Sometimes I get a copy in mail the week after. So I think the IETF is already doing pretty well at making materials available, and insisting on getting slides far in advance of the meeting is beyond what most people get in reality outside of the IETF. I would call this a SHOULD not a MUST. suspect Scott's experiences matches that of many of us, but let's consider possible sampling bias here, which might limit the applicability of that experience to the IETF... There is a difference between being a native English speaker who is already integrated into an on-going work effort, versus someone who might be neither, as is often true for IETF meetings. Informative slides that are available ahead of time can be extremely helpful, for establishing the context of the presentation/discussion and for outlining the main points. For someone new to a topic or with language limitations, that can make the difference between understanding the flow of speech, versus not. So let's be careful about whether slides ahead of time need to be a requirement, rather than being considered only a nice-to-have. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: procedural question with remote participation
John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: In those cases, as a remote participant, I need all the help I can get. I'd rather than no one ever use a slide that has information on it in a type size that would be smaller than 20 pt on A4 paper. But 14 pt and even 12 pt happen, especially if the slides were prepared with a tool that quietly shrinks things to fit in the image area. If I'm in the room and such a slide is projected, I can walk to the front to see if if I'm not already in front and can't deduce what I need from context. If I'm remote and have such a slide in advance, I can zoom in on it or otherwise get to the information I need (assuming high enough resolution). If I'm remote and reading the slide off video, especially low resolution video, is hopeless. Also, I can't go back to the previous slide if the system is just remote projection. Good quality mumble-free audio + pre-distributed slides locally rendered beats any amount of lag-free video. I also can go ahead and find out if the speaker is going to cover an important point, or if I have to bring it *now*. -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works pgpLVRGCO4sym.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. Keith
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 06/08/13 14:08, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. interesting.. out of pure curiosity, People keep acting, you mean, who? Thanks, Aaron PS: this whole tread is about the key word slides. If one of the key purposes is NOT about presentation, what are talking about here? plz correct me, if I got it wrong... Keith
Re: procedural question with remote participation
to clarify, imho: presentation != slides making the best out of IETF meetings for both f2f and remote participants is hard and yet worth our try. back to our slides shipping tread, everybody has own opinion toward whether I prefer/believe the slides should be uploaded earlier or not so, and obeying our own principle when doing our own presentation materials is definitely appreciated, but don't force it upon others please. (of course WG chairs can recommend WG presenters to follow the same agenda for better coordination within the group, and in that case f2f and remote participants can be duly notified via WG mailing list, in advance) Thanks, Aaron On 06/08/13 14:49, Aaron Yi DING wrote: On 06/08/13 14:08, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. interesting.. out of pure curiosity, People keep acting, you mean, who? Thanks, Aaron PS: this whole tread is about the key word slides. If one of the key purposes is NOT about presentation, what are talking about here? plz correct me, if I got it wrong... Keith
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/06/2013 09:08 AM, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. Hi Keith, I think this sort of misses the point. At least for me as a remote participant. I'm not interested in arguing about whether slides are good or bad. I am interested in following (and being involved) in the WG meeting. When there are slides I want to be able to see them clearly from my remote location. Having them integrated with Meetecho works fine. Having slides and other materials available to download ahead of time is also OK. I can work with what is available, but having slides brought to the meeting on USB (it happens) does me no good. Also people using pointing devices, that can't be seen remotely, to point to areas on each slide doesn't help. As of today when the slides are available (or if there are no slides and just talk) I can follow WG meetings quite well. Being able to actively engage in any discussion remotely is, IMO, pretty much limited to the mailing lists. Getting involved in an active discussion at a WG meeting remotely is currently difficult at best and impossible at worst. I'm all in favor of discussions in WG meetings, but from where I sit we still have a ways to go to fully integrate remote participants. Making slides available soon enough to be viewed by remote attendees during the meeting seems like an achievable step towards better integration of remote participants. The usefulness of doing this is also independent of whether the slides are for a presentation or to illustrate a point of discussion. As Ted noted, What is important is that remote people see the slides at the same time as local people. That is the point. -Andrew
Re: procedural question with remote participation
If the WG/session chairs did not receive the slides at least a few days prior to the meeting, then it is really hard for the WG chairs to make sure that the slides support a discussion, rather than a presentation. Given that we have meetings on Friday morning, and some people are very busy during the week, and travel time can be 24h for some trips, asking that the chair has received the slides *a week* before the WG session, being Friday morning, seems to actually be cutting it really close. If a discussion leader can not get some slides into the WG chairs' inbox by the Friday morning before the IETF meeting, then I question whether the WG chair should give them any time. -- ] 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[
