Subject: [edu-team] technical presentations [was Re: [93attendees] Meeting schedule]

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 18:15:54 +1200

Hi Andrew,

I've taken the liberty of switching the cc to the EDU team.

On 22/07/2015 02:14, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 11:51:20PM +1200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>
>> I am a little puzzled about the goal of the technical presentations
>> in the IAB plenary, but I'm ready to be educated.
> 
> From my point of view, the goal of these presentations is to highlight
> technical topics that we (on the IAB) think might be of interest to a
> broad cross-section of the IETF community.

That sounds very like the criterion for EDU technical tutorials, except
that we add the phrase "and will help them be more effective in their
IETF roles". Not that everybody agrees; in the run up to this week, we
(EDU) got dinged for offering a tutorial that covered "competing" standards
work in a particular area.

Anyway, my point is that coordinating the choice of plenary technical
topic with EDU might be a good idea for both sides of the house.
I'm not suggesting anything heavyweight, but giving each other visibility
into future plans would avoid clashes and overlaps.

> In my experience, we try
> to pick issues that are likely to affect several different areas in
> the IETF, that still have open work that relate to IETF protocols, and
> that we think will have general appeal.  Admittedly, our judgement is
> not always perfect; and some such presentations are more successful
> than others.  But that is the goal.  We also have a principle that
> such plenary presentations should be technically interesting or
> entertaining, and ideally both.

I think the EDU team might have written exactly the same if we'd
thought about it.

> Naturally, for some portion of the population we will sometimes fail
> in this aim every time.  If you're another expert in the particular
> field in question it's quite unlikely you'll learn anything in a
> presentation aimed at a plenary audience (though even there, you might
> learn something about how -- or how not -- to present the issues to
> such an audience).

Indeed. And if there has been an issue, it has usually been too much
marketing-speak since external speakers really don't grok who they are
speaking to. EDU speakers are normally IETF old hands who know to
keep it strictly technical.

> I hope that's useful.

Yes, thanks.

  Brian

> 
> Andrew (speaking for myself)
>

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 08:48:38 +0200

Hi,

> topic with EDU might be a good idea for both sides of the house.

The IAB is working very hard to improve the technical topic
presentations, but I confess that it currently gets arranged late
enough (and we have a hard enough time of it) that adding more
co-ordination steps earlier is almost certainly unlikely to happen.
I'm totally prepared, however, to tell you what we're working on when
we settle on something.

> speaking to.

This is something we've especially tried to fix recently, however.
Dave Thaler is, you might imagine, especially sensitive to the issue
:)

> EDU speakers are normally IETF old hands who know to keep it
> strictly technical.

For us there's a bit of a tension with IETF "old hands", partly
because we think it's useful to bring in outside views but also
because we're aware of the difficulty of communicating to this
community if you've never participated in it before.  For my own part,
I also sometimes worry about the consequences of the IETF echo chamber.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 19:09:30 +1200

> I'm totally prepared, however, to tell you what we're working on when

It can go the other way: Mirjam has a spreadsheet with agreed tutorial
topics for IETF N+1 and proposed topics for IETF N+2.

    Brian

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 09:50:22 +0200

> topics for IETF N+1 and proposed topics for IETF N+2.

That'd be fantastic input.  Thanks!

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 10:25:47 +0200

> topics for IETF N+1 and proposed topics for IETF N+2.

And I should probably find a way to post that to the EDU wiki on a
regular basis..

Mirjam

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 11:12:33 +0200

Hi Andrew,

> That'd be fantastic input.  Thanks!

I added our planned tutorials for IETF 94 and IETF 95 to the wiki:

http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/wiki/IETF94

http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/wiki/IETF95

Many of them still need to be confirmed. But you get an idea what we're
currently thinking of and maybe you (and others on the IAB) have some
suggestions for additional technical topics.

Mirjam