Subject: [Manycouches] WG Review: Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:20:01 -0700

A new IETF WG has been proposed in the General Area. The IESG has not made
any determination yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is
provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the
IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by 2020-07-06.

Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Current status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Amelia Andersdotter <[email-masked]>
  Suresh Krishnan <[email-masked]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>

General Area Directors:
  Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>

Mailing list:
  Address: [email-masked]
  To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches
  Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/manycouches/

Group page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/shmoo/

Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-shmoo/

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the IETF's typical schedule of three
in-person meetings per year. It has caused the IETF to have to convert
previously scheduled in-person meetings into fully online meetings. Although
it is the first time the IETF's meeting schedule has been disrupted, it is
possible that other crises could cause similar disruptions in the future.
Even in the absence of the pandemic, discussions about the possibility of
fully online meetings had been occurring in the IETF community for years as a
result of general increases in remote attendance, improvements in web
conferencing services, concerns about the environmental impact of travel, and
other reasons.

The meeting planning activities that the IESG and the IETF LLC engage in
would benefit from IETF community consensus guidance concerning novel aspects
raised by these developments. The SHMOO working group is therefore chartered
to document high-level guidance and principles to the IESG and the IETF LLC.
The guidance and principles will concern the following:

- Determinations of when a previously scheduled in-person meeting should be
canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting. Similar to how RFC 8718
establishes community principles and guidance for the selection of meeting
venues, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from community consensus
guidelines about which factors to consider when deciding to cancel or replace
an in-person meeting and the relative importance of those factors. This work
item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of a BCP.

- Meeting planning in the event that a previously scheduled in-person meeting
needs to be canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting. Similar to how
RFC 8719 establishes guidance for the regional rotation of in-person
meetings, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from having community consensus
guidelines about the time zone selection, meeting length in days, and other
high-level scheduling aspects when an in-person meeting must be canceled.
This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or
more BCPs.

- Functional requirements for the technologies the IETF uses to support fully
online meetings. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with one or more
informational RFCs.

- Determinations about the meeting fee for fully online meetings. Since
remote participation in in-person meetings has historically been at zero cost
to participants, LLC and IESG decisions about meeting fees for fully online
meetings need to be informed by community consensus guidelines about whether
and how to set a registration fee for fully online meetings. This work item
is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or more informational
RFCs. Suggestions for changing the IETF's overall funding model are out of
scope.

- The cadence of meeting scheduling and the mix of in-person versus fully
online meetings going forward once the disruptions caused by the pandemic
have subsided. The working group is expected to document the expected future
meeting cadence as a BCP if consensus emerges to depart from the existing
cadence of three in-person meetings per year. Notably, any such guidance will
not become actionable until 3-4 years after it achieves consensus, given the
length of the IETF meeting planning cycle. The working group will not
progress this work item until it has requested publication for all of its
meeting cancellation-related work items.

The work of SHMOO is expected to produce high-level principles, not detailed
operational plans. Specifications of details concerning cancellation
criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting agenda formats and content
are out of scope. Aside from the fourth work item above, discussion of
financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713 are both out of
scope. The goal is to produce guidelines for the IESG and the IETF LLC to
operationalize while ensuring they have substantial flexibility to continue
to deliver and evolve the IETF meeting experience to best serve IETF
participants and the Internet community at large.

The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have been mitigated by
the time this group completes its work, but the experience of handling
meeting planning during the pandemic has proven that having community
consensus guidance at hand when dealing with novel conditions in the future
would be beneficial.

Milestones:

TBD

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 17:06:00 -0700

> - Determinations of when a previously scheduled in-person meeting should
> be canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting. Similar to how RFC
> 8718 establishes community principles and guidance for the selection of
> meeting venues, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from community
> consensus guidelines about which factors to consider when deciding to
> cancel or replace an in-person meeting and the relative importance of
those
> factors. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication
of a
> BCP.

I think this item frames the question in a way that will entail lots
of decisions for each previously planned meeting of whether
it should be cancelled.  Using the same criteria, but making
I "when can the IETF reliably plan to restart meeting f2f?"
the question the criteria are intended to answer would
also allow the possibility of "not until 2022" or "never". 

Of course there are arrangements made, deposits placed,
contracts signed that are not refundable, but I don't
think those should be factors to consider when deciding
whether to have an in-person meeting, even if there
is no cancel clause that will take effect. 