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 2013-08-06, at 10:26, Aaron Yi DING aaron.d...@cl.cam.ac.uk wrote: to clarify, imho: presentation != slides In my experience, slides are mainly useful: 1. To convey information which is difficult to express accurately by voice only (e.g. graphs, names of drafts, big numbers) 2. To distract the e-mail-reading audience in the room so that they look up and pay attention. An example of (2) can be found in http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-dnsop-8.pdf where I presented a one-slide problem statement that consisted entirely filled with an xkcd cartoon. Once the room is suitably filled with hilarity, it's much easier to enrage people with your stupid idea. I don't think that having slides available in advance helps significantly with (1) in an ietf context (where we are continuing a conversation from a list, and not generally introducing new material). (2) is not really pertinent for a remote audience (if they've bothered to attend at all, you can surely assume they are paying attention.) Many people use slideware as a teleprompter so that they can remember what to say at the mic. I've done that before. I'm not proud of it. The best outcome at a working group meeting is that, as a presenter, you spend most of your time listening rather than talking. If the mic line is empty, you probably should not have been on the agenda. Joe
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Hey Joe, On 8/6/13 7:41 PM, Joe Abley wrote: An example of (2) can be found in http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-dnsop-8.pdf where I presented a one-slide problem statement that consisted entirely filled with an xkcd cartoon. Once the room is suitably filled with hilarity, it's much easier to enrage people with your stupid idea. I don't think that having slides available in advance helps significantly with (1) in an ietf context (where we are continuing a conversation from a list, and not generally introducing new material). (2) is not really pertinent for a remote audience (if they've bothered to attend at all, you can surely assume they are paying attention.) What? People remotely can't read email? Heck we can do more than that. We can cook a meal. Try that while an IETF is going on. Many people use slideware as a teleprompter so that they can remember what to say at the mic. I've done that before. I'm not proud of it. But if those lines contain *questions*, it gets you to the point where there is discussion, which is just fine, as you point out here: The best outcome at a working group meeting is that, as a presenter, you spend most of your time listening rather than talking. If the mic line is empty, you probably should not have been on the agenda. 100% agree. Eliot
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 6, 2013, at 1:41 PM, Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca wrote: In my experience, slides are mainly useful: 1. To convey information which is difficult to express accurately by voice only (e.g. graphs, names of drafts, big numbers) Yup. 2. To distract the e-mail-reading audience in the room so that they look up and pay attention. YES! (Crap, I thought we were supposed to keep that purpose a secret!) And no way am I uploading my jokes in advance and having people see them in advance - it ruins the joke completely! Sheesh, they're barely funny enough as is. An example of (2) can be found in http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-dnsop-8.pdf where I presented a one-slide problem statement that consisted entirely filled with an xkcd cartoon. Huh, who knew DNS Ops was rocket science? :) (I like the hack idea, btw... mostly because I like your xkcd cartoon, of course) Many people use slideware as a teleprompter so that they can remember what to say at the mic. I've done that before. I'm not proud of it. Yeah me too, but I'd prefer people pay attention to what I say, rather than the text on the slides. -hadriel
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/06/2013 11:06 AM, Andrew Feren wrote: On 08/06/2013 09:08 AM, Keith Moore wrote: On 08/04/2013 02:54 PM, 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. I agree that remote people should see the slides at the same time as local people, except that I think that in both cases this should be well before the meeting. The slides shouldn't be shown at the meeting unless needed to illustrate a point of active discussion. People keep acting as if the purpose of these meetings - the reason people spend thousands of euro and travel thousands of km - is to watch slides. Hi Keith, I think this sort of misses the point. At least for me as a remote participant. Actually I think the desire to get slides out early largely misses the point. Or at least, it's an effort optimizing what should be the rare case. I fully agree that slides should be easily available to both local and remote participants well prior to any meeting in which a presentation will be made. (Say a plenary session where presentations are normal and appropriate.) While speakers might like to revise their slides at the last minute, there's no reason why they shouldn't be expected to upload preliminary slides well in advance (because the key to an effective presentation is good preparation, after all) and a revised version (if necessary) later. This isn't at all rocket science, and there's no reason why it should not be done. But if we really want to make remote participation effective, we need to figure out better ways to involve remote participants in _discussions_ - not only in plenaries, WG meetings, BOFs, etc., but also in hallway and bar conversations. Having a local speaker read something from a laptop that was typed into a Jabber session by a remote participant is better than nothing. But surely we can