Subject: RE: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 11:52:15 -0400

There has been a fairly negative response to the idea of allowing WG 
chairs to officially name WG secretaries.  I am surprised by this for 
three reasons:

	- There was nothing in this proposal that required
		all WGs to have WG secretaries.
	- This proposal was offered as a constructive way to 
		solve a set of evident, IETF-wide problems.
	- There are few, if any, alternate proposals on the
		to address these problems.

What are the problems?

From my perspective, a WG secretariat could add much-needed
cycles to help solve the following problems:

	- WG minutes are not submitted, submitted late, incomplete
		and/or of such poor quality as to be completely
		useless
	- WG agendas are not posted, posted late, incomplete and/or
		of such poor quality as to be completely useless
	- WG mailing lists aren't well-managed, and summaries
		aren't sent after lengthy discussions.

Now, I'll admit that there may be some WGs for which all of these
things are being done, and done well on a timely basis...  But, can
you name one?  These problems apply to a large enough majority of
the IETF groups that I think they can be considered IETF-wide 
problems.

Why are minutes, agendas and summaries important?

We assert that it is possible to be a full contributor in the
IETF without attending meetings.  Bad or missing meeting minutes
make that more difficult.

The minutes are the only long-term, archived record of what was
discussed and decided in our meetings.  They can be very important
later, if it is necessary to know what a group decided and why.

Agendas allow people to prepare for meetings and to know which
meetings they should attend. 

And summaries could help to make WG mailing lists productive, 
breaking us out of the make-progress-every-four-months cycle 
that most WGs seem to be locked in.

I am the first to admit that my WGs have not been exemplary at
these things.  Have yours?  If not, do you think a WG secretary
might help?  

The responses on this list have generally been of the form:

	- I prefer to pick scribes at the meetings, because...

or

	- I (the chair) find a tape recording more useful
		than notes from scribes or a secretary...

If these things are working, then why are our minutes so late and
so poorly done?  Why are so many minutes missing altogether?

Margaret

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 10:53:38 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Margaret,

This was an excellent and thought-provoking e-mail.

The only question I'll add is, "Would acting as a WG secretary
help develop someone in your working group so they can
contribute more to IETF work?"

We're all over the IESG because they're too busy to develop
anyone who can help them be less busy. Is the WG secretary
concept an opportunity to help WG chairs?

Spencer

---

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:33:38 -0400

My takeaway from this thread is that we need to give a better
definition of what is expected/required of minutes (and,
as Aaron suggested, some samples of *good* minutes would help),
and any other WG documentation that is expected to persist
beyond the scope of any given WG Chair.

I don't care how a WG chair does this -- either randomly picking
a scribe at the beginning of a session, or having a standing
secretary position -- but IMO it is the WG chair's responsibility
to see that the minutes get into the proceedings, and are
useful for future purposes of determining what happened at that
meeting.  And I can say that as former WG chair, with minutes
recorded for URN & CNRP WG's that I don't believe meet that bar --
my fault, I was going with the flow at the time, I didn't know
any better...

The truth is that there are myriad reasons to come back to the
meeting minutes -- WG participants that could not get to the
meeting, future chairs (of the same WG) trying to detect what
has passed, appeals, WG revision of WG decisions.  They are a critical
part of getting our work done (and audio recordings of multi-hour
sessions, while helpful in creating such minutes, are not a 
replacement for them).

So -- if you had to live with the fact that "whatever happened
in the room, it doesn't count if it isn't in the minutes", what
problems do you have to creating such minutes, and how can
we solve them?

Leslie.

-- 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Reality:
     Yours to discover."
                                -- ThinkingCat
Leslie Daigle
[email-masked]
-------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 19:01:43 -0500

> problems do you have to creating such minutes, and how can

We've done several things around the SIP-related groups to help out
here:

1) We get several note-takers for each meeting. The "raw" notes from
each note-taker are published along with the slides, agenda, and
official minutes on our supplemental web sites. This helps round out
different contexts should there be later debate about what we came up
with. It is often difficult to get note-takers to actually send their
notes -- usually a few days, and often three to six weeks pass before
they get them sent in.

2) I've started coaching note-takers on recording issues raised,
alternatives discussed, conclusions (or the lack thereof), and major
rationales. It helps to be able to say "please look at the minutes from
the last meeting on our web so you can get close to the right format."
Over the past few years, this has increased note-usability somewhat.