I hope to avoid bikeshedding this topic to death the WG
focuses on the "long pole in the tent" items that are
most stringent. I think that is likely "must have been
at least one successful (no infection) international scientific
 technical meeting at the venue selected, with
 similar demographics and duration." 

Another way to gauge is to survey likely attendees about
when they will feel comfortable taking an international
flight and meet and eat and drink with others.. 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/08/upshot/when-epidemiologists-w
ill-do-everyday-things-coronavirus.html
as an inspiration for a survey, although just asking
likely attendees as to when they'd be willing to commit
to an in-person meeting (with special consideration
given to chairs, ADs etc?) and what percent of various
categories of potential attendees they think would
be necessary for the meeting to be successful.

> - Meeting planning in the event that a previously scheduled in-person
> meeting needs to be canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting.
> Similar to how RFC 8719 establishes guidance for the regional rotation of
in-
> person meetings, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from having
> community consensus guidelines about the time zone selection, meeting
> length in days, and other high-level scheduling aspects when an in-person
> meeting must be canceled.
more
> BCPs.

Is there a difference between a meeting that was previously scheduled
in person and one that we plan "born remote"? Why not just
"meeting planning for online meetings"? 

Is discussion on how to accomplish tasks without simultaneous
participation in meetings across time-zones in scope?

> online meetings. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with one or
more

I'm not sure which of these topics are in scope
-  Technologies for getting things done without simultaneous cross-timezone
meetings (not but should be)
- WebEx vs. Meetecho (not)
-  bandwidth, latency, jitter requirements for full remote participation
(whatever that means)
- use of standards nor need for development of such for WebRTC and IPV6 (?)
 
> meetings need to be informed by community consensus guidelines about
> whether and how to set a registration fee for fully online meetings. This
> work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or more
> informational RFCs. Suggestions for changing the IETF's overall funding
> model are out of scope.
> 
> have subsided. The working group is expected to document the expected
> future meeting cadence as a BCP if consensus emerges to depart from the
> existing cadence of three in-person meetings per year. Notably, any such
> guidance will not become actionable until 3-4 years after it achieves
> consensus, given the length of the IETF meeting planning cycle. The
working
> group will not progress this work item until it has requested publication
for
> all of its meeting cancellation-related work items.

The status quo is "only online"
 
> The work of SHMOO is expected to produce high-level principles, not
> detailed operational plans. Specifications of details concerning
cancellation
> criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting agenda formats and
> content are out of scope. Aside from the fourth work item above,
discussion
> of financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713 are both out
> of scope. The goal is to produce guidelines for the IESG and the IETF LLC
to
> operationalize while ensuring they have substantial flexibility to
continue to
> deliver and evolve the IETF meeting experience to best serve IETF
> The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have been mitigated
> by the time this group completes its work, but the experience of handling

This is contingency planning. You should plan for contingencies
That are likely to happen and not bother too much in estimating
likelihood except to rule out impossibilities. 

The criteria to be optimized is "getting the IETF's work done in
a timely fashion" and I think every contingency plan should
address that goal.
--
https://LarryMasinter.net https://going-remote.info

---

From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 10:32:05 +0200 (CEST)

> Il 27/06/2020 02:06 Larry Masinter <[email-masked]> ha scritto:
> 

The problem with this is that it is a chicken and egg clause: no meetings can happen before a meeting has happened. I also suspect that there are not that many "international scientific technical meetings with similar demographics and duration" that can set a precedent, let alone at a specific venue which we already selected. I would at least be much more general, i.e. refer to whether any meetings of similar size are already happening or are realistically intended to happen in the same period and area.

> "meeting planning for online meetings"? 

In the absence of consensus to change the current practices, the default plan is "physical meeting" and you need to act to turn that into an online-only meeting. That may change as the result of the WG addressing the last bullet point in the charter, but at this point in time it works like that.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[email-masked] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 15:34:17 -0500

Dear IESG,

Thanks for moving this forward. I care about the work, but my BOF is
currently scheduled at the same time as SSMOO, so I'll type some thoughts
here.

Do the right thing, of course.

> Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo)

This text is kind of pandemic-centric. Yes, the IESG was involved in "go/no
go" decisions about IETF 95 during the Zika epidemic, but we've also moved
IETF meetings to another country after the Muslim travel bans in 2017, and
one of the biggest impacts on travel I can remember in the past decade was
the Iceland volcanic eruptions in 2010, which really kicked off in April,
so *barely* missed IETF 77 in Anaheim (if you believe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull, more
than 20 countries closed their airspace for commercial flights, 20 million
passengers were impacted, and this was characterized as the biggest
disruption for travel since the second world war).

So I think my point is that "any situation that makes the chances of an
effective face-to-face IETF meeting significantly less than it needs to be"
should clearly be in scope.

I should also mention that this description doesn't mention working group
interim meetings (either in-person or virtual). The IESG revised their
statement about this in May, which I COMPLETELY missed (damn CoViD-19), but
https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance-2016-01-16/
might
benefit from community discussion. The thread at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/ANrB1D0lFY-ZqU5F7wf43aS9q80/ ended
with the IETF Chair saying it would be awesome if someone could remove the
crustier details in BCP25, and unless that's a unified effort, perhaps
SHMOO could clean up some of the meeting-related details. ...

Do the right thing, of course. .

> item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of a BCP.

I am sympathetic to Larry's concern that this COULD result in
meeting-by-meeting detailed decisions that could have been governed by
general principles. As long as it's OK for someone to say "IETF 107 will be
converted to online for the following reasons", "IETF 108 should converted
to online because no significant changes since IETF 107", and "IETF 109
should be converted to online because no significant changes since IETF
108", I won't worry about that.

> meeting

The milestones for deliverables isn't listed below, but I'd suggest
publication as Informational, or perhaps better, Experimental, than BCP. We
haven't had a single full-agenda online meeting yet, and I'd expect we're
going to learn a lot from IETF 108, and IETF 109, and perhaps from some
more IETF meetings, depending on how things go.

If the working group quickly comes to consensus on guidance that is
unanimously cheered by the entire community, that would be great, but until
we have a couple of meetings held using that guidance, I'm not seeing how
that would qualify as a "Best Current Practice".

I also note that people have noticed working group meetings held during
IETF meeting weeks require registration, and working group meetings that
are not held during IETF meetings, do not. I've heard some working groups
talking about going to entirely virtual-interim meetings(*), and I've heard
some working groups talking about going 1-in-person-meeting/year. So I'm
not sure what a "normal" IETF meeting week is going to look like in a year,
and that doesn't make me feel confident about this being a BCP.

(*) full disclosure - Michael Richardson and I co-chair Cellar, which
hasn't met at an IETF meeting since 2017 (according to
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/meetings/), but meets monthly on
teleconferences. We seem to make that work.

> whether

I'm sorry, but I'm not following this. We've had a funding model that
assumes $N dollars from meeting fees, and the meeting fees for IETF 108 are
roughly 1/3 of the meeting fees for IETF 106, and we've already had a
conversation about how many registrations we're going to waive for IETF
108. I'm not seeing how the working group can be constrained to come up
with a plan for meeting fees assuming no changes to the funding model.

If that's obvious to everyone but Spencer, please continue, of course.

> future
> detailed
> content

My comment about being pandemic-centric above might more properly appear
for this paragraph ^.

Make good choices, of course!

Spencer

> Milestones:
>
> TBD
>
> _______________________________________________
> IETF-Announce mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
>

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2020 15:52:43 -0500

Let me add to what Spencer said below:

I know Suresh  but I don't know Amelia (no offence intended).

I think that the current COVID-19 pandemic is so huge that we can forget
about previous ones mentioned below like Zika, of course not Spanish Flu
which did not cause any trouble for IETF :)

Behcet

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 3:35 PM Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> This text is kind of pandemic-centric. Yes, the IESG was involved in
> "go/no go" decisions about IETF 95 during the Zika epidemic, but we've also
> moved IETF meetings to another country after the Muslim travel bans in
> 2017, and one of the biggest impacts on travel I can remember in the past
> decade was the Iceland volcanic eruptions in 2010, which really kicked off
> in April, so *barely* missed IETF 77 in Anaheim (if you believe
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull,
> more than 20 countries closed their airspace for commercial flights, 20
> million passengers were impacted, and this was characterized as the biggest
> https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance-2016-01-16/ might
>> to document high-level guidance and principles to the IESG and the IETF
>> LLC..
>> be
> 108", I won't worry about that..
>
>> continue
> for this paragraph ^..
> Manycouches mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manycouches
>