do better. As of today when the slides are available (or if there are no slides and just talk) I can follow WG meetings quite well. Being able to actively engage in any discussion remotely is, IMO, pretty much limited to the mailing lists. Getting involved in an active discussion at a WG meeting remotely is currently difficult at best and impossible at worst. It used to be the case that Internet access at IETF meetings was flaky, either because of the wireless network or because of the network connection or both. More recently the performance of the meeting Internet access has been stellar. If we put the same kind of effort into facilitating remote participation in discussions, I suspect we could move from difficult at best and impossible at worse to works well. Of course, it might take awhile, but it's those very kinds of discussions that are so essential to broad consensus that (when it works) makes our standards effective. The fact that it doesn't work well now is not a good argument for not making it work well in the future. (We're supposed to be creating the future, after all. That's our job.) It's also the case that the fact that facilities for involving remote participants in conversation haven't historically worked well, is used as a justification for continuing to have this dysfunctional style of conducting working group meetings, thus making very poor use of local participants' time and money. I'm all for making presentation slides available to local and remote participants well before the meeting. But if we're only concerned with making presentation slides available, we're selling ourselves very short. That's the point I'm trying to make. Keith
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 2013-08-06, at 14:00, Hadriel Kaplan hadriel.kap...@oracle.com wrote: An example of (2) can be found in http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-dnsop-8.pdf where I presented a one-slide problem statement that consisted entirely filled with an xkcd cartoon. Huh, who knew DNS Ops was rocket science? :) (I like the hack idea, btw... mostly because I like your xkcd cartoon, of course) Of course! And now people who aren't even following dnsop are reading the slides, and maybe even the draft. It's a triumph of social engineering. :-) Joe
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 6, 2013, at 10:52 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: But if those lines contain questions, it gets you to the point where there is discussion, which is just fine, as you point out here: The best outcome at a working group meeting is that, as a presenter, you spend most of your time listening rather than talking. If the mic line is empty, you probably should not have been on the agenda. Dear Eliot and Joe, The context of local conversations often use shorthand references to the material presented rather than restating the content to ensure remote participants understand what is being said. The IETF should devise a strategy able to virtualize both the local protector and PA in the event the venue no long has access to the Internet but where the meetings are still able to proceed. Ensure remote participants are not considered secondary. If fact, paying some access fee (that should be able to avoid VAT) might be reasonable. Regards, Douglas otis
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 06/08/13 19:03, Keith Moore wrote: But if we're only concerned with making presentation slides available, we're selling ourselves very short. That's the point I'm trying to make. Keith Hi Keith, Thanks for clarifying it - agree with you fully on this point. Keeping a clear goal in mind helps improve our current practice, and I pretty much like what Joe hinted: On 06/08/13 18:41, Joe Abley wrote: The best outcome at a working group meeting is that, as a presenter, you spend most of your time listening rather than talking. If the mic line is empty, you probably should not have been on the agenda. Joe How to get remote participants involved in meaningful discussion deserves our close attention, besides to improve the experience for f2f participants, e.g., presenters. (IMO, when to upload slides and how to coordinate is a WG specific issue and WG/session chairs can define a rule of conduct in their own meetings so it works best there, for both remote and f2f) Cheers, Aaron PS: I personally find it rather funny to see people claiming one's own approach works better and so forth implicitly indicating they really understand what remote/f2f participants need, and even so, we others should follow... which somehow reminds me Dave Crocker once joked in another thread that almost everyone claims that they are a better than average driver ;)
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 2013-08-06, at 15:35, Aaron Yi DING aaron.d...@cl.cam.ac.uk wrote: PS: I personally find it rather funny to see people claiming one's own approach works better and so forth implicitly indicating they really understand what remote/f2f participants need, For the record, I have zero experience consuming my own in-person presentations whilst attending remotely. I will say that Dan York did a stand-up job in dnsop last week channeling jabber chatter to the microphone. Joe
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 8/4/13 4:41 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: 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) I don't want to promise too much, but in time for Vancouver I'll probably finish some code that sends you all sorts of helpful information when you join the jabber room. There is a standardized room subject message but not all IM clients show you that, so I plan to have it sent as a one-off message when you join the chatroom. Further discussion, if any, on the tools-disc...@ietf.org list. Peter -- Peter Saint-Andre https://stpeter.im/
