Hi Dave, Since I see that John Leslie volunteered me to respond :-), I will give you my thoughts so far - in a somewhat random order. I am happy to brainstorm and chat (or voice chat as well), if higher bandwidth is useful.
At IETF 97, I learned that Karen O'donoghue & Christian O'Flaherty are working on the operationalization of IETF Hubs. I have some discussion in to have with them - but I don't think we've adequately connected yet, so please understand that I probably have a different perspective and approach. At IETF 95 in BA, the IESG did discuss having IETF hubs and was generally in favor of encouraging them, via community/bottom-up organization. We did discuss trying to be proactive in clearing away organizational hurdles and providing basic support. As far as existing hubs go, I know that Christian has been involved in Remote Hubs. In addition, there is an IETF Hub in Bangalore ( [email protected]), but I don't see much traffic on that list and an IETF Hub in Boston ([email protected]). I also have a request for a mailing list for an IETF Hub in Northern Virginia, but I want to connect fully with Karen & Christian before getting that set up. There's also an [email protected] for coordinating in-country activity in India. I really do believe that what is right depends very much on the geography and how experienced in the IETF the interested folks are. I would like to add some nuance to the description of IETF Hubs and distinguish between the activity of being an IETF Remote Hub for one or more WG meetings during an IETF meeting and being an IETF Community Hub. A Community Hub is trying to build a semi-permanent community connected to IETF through a variety of activities (social, technical talks, remote hubs, etc.). Let's talk briefly about what is necessary for a Remote Hub and some of the associated challenges. 1) A physical location for the meeting. Since an IETF Meeting has about 8 parallel sessions, trying to truly provide access to all of the sessions would mean at least 8 different conference rooms. 2) Limited attendance and interest: A particular geography is unlikely to have folks interested in every WG - and perhaps not even more than 1. 3) Split Community: Many active IETFers are off attending the physical IETF meeting, which leaves those who can't go to attend the Remote Hub. Sometimes that works fine - where there are folks who are well connected into the IETF and can explain things as needed and yet don't attend all the physical meetings - and sometimes it can leave an experience gap in the room. 4) Inconvenience of time-zone: Very few people are interested in getting up in the middle of the night to drive even 30 minutes to sit in a conference room by themselves or with a couple other folks - and have the needed participants for conversations be physically elsewhere. Now, with all that said, my understanding is that having a Remote Hub with at least one organizer that focuses on a small number of WGs for which there is significant local interest can work well. It combines best with some social interaction (cookies equiv - going out to lunch/dinner/etc. ) and sometimes some introductory talks. In the Boston area, Ravi Torvi from Juniper has organized Remote Hubs for IETF 95 & 96 and is planning to again for IETF 98. The time-zone difference for IETF 97 was just too much. The WGs covered tend to be routing related, due to the interest of folks at Juniper. Attendance has varied, but rarely has more than a couple people who aren't usually at that Juniper facility and has generally not had more than 10 people. He has tried having a social dinner one evening after a session and that has had a bit more variety of attendance. He hasn't tried having additional/different talks. In the Boston IETF Hub, we have and continue to be trying a few different things. 1) We have a couple organizers (Rich Salz and myself) and are looking for more. 2) Social interactions: We've had a couple purely social get-togethers - for dinner and to celebrate a retirement. We are planning (but not organized yet) that another social lunch or dinner should happen during IETF 98. 3) Technical talks: We have had two sessions of technical talks that are related to IETF work and then followed by a social dinner for those interested. These seem to be quite successful based on feedback, willingness of folks to present, and animated conversation. Rich is organizing the next session (planned for Feb 21) and it will be focused on privacy and security. We are trying this to see if having a focus topic is popular. Figuring out how to do effective outreach is and remains a challenge. I am sure that with help and focus that will improve and that's my primary hope and concern at this point - beyond wanting another person or two to help with the organization. I realize that's a lot of background to give flavor and context to my response to your questions. On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 7:20 PM, Dave Crocker <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi. > > For obvious reasons, there is some renewed/increased interest in use of > remote hubs for IETF meetings. Although there has been quite a bit of > activity with hubs in recent years, I believe the expectations and > requirements for them have been kept informal (and possibly idiosyncratic, > with each hub doing whatever locals prefer.) > I strongly believe that what works for each geography and group of people is different. While I would like to see a slightly higher amount of formality - like a well-known wiki that lists the various hubs and their coordinators and gives each hub its own wiki page and mailing list if desired - I don't see a lot of formality as yet appropriate. If and as Hubs become more solid, then we have to think about organizational considerations - such as the management of the coordinators, how selecting, mentoring, and removing them works, and so on. There are also likely to be various IOAC-level considerations to think about. > If we believe we are going to be relying on the use of remote hubs more, > we should try to clarify what services they need to provide and how their > operation should be incorporated into the conduct of face-to-face IETF > meetings. > Personally, I think that we are relying on remote participation and continuing to improve MeetEcho is great and useful. I'd recommend taking a quick read through https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-manycouches-completely-virtual-meetings/ as well. I just don't think that we will have sufficient density of participants in any particular WG in any particular geography to have the meaningful conversations not take place via MeetEcho - and I'm not very comfortable with a split conversation anyway. There are already a number of interactions that WG Chairs have become accustomed to for MeetEcho and I think that they mostly generalize regardless of whether there is one person/remote room or more than one. > By way of example... > > Should they support multiple, parallel sessions, so that different > groups of hub participants can 'attend' different, parallel sessions? > > Should the interaction between hub participants and participants at the > 'main' venue be subject to particular procedures/style? > We've talked repeatedly about having a virtual queue that everyone gets into - local and remote, but there are concerns around impacting the speed and interactivity of the in-person interactions too. Let me turn it around - what do you see as being needed beyond what we had at IETF 97? Regards & thanks for reading this far too long email, Alia > > Thoughts? > > d/ > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > > _______________________________________________ > NOTE WELL: This list operates according to > http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html. > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet >
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