3) We've had the privilege of having Arnoud van Wijk in many meetings.
As he has a hard time following the spoken discussion, he often brings a
professional transcriptionist. Several times we have relied on her
transcripts for generating minutes when the volunteer note-takers
imploded. On the other hand, it's REALLY hard to get concise minutes out
of a word-for-word transcript, especially when speakers fail to identify
themselves. Several times in each meeting I have to ask people to slow
down and speak clearly.

4) In meetings related to SIP but that I'm not actually chairing
(SIMPLE, XCON, etc.) I'll frequently volunteer to take notes. I
generally have these mailed to the chairs before I leave the meeting,
and they've told me this is quite helpful for them. I've noticed this
makes it easier to get people to volunteer to take notes in the meetings
I do chair. Guilt is such a wonderful motivator.

5) In addition to the raw notes, the various stages of "draft" minutes
are both posted to the web site and mailed out to the list. I'll usually
get several suggestions for corrections from the working group before
finalizing the minutes.

And even then, the best of minutes are still not perfectly useful and
I'm always wishing I'd done a better job.

--
Dean

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From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:56:04 +1000

[newbie co-chair comments alert.. -ggm]

At the just past APNIC member meeting in Seoul, and at the up-coming
APRICOT/APNIC combined meeting, we have been hiring closed caption people who
normally do either TV subtitles, or courtroom recording, to do a screen and
jabber/weblog displayed verbatim log.

We found it useful, but the people charged with writing up canonical minutes did
say the divergences were a problem, and that 'scary' errors of meaning could
creep in.

I think the value in screening logs of things like this is about participation,
not record keeping. Having said which, I too have been doing jabber logging in
several WG I attend, and while its nice that the WG chairs have been
appreciative I don't over-estimate their value to them in compiling the real
minutes. They are different things, and the jabber log at best is an input, not
of itself a canonical record.

Something to keep in mind is the ITU/CCITT concept of the 'rapporteur' who is
charged with summarizing the state of consensus. We've also played with that at
APNIC meetings, and its helped defuse things where the chairs are seen as being
too close to the subject to give neutral/dispassionate views, often having
document in process as well as chairing the meeting.

cheers
	-George

---

From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 14:13:56 -0400

>                 to address these problems.

I  agree with this logic and argument expressed here... the concept of WG
secretaries appointed at the pleasure and discretion of WG chairs has
enormous merit and those Secretaries should be listed on the WG home page

I like to try it out in Minneapolis for a variety of reasons.

In fact Id formally like to petition the IESG for permission to try it out.

IMHO the meta issues here are two fold.

1. What are the structures we can put in place that ,within reason, relieve
some of the burden on the IESG for BGP , Informational document review and
production and some of Ted Hardies ideas on a Area Directorate committee
make sense here.

2. There is a fundamental issue here underlies the current thread which is
what I would call "management in depth'.  It is a classic problem of any
organization that wishes to both recognize as well as promote individuals
into positions that ultimately lead to management responsibilities.

The IETF is no different from any corporate body profit or non-profit in
nature .. the successful organization looks first to its order of
succession and the structure that says if  person A gets hit by a truck
then what happens??  Each and every person in the structure of management
of the IETF is needs to be partially responsible to make sure that there is
some one to take over in the event of sickness, death or other catastrophic
event.

This is not a NOMCOM issue but it goes to the structures in place that the
NOMCOM must draw on which is the pool of responsible and trained applicants
for management positions.

>                 aren't sent after lengthy discussions.

presicely and I'm perfectly wiling to admit to some of these omissions myself

>Why are minutes, agendas and summaries important
>

yes

Richard Shockey, Senior Manager, Strategic Technology Initiatives
NeuStar Inc.
46000 Center Oak Plaza  -   Sterling, VA  20166
sip:rshockey(at)iptel.org   ENUM +87810-13313-31331
PSTN Office +1 571.434.5651 PSTN Mobile: +1 703.593.2683,  Fax: +1 815.333.1237
<mailto:richard(at)shockey.us> or <mailto:richard.shockey(at)neustar.biz>
<http://www.neustar.biz> ; <http://www.enum.org>
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