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.imwrote: I don't want to promise too much, but in time for Vancouver I'll probably finish some code that sends you all sorts of helpful information when you join the jabber room. There is a standardized room subject message but not all IM clients show you that, so I plan to have it sent as a one-off message when you join the chatroom. Further discussion, if any, on the tools-disc...@ietf.org list. I'd be happy to help, and will meander toward that list. One thing for this August Body to consider - we can (quite) easily have new occupants to the room not be participants - in the XEP-0045 sense of the term. This would mean new occupants would lack voice, and be unable to add to the discussion - until they've jumped through some hoops. One such hoop might be acknowledging the (privately sent) Note Well message (thus equating XEP-0045 Participant with IETF Participant to some degree). Another might be that we tell them to go away if their XEP-0054 vCard doesn't include sufficient detail (like their full name and email address, for example), taking us a step toward remote registration. Dave.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/05/2013 10:07 AM, Dave Cridland wrote: One such hoop might be acknowledging the (privately sent) Note Well message (thus equating XEP-0045 Participant with IETF Participant to some degree). Another might be that we tell them to go away if their XEP-0054 vCard doesn't include sufficient detail (like their full name and email address, for example), taking us a step toward remote registration. I hope folks who invest effort in tooling try to make it all easier and not harder. Right now we don't have good tools that allow remote folks to easily provide live input (and maybe that's just because its a hard problem). So I'd say we should keep trying to make that better and not worry yet about how to control abuse of what's not currently usable. On 08/04/2013 11:41 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: And have separate rooms that require registering, like [wg-name]@members.ietf.org or whatever, We don't have, nor (I believe) do we want, members. And we do want good technical input regardless of source. About the only reason to try control that via registration is due to patent nonsense. That is (unfortunately) a real reason, and we do have to take it into account, but please let's all bear in mind that 99% of those patents are total crap (regardless of country afaik) and let's not be driven by the stupidity but rather let's put that in its proper place as a regrettable cost of being open. Sorry to go on about that, but I don't think onerous registration schemes are really needed to e.g. do floor control. And since the former (registration stuff) is easy, and the latter (esp. with remote audio input in our environment) is not, we might easily end up doing the easy thing, and making it all worse. Cheers, S.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
At 13:10 04-08-2013, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: OK, I'll bite. Why do you and Michael believe you need to have the slides 1 week in advance? One generation's bad behavior becomes the next generation's best practice. It would be appreciated if those slides could be made available in advance. You have the agenda and drafts 2 weeks in advance. The slides aren't normative. Even I do not have the agenda two weeks in advance. Nowadays, there are if time permits slots in addition to A.O.B. What is the meaning of normative in the above? If you need to have them on the website 7 days in advance, you really need to get a faster Internet connection. ;) Ok. :-) At 14:27 04-08-2013, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: 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?) The Technical and other Plenary slides are not made available well in advance. Someone asked the following question: Does she have a clue that she just asked for feedback from an audience that can't see the link she put on the screen? There was a discussion about beer from the tap after that. Please open a new thread if you would like to discuss about that. :-) At 15:21 04-08-2013, Stephen Farrell wrote: And only something potentially disastrous ought imply even considering a zero-tolerance anything in a volunteer organisation. It is after all a volunteer organisation. I hope that people were not surprised that I did not ask for the Spice Girls session to be cancelled. At 15:41 04-08-2013, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: Do you find this is an actual problem in WG meetings? Are the jabber scribes not able to tell you who is at the mic if you ask them? People have forgotten to state their names Some of the Jabber scribes are not able to tell me who are at the microphone when I ask them. If it was my decision to make (and it is not), the Jabber scribe would be allowed to comment at the microphone even after the microphone line is capped. A person can always argue that it is an arbitrary decision. :-) As an off-topic comment, it's not because the Meetecho people are nice that one should expect them to act as Jabber scribes. At 18:36 04-08-2013, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: 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) Yes. Some sessions are easy to follow. For example, I read some slides posted a few days before and I had an idea of what would be discussed. I looked for the slides for a BoF as it was not clear to me what one of these items on the agenda was about. The slides were not available. I didn't bother asking about them. The correct question would have been about the item on the agenda instead of the slides. Regards, -sm
Re: procedural question with remote participation
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. Aside: this is yet another reason why a really thorough jabber scribe is useful. swb
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 05/08/13 10:38, Scott Brim wrote: 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. don't forget there are accents as well which make the parsing challenging even more :) Aaron Aside: this is yet another reason why a really thorough jabber scribe is useful. PS: good ones normally don't have time, and random volunteers may not meet your expectation. sign.. swb
