Subject: Re: [Manycouches] Remote presenters for HotRFC in Vancouver? (was: Re: Side meetings in a virtual IETF meeting ?)

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2020 20:40:08 -0500

Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > HotRFC and Petchakutcha are the two most simple "side meetings" to offer
    > remotely because of their unidirectional format. My original ask on the
    > subject line was about all side meetings, especially other inofficial ones,
    > and my minimum ask was just about change in policy, use of meetecho
    > would be even better but understood to be limited by working hours of
    > volunteers.

When you are talking about making an event entirely virtual, you need to ask
yourself if a PetchaKucha to an empty room would be interesting.

I would submit that it would simply not work.
You need the interaction with the audience, if only to see whether the joke
is going the right way or not.

So PHB's point about HotRFC remains.
I want to soften it slightly:  being able to go up to the person afterwards
and chat is the reason it works in person.  That fails for remote presenters,
and for remote audience, and therefore Youtube would be as good.

As for Poster sessions being not attended:  the posters are supposed to be
along the *BANK* line to the beer.  Just like how Fry's Electronics gets you
to buy some more USB sticks, or a few bags of chips.

If you know me, then you know that I have done a *LOT* of IETFs remotely,
including going back to mbone stuff, unicast MP3 streams, etc.
I bitch regularly about slides that aren't available ahead of time.

My problem is with trying to bring in-person interaction to remote
attendees. It results in a really poor remote-interaction, and really poor
in-person interaction.

Either have an in-person meeting, or have a virtual meeting where everyone is
remote (and dammit: you can all afford $80 gamer headsets, and use external
USB adapters).  Just don't try to mix things up.

Meetecho for a group of people who are mostly in the room, and where have
good mic line discipline can work.  But there is an awful lot of work that
can't get done in that format (having nothing to with remote attendees).
That's why we have side meetings or BarBOFs, where we can have a group of 6
to 10 people hash some difficult thing out.  We NEED the non-verbal queues to
have a good conversation, and trying to talk to someone's iPAD just won't cut
it. Sorry.

The goal here is not to eliminate all meetings, nor is it to support people
who can NEVER come to a meeting.  The goal is to reduce the number of
meetings we *have* to have, and to MAXIMIZE how much we do when we do gather.
Is the BarBOF the only way to bring new work to the IETF?  No.
Is it a good way to meet other people who might be able to help?
Yes, but it's not the only way.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

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From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 02:01:07 +0000

Hiya,

On 05/03/2020 01:40, Michael Richardson wrote:
> The goal 

I suggest we may have more than one goal. Even one
person may have multiple conflicting goals at the same
time. (I know I do:-)

> here is not to eliminate all meetings, nor is it to support people
> who can NEVER come to a meeting. 

I disagree with that last. I do believe the IETF would
be better, the better we support properly eliciting and
processing useful input from people who can never come
to a f2f meeting.

(It could be that your phrase "the goal here" did not
refer to the goals of the manycouches list, but rather to
a singular point you were making, in which case, sorry
for being dense, my excuse being variance in transatlantic
terminological traits;-)

> The goal is to reduce the number of
> meetings we *have* to have, 

That is another, different but also fine, goal.

S.

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 02:28:52 +0000

At previous HotRFC's I have chatted 1:1 with several presenters and got them to come to ACME or other WG and present. Of course if the in-person meeting isn't happening, this is kinda moot.

---

From: Joseph Potvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2020 22:03:29 -0500

My impression is that the main goal presently is to put in place a good
enough 'Plan B' (B for Business) that can handle between 50 and  100
percent of attendees participating remotely. Otherwise, there's a
significant contingency of outright 'Plan C' (C for Cancelled) due to
events outside of organizer's hands.

Roughly speaking, I suggest to define "good enough" as meaning that,
categorizing WG issues and drafting to be resolved as Critical / Important
/ Desireable, that all of the Critical issues/drafts get resolved or
significantly advanced notwithstanding the limitations of the Plan B, and
that Important and Desireable matters get advanced as well as can be done
under the circumstances.

