Subject: [Manycouches] Benjamin Kaduk's Block on charter-ietf-shmoo-01-01: (with BLOCK and COMMENT)

From: Benjamin Kaduk via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2022 23:48:44 -0800

Benjamin Kaduk has entered the following ballot position for
charter-ietf-shmoo-01-01: Block

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The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-shmoo/

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BLOCK:
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The removal of the "community health"-related work item renders the
qualifier of "Aside from the fourth work item above, discussion of
financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713 are both
out of scope" inaccurate -- the work item in question is now the
third work item.

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COMMENT:
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  - Meeting planning for mostly online, or “hybrid,” meetings. Meetings that have
    an in-person component but with significantly more remote participants than a
    mostly-in-person meeting need to be planned with community consensus
    guidelines, too. While trade-offs have often been addressed in favor of onsite
    attendees, the IESG and LLC would benefit from having community consensus on
    high-level guidance about the organization of such hybrid meetings, regarding
    such things as the meeting schedule, the meeting length in days, and
    acceptable limitations on the maximum allowed or minimum expected onsite
    attendees, whether and how to schedule and prioritize among onsite activities
    such as side meetings, the terminal room, the code lounge, and others, and
    other scheduling aspects.

Is the "and" before "acceptable limitations" placed as intended?  It seems to imply
that the "acceptable limitations on" clause also applies to the subsequent items
including "whether and how to schedule and prioritize among onsite activities", which
doesn't make much sense to me.

    Specifications of details
  concerning cancellation criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting
  agenda formats and content are out of scope.  [...]

I think there might be room for some community consensus guidance on good reasons
to cancel a meeting, I acknowledge that such guidance would inherently be
incomplete and the IESG and LLC would always need to be able to exercise
considerable flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances, so leaving the
topic fully out of scope as indicated here may well be the right choice, at
least for now.

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From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2022 08:10:15 -0500

Here's an updated version with those two corrected:

Stay Home Meet Occasionally Online (shmoo)

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 is beneficial.

The disruption of the IETF's typical schedule of three mostly-in-person meetings
per year, is causing it to convert a number of such meetings to fully online
meetings. Yet discussions about the possibility of fully or mostly 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.
It might therefore happen that in-person meeting participation will become less
popular and that a significant fraction of  participants will be remote.

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:

- Meeting planning for fully online meetings. 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.

   such things as the meeting schedule, the meeting length in days,

- Determinations about the meeting fee structure for remote participation. Since
   remote participation in mostly-in-person meetings has historically been free,
   IETF LLC and IESG decisions about the meeting fee structure for remote
   participation need to be informed by community guidelines. This work item is
   expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or more BCPs. Suggestions
   for changing the IETF's overall funding model are out of scope.

- The cadence of meeting scheduling and the mix of mostly-in-person, hybrid and
   fully online meetings going forward as well as the format of meetings, e.g.,
   use of interims compared to components and length of the plenary meeting
   (week). The working group is expected to document the expected future meeting
   cadence and format as a BCP if consensus emerges to depart from the existing
   cadence of three mostly-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 work of SHMOO is expected to produce high-level principles, not detailed
operational plans. 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. Specifications of details
concerning cancellation criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting
agenda formats and content are out of scope. Aside from the last work item
above, discussion of financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713
are both out of scope. Scheduling guidance for interim meetings is out of scope.

-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780

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From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2022 18:12:07 +0200

Hi,

> Here's an updated version with those two corrected:

<snip>

I submitted this as https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-shmoo/01-02/.

Please let me know if any further edits are coming to address comments raised by other ADs?

Thanks,
Lars

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From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2022 15:51:58 -0800

> Please let me know if any further edits are coming to address comments raised by other ADs?

Er, now I'm confused.  Is the work item for which "discussion of financial
aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713" are potentially in scope
the work item about "the meeting fee structure for remote participation" or
"the cadene of meeting scheduling"?  I assumed the former, but that's not
the "last work item above", which is what the text in the -01-02 is
pointing to.

-Ben