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 5, 2013, at 5:28 AM, Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: I hope folks who invest effort in tooling try to make it all easier and not harder. Right now we don't have good tools that allow remote folks to easily provide live input (and maybe that's just because its a hard problem). So I'd say we should keep trying to make that better and not worry yet about how to control abuse of what's not currently usable. Yup, afaict we were doing ok until IETF 87... but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named Guest) did remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was personally ok with it, but it was awkward. If folks feel it's inappropriate, then we need something else. I'd be ok with just having jabber scribes ignore anonymous participants. On 08/04/2013 11:41 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: And have separate rooms that require registering, like [wg-name]@members.ietf.org or whatever, We don't have, nor (I believe) do we want, members. Yeah, members.ietf.org was a poor choice of domain name. I wasn't making a formal proposal - just thinking out loud. I'd be happier if the tools team figures out something simpler and less onerous anyway. I was just noting it's not an impossible task to accomplish, some way or other. And we do want good technical input regardless of source. About the only reason to try control that via registration is due to patent nonsense. That is (unfortunately) a real reason, and we do have to take it into account, but please let's all bear in mind that 99% of those patents are total crap (regardless of country afaik) and let's not be driven by the stupidity but rather let's put that in its proper place as a regrettable cost of being open. Amen to that! -hadriel
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/05/13 07:31, Hadriel Kaplan allegedly wrote: Yup, afaict we were doing ok until IETF 87... but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named Guest) did remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was personally ok with it, but it was awkward. If folks feel it's inappropriate, then we need something else. I'd be ok with just having jabber scribes ignore anonymous participants. It's inappropriate. Tell them they need to provide at least a name.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 5, 2013, at 2:43 PM, Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com wrote: On 08/05/13 07:31, Hadriel Kaplan allegedly wrote: Yup, afaict we were doing ok until IETF 87... but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named Guest) did remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was personally ok with it, but it was awkward. If folks feel it's inappropriate, then we need something else. I'd be ok with just having jabber scribes ignore anonymous participants. It's inappropriate. Tell them they need to provide at least a name. Would it be better if they were called Emma instead of Guest ?
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/05/13 07:51, Yoav Nir allegedly wrote: On Aug 5, 2013, at 2:43 PM, Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com wrote: On 08/05/13 07:31, Hadriel Kaplan allegedly wrote: Yup, afaict we were doing ok until IETF 87... but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named Guest) did remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was personally ok with it, but it was awkward. If folks feel it's inappropriate, then we need something else. I'd be ok with just having jabber scribes ignore anonymous participants. It's inappropriate. Tell them they need to provide at least a name. Would it be better if they were called Emma instead of Guest ? Yes. Ask lawyers.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 5, 2013, at 5:26 AM, SM s...@resistor.net wrote: At 13:10 04-08-2013, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: You have the agenda and drafts 2 weeks in advance. The slides aren't normative. Even I do not have the agenda two weeks in advance. Huh. Sounds like a WG Chair problem. I believe draft agendas are due 2 weeks in advance, and final agendas due 1 week in advance. Or at least that was the excuse I was given when I've been denied requests to add stuff to WG agendas on previous occasions - the Chairs told me I was asking too late. (as they should have) What is the meaning of normative in the above? I was trying to be cute by using the term from our drafts/RFCs, as in normative references vs. informative, or the document's RFC2119-type text is normative while examples are informative. I meant the slides are just helpful guides, like pictorial examples, vs. the draft itself which is the real proposal. I guess the joke flopped. :( Some of the Jabber scribes are not able to tell me who are at the microphone when I ask them. If it was my decision to make (and it is not), the Jabber scribe would be allowed to comment at the microphone even after the microphone line is capped. A person can always argue that it is an arbitrary decision. :-) Again, this sounds like a WG Chair problem. If you find that happening, send a private email to that working group's Chair(s) reminding them of the jabber folks. And if they ignore you, then send a private email to the Area Director(s). WG Chairs and ADs are generally decent human beings, at least in private. ;) As an off-topic comment, it's not because the Meetecho people are nice that one should expect them to act as Jabber scribes. I don't expect Meetecho people to jabber scribe. I expect other folks in the room to volunteer. It's a heck of a lot easier/better than being the minute taker. That's why I volunteer for being a scribe - to avoid being a minute taker. :) -hadriel