Other international events like trade and promotional shows can cancel or
postpone without consequence beyond financial and marketing disruption.

The work of the IETF dynamically supports global critical infrastructure,
and I see no reason why there cannot be a reasonably complete Plan B
described and resourced in the next two weeks.
https://etherpad.ietf.org:9009/p/ManyCouches

Joseph Potvin
Executive Director, Xalgorithms Foundation
Mobile: 819-593-5983
[email-masked]
https://www.xalgorithms.org

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 9:01 PM Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> Manycouches mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches
>

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 06:52:50 +0100

On 2020-03-05, at 02:40, Michael Richardson <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> being able to go up to the person afterwards

But that is entirely a tools limitation, or actually a limitation in the way we use our tools.

It would be easy to have hallway rooms (e.g. in meet.jit.si) open for each presentation after the presentation.  Linked from the hotrfc agenda (which could also be made easier to find), so they are one click away.

Yes, that would require local presenters to stay close to their laptops a bit.
It would also benefit from better request queueing.
But if we want to engage remote participants/enable talking to remote presenters, this could be done.

Grüße, Carsten

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From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2020 22:00:49 -0800

> But if we want to engage remote participants/enable talking to remote presenters, this could be done.

Looks like something that we would want to try. It is an alternative to
the "hallway conversations". And trying that with Hot RFC might be a
nice first baby step.

Listening to the various complaints on the IETF lists, I wonder how many
innovative scenarios like that we might try. Mini conference spots in
which people just walk in, just like they walk in to a table in a break
during session. Chat roulette as an alternative to the welcome session.
Some avatar based conference as an alternative to the social event...

-- Christian Huitema

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From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 08:42:40 +0100

> is going the right way or not.

Interesting aspect, yes. But wouldn't be top of mind for me to solve.
Would be fun to try to solve though if there was a tools development track.

> and for remote audience, and therefore Youtube would be as good.

The after-presentation chat requirement is IMHO just a variation of the
hallway problem. Did we actually agree in the discussion whether want
audio or texting or both ? 

> [poster, frys, mbone and usb sticks...]

> attendees. It results in a really poor remote-interaction, and really poor

Its IMHO just a big tooling issue. Nothing that could be solved if you
had at least 1 million dollars to spend on good developers and slowly
building up tooling components, incrementally with experimentation
(instead of the usual waterfall waste of money into one complete new
 overdesigned system that will never work).

But not a lot that can be improved IMHO if you think you can get it for free.

> USB adapters).  Just don't try to mix things up.

well known regurgitated argument. I will agree to the local/remote
mix won't work for current tooling. See above on investment need to
solve limitations.

> have a good conversation, and trying to talk to someone's iPAD just won't cut

Audio calls between rooms with multiple people and remote participants
can work very well, i remember a BIER interim in San Jose, USB handsfree
and webex that worked IMHO very well.

But then of course all those tools immediately show how
important fundamentals haven't been solved well for decades. For example
i now often get audio buffer-bloat (especially with RTCweb, depending on
browser, internet connection etc. pps), aka: my voice is 10 seconds behind,
and then of course you come over over extremely rude interrupting always
etc. pp.  And of course there is not even signaling of the problem 
such as a display showing current channel RTT or red blinking light.
And why should there be problem diagnosis for problems that do not need
to exist in the first place ? Just because the industry has shown it's
incapable to fix those problems for decades ?

[10 more rant pages deleted for space]

Just tried the example of one of the IMHO most fundamental tooling issue
we have: No business critical quality audio channels between remote.

Cheers
    Toerless

-- 
---
[email-masked]

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2020 14:37:21 -0500

> It would be easy to have hallway rooms (e.g. in meet.jit.si) open for
    > each presentation after the presentation.  Linked from the hotrfc
    > agenda (which could also be made easier to find), so they are one click
    > away.

    > Yes, that would require local presenters to stay close to their laptops

We should probably give each presenter a stable URN for this room, so that
they can publish this during their presentation, and we'll need to have a
queue system for asynchronous questions.

I know, let's call it: Sunday Meeting Talk-later Protocol. SMTP.
Is that taken?