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

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 05:09:09 +0200

The IESG was discussing the state of minutes from WG meetings last week.

Generally, there are problems with both quality and timeliness of meeting 
minutes - they are often late to the secretariat, or do not arrive at all; 
their format varies widely, and it can be very hard from some of the 
minutes to identify the decisions the WG thought that it reached at the 
meeting.

Since this forms part of the record of the standards process, which is 
important in order to document that we have followed our open process, this 
is not great.

We then remembered the following passage from RFC 2418 (WG guidelines):

6.2. WG Secretary

   Taking minutes and editing working group documents often is performed
   by a specifically-designated participant or set of participants.  In
   this role, the Secretary's job is to record WG decisions, rather than
   to perform basic specification.

We've mostly not done this in later years, most chairs instead doing the 
"does anyone want to volunteer to take minutes" style.
However, it might be a worthwhile thing to do.

I checked with the secretariat - it's a relatively trivial job to add the 
role of "WG Secretary" to IETF WG charters, so that there's both public 
knowledge of who has the post and some "payback" for it - and having the 
people be formally identified and committed would also allow us to do 
things like targeting them for information, or engaging them in discussion, 
on how this role needs to be performed.
One could also imagine this role subsuming the role of "WG facilitator", 
and being also a natural first choice for things like issue tracking.

But the obvious overhead is that the WG chairs have to identify and recruit 
people to fill these positions.

What do the WG chairs think? Is anyone doing this at present? Is it worth 
trying?

                      Harald

---

From: "Chris Apple" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 01:18:23 -0400

I definitely think its worth trying.

The way you described the position morphing over time makes it seem like
a more appropriate title might be WG Project Manager - who happens to be
accountable for recording and publishing meeting minutes (among other
things).

Chris Apple - Principal Architect

DSI Consulting, Inc.

mailto:[email-masked]

http://www.dsi-consulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 11:09 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

6.2. WG Secretary

                      Harald

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 22:39:00 -0700

>accountable for recording and publishing meeting minutes (among other

It's a big leap from note taker to project manager.
I think the WG Chair(s) are responsible for the
WG projects, and this role should not be delegated.

I like to have 2 or 3 people taking notes and then I
write the minutes from multiple sets of notes.

I don't know if creating an official position will
improve the situation.  Perhaps some guidelines
for note takers and minutes writers (ala ID-nits)
will help more.  I wish note takers would do
a better job of capturing context and every decision
and action item made, rather than trying to transcribe
every conversation in the meeting.

>Chris Apple - Principal Architect

Andy

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 05:06:01 -0700 (PDT)

Dear All,

A couple of good ideas in this thread -

- prearranging two note-takers before the meeting,

- developing a minutes-nits list (we don't have any idea what
format to produce notes in; we had some complaints after the
last meeting that we had text minutes that were transformed into
HTML and all formatting lost, so this seems like a mimimum
requirement for IETF 58!)

We've tripped over some voracious scribes, especially on jabber,
at the last couple of meetings (the jabber logs for the IESG
plenary were almost word-for-word). It would be nice to
encourage this style of note-taking, AS WELL AS the "context and
decisions" style of minutes that we really need to publish. Most
WGs have either one or the other, so he-said/she-said minutes
are a forest and decisions minutes don't have enough redundancy
to identify missed sense-of-the-room calls.

I've been involved with WG chairs who were trying after the
meeting to identify what the sense of the room was for moving a
document forward - the note-takers missed the decision, and
nobody had a transcript, so...

And having he-said/she-said minutes on Jabber is really nice -
I'd like to see us commit to having Jabber logs