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Spencer Dawkins spencerdawkins.i...@gmail.com quoted Hadiel really poorly, which confused me as you who said this, but I think it was Hadriel now: OK, I'll bite. Why do you and Michael believe you need to have the slides 1 week in advance? 1) As a WG chair, I'd like to see the slides from a (new) presenter in advance to make sure that the *presentation* is on topic, there aren't too many slides, and that ideally, it is a request for discussion rather than a presentation. That's where the deadline comes from. I don't suggest that 2) As a remote participate, I'd much rather have consolidate slides. That requires a bit of time/effort on the part of the chairs. 3) As an open-standards body, I believe it is hypocritical for us to be posting slides in a vendor proprietary format or one from a standards body that seems to have all of features we dislike (like pay to vote). (I'm okay with the secretariat doing conversion, but they are not instant) (And,open source tools running on open platforms sometimes do not render the slides as intended due to lack of a font or a other thing) 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] I distinquish between rev-00 of slides and rev-09. I don't have a problem with updates to the slides, assuming you can find the Export as PDF button. It would be best if you didn't create new slides due to numbering changes. I also understand that ADs running area meeting aren't going to have status updates 7 days in advance, nor do I expect them to. I had not considered Spencer's point about translation, and frankly it is a really really really good point. None of this should be taken as disagreement with proposals to experiment with room shapes, whiteboards, , etc. that I heard last week. +1 -- ] 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[ -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works pgpOMRsk6ml3A.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: procedural question with remote participation
Hi. I seem to have missed a lot of traffic since getting a few responses yesterday. I think the reasons why slides should be available well in advance of the meeting have been covered well by others. And, as others have suggested, I'm willing to see updates to those slides if things change in the hours leading up to the meeting, but strongly prefer that those updates come as new alides with update-type numbers or other identification rather than new decks. In other words, if a deck is posted in advance with four slides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and additional information is needed for 3, I'd prefer to see the updated deck consist of slides 1, 2, 3, 3a, 3b, 4 or 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4, rather than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I also prefer consolidated decks but, if WG chairs find that too difficult, I'm happy to do my own consolidating if everyting is available enough in advance for me to do sol Almost independent of the above, the idea that one should just watch the slides on Meetecho implies that Meetecho is available in every session (it isn't) and that everything works. In addition, they either need the slides in advance or need to be able to broadcast real-time video at a resolution that makes the slides readable. The latter was not the case last week in some of the sessions in which Meetecho was transmitting the slides sometimes due in part to interesting speaker-training issues. The reasons to discourage anonymity aren't just patent nonsense (although that should be sufficient and I rather like the pun). Despite all we say and believe about individual participation, the IETF has a legitimate need to understand the difference between comments on a specification from an audience with diverse perspectives and organized campaigns or a loud minority with a shared perspective. That requires understanding whether speakers are largely independent of each other (versus what have sometimes been referred to as sock puppets for one individual) or whether they are part of an organization mounting a systematic campaign to get a particular position adopted (or not adopted). The latter can also raise some rather nasty antitrust / anti-competitiveness issues. Clear identification of speakers, whether in the room or remote, can be a big help in those regards, even though it can't prevent all problems. And the IETF having a policy that requires clear identification at least establishes that we, organizationally and procedurally, are opposed to nefarious, deceptive, and posslbly illegal behavior. A rule about having slides well in advance helps in another way: slides that are bad news for some reasons but posted several days in advance of the meeting provide opportunities for comments and adjustments (from WG Chairs and others). Ones that are posted five minutes before (or 10 minutes after) a session lose that potential advantage. Again, I don't think we should get rigid about it: if slides are posted in advance and then supplemented or revised after feedback is received, everyone benefits. I want to stress that, while I think registration of remote people who intend to participate is desirable for many reasons, I think trying to condition microphone use (either remote on in-room) with proof of registration and mapping of names would be looking for a lot of trouble with probably no significant benefits. best, john
Re: procedural question with remote participation
At 12:38 PM 8/5/2013, John C Klensin wrote: Hi. I seem to have missed a lot of traffic since getting a few responses yesterday. I think the reasons why slides should be available well in advance of the meeting have been covered well by others. And, as others have suggested, I'm willing to see updates to those slides if things change in the hours leading up to the meeting, but strongly prefer that those updates come as new alides with update-type numbers or other identification rather than new decks. In other words, if a deck is posted in advance with four slides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and additional information is needed for 3, I'd prefer to see the updated deck consist of slides 1, 2, 3, 3a, 3b, 4 or 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4, rather than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. How exactly do you do this in pptx? Numbering slides is a linear operation AFAICT, and it's binary (it's either on or off). Please educate me if I'm wrong; lord knows I don't know don't know how to do everything flag/setting in powerpoint... And, in my 8 years as TSVWG chair, I've rarely had completely new individual slides sprinkled throughout an existing deck. Rather, I've received updated slides - each with part of their content altered. Does this fall into your desire for a 3a, or is that just 3 (because 3a means an entirely new slide from scratch)? BTW - I'm very much *not* in favor of stipulating to my WG that slides must be turned in 7 days in advance of a TSVWG meeting. I personally think no more than a 48 hour advanced window should ever be considered. James I also prefer consolidated decks but, if WG chairs find that too difficult, I'm happy to do my own consolidating if everyting is available enough in advance for me to do sol Almost independent of the above, the idea that one should just watch the slides on Meetecho implies that Meetecho is available in every session (it isn't) and that everything works. In addition, they either need the slides in advance or need to be able to broadcast real-time video at a resolution that makes the slides readable. The latter was not the case last week in some of the sessions in which Meetecho was transmitting the slides sometimes due in part to interesting speaker-training issues. The reasons to discourage anonymity aren't just patent nonsense (although that should be sufficient and I rather like the pun). Despite all we say and believe about individual participation, the IETF has a legitimate need to understand the difference between comments on a specification from an audience with diverse perspectives and organized campaigns or a loud minority with a shared perspective. That requires understanding whether speakers are largely independent of each other (versus what have sometimes been referred to as sock puppets for one individual) or whether they are part of an organization mounting a systematic campaign to get a particular position adopted (or not adopted). The latter can also raise some rather nasty antitrust / anti-competitiveness issues. Clear identification of speakers, whether in the room or remote, can be a big help in those regards, even though it can't prevent all problems. And the IETF having a policy that requires clear identification at least establishes that we, organizationally and procedurally, are opposed to nefarious, deceptive, and posslbly illegal behavior. A rule about having slides well in advance helps in another way: slides that are bad news for some reasons but posted several days in advance of the meeting provide opportunities for comments and adjustments (from WG Chairs and others). Ones that are posted five minutes before (or 10 minutes after) a session lose that potential advantage. Again, I don't think we should get rigid about it: if slides are posted in advance and then supplemented or revised after feedback is received, everyone benefits. I want to stress that, while I think registration of remote people who intend to participate is desirable for many reasons, I think trying to condition microphone use (either remote on in-room) with proof of registration and mapping of names would be looking for a lot of trouble with probably no significant benefits. best, john
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On 08/05/2013 12:31 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named Guest) did remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was personally ok with it, but it was awkward. Ah. I wasn't aware of that. Not stylish at all IMO on the part of whoever was Guest. I'd be confident that the chairs and participants will deal with it ok though. We do manage to deal with silliness (e.g. people with bad ideas) all the time, so I don't see why this'd pose an insurmountable problem to a wg. On 08/05/2013 06:38 PM, John C Klensin wrote: The reasons to discourage anonymity aren't just patent nonsense (although that should be sufficient and I rather like the pun). Thanks. The pun was accidental as it happens, but I did leave it in after I spotted it :-) Puns aside, its an important point. Most patents are nonsense (in terms of being really inventive) and we shouldn't base our processes anywhere near primarily on the existence of that nonsense. Despite all we say and believe about individual participation, the IETF has a legitimate need to understand the difference between comments on a specification from an audience with diverse perspectives and organized campaigns or a loud minority with a shared perspective. Good point. We have similar issues with folks who do lots of contract work I guess. But, IMO we should first make sure we can hear the good points that are to be made, and only then modulate our reactions to those in terms of who-pays-whom or whatever. Put another way, regardless of patents or who's paying, if someone (even anonymously) comes up with a really good technical point, then we do have to pay attention. But I think we do do that. In contrast, I think the real challenge remote participants face is being heard. And when/if we solve that problem, I suspect that remote participants with bad ideas will be a far worse problem than those who'd like to submarine a patent or further a subtle corporate agenda. So again that leads me back to trying to encourage folks to just make the tools better for us all and to only then try figure out how we need to manage that. Perhaps Hadriel's anecdote above means that how we use jabber is, after about a decade, now mature enough that we ought think more about how we formalise its use. I'm ok with waiting another longish time before even thinking about how to do the same with successful inbound audio for example. S.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
--On Tuesday, August 06, 2013 02:06 +0100 Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: ... On 08/05/2013 06:38 PM, John C Klensin wrote: The reasons to discourage anonymity aren't just patent nonsense (although that should be sufficient and I rather like the pun). Thanks. The pun was accidental as it happens, but I did leave it in after I spotted it :-) Puns aside, its an important point. Most patents are nonsense (in terms of being really inventive) and we shouldn't base our processes anywhere near primarily on the existence of that nonsense. Agreed, modulo observations about how much time we seem to put into fine-tuning IPR policies and devising threats to make to those who don't seem inclined to comply. Despite all we say and believe about individual participation, the IETF has a legitimate need to understand the difference between comments on a specification from an audience with diverse perspectives and organized campaigns or a loud minority with a shared perspective. Good point. We have similar issues with folks who do lots of contract work I guess. But, IMO we should first make sure we can hear the good points that are to be made, and only then modulate our reactions to those in terms of who-pays-whom or whatever. Indeed. Put another way, regardless of patents or who's paying, if someone (even anonymously) comes up with a really good technical point, then we do have to pay attention. But I think we do do that. When, as you indirectly point out, we can hear them. In contrast, I think the real challenge remote participants face is being heard. And when/if we solve that problem, I suspect that remote participants with bad ideas will be a far worse problem than those who'd like to submarine a patent or further a subtle corporate agenda. Of course, that is also true of participants who show up and more f2f meetings. So again that leads me back to trying to encourage folks to just make the tools better for us all and to only then try figure out how we need to manage that. Perhaps Hadriel's anecdote above means that how we use jabber is, after about a decade, now mature enough that we ought think more about how we formalise its use. I'm ok with waiting another longish time before even thinking about how to do the same with successful inbound audio for example. I'm actually not a big fan of inbound audio, at least not yet. It is subject to the same technical and operational issues that make outbound audio fragile, including the difficulties of clear and standard pronunciation plus the same how to raise your hand, get in line, or otherwise ask for the floor issues that Jabber does. But, if we are going to rely on Jabber for input, we need to move toward treating it as a source of input with the same priority as those in the room (and relatively more real time), not something that is a nice-to-have when it happens to work. best, john
Re: procedural question with remote participation
On Aug 4, 2013, at 2:20 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: 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. John - I've participated in many IETFs in person but have been remote for the last two meetings. I agree that the slides are essential in many cases for following the discussion, and furthermore agree that it is a complete pain to have to hunt for the slides when they haven't been posted and are instead just in the room, or on the list, or at some URL being passed around, etc. Noting all that agreement, I don't support a one week slide cutoff; the downside of not having a presentation slot as a result would be a disproportionate impact to working group productivity... delaying presentation of an important topic for 4 months just because the slides showed up late (but still days before the actual session) would be creating a purely administrative and artificial impediment to getting things done. Now, something in ietf tools that emailed the WG Chairs (and AD?) noting that slides aren't up for presentations occurring _tomorrow_ and/or kept track of presenters with chronic problems missing the deadline getting their slide decks in the night before might be very useful, and help quite a bit with improving remote participants ability to follow along. My .02, /John
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
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: 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: 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: 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: 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.
Re: procedural question with remote participation
--On Saturday, August 03, 2013 08:55 +0200 Olle E. Johansson o...@edvina.net wrote: ... Just a note for the future. I think we should allow anonymous listeners, but should they really be allowed to participate? We don't allow anonymous comments at the microphone in face-to-face meetings, requiring all people to clearly state their names and have those names recorded in the meeting minutes and in the Jabber log.I don't see why we would change this for remote participants. ... (moving to ietf mailing list) Absolutely. Now, should we add an automatic message when someone joins the chat rooms, or a message when meetings begin that all comments made in the chat room is also participation under the note well? Ole, 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. But, more generally... I've said some of this in other contexts but, as a periodic remote attendee, including being remote for IETF 87, I'd support a more radical proposal, for example: 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). * 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 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. 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 convenient. * 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. Last week, there were a few rooms in which the audio was, to put it very politely, a little marginal. That happens. But, when it combines with people mumbling their names or saying them very quickly, the result is as little speaker identification as would have been the case if the name hadn't been used as all. In addition, some of us suffer from the disability of not being able to keep track of unfamiliar voices while juggling a few decks of slides, a jabber session, audio, and so on. I identified myself 10 minutes ago is not generally adequate. * On several occasions this week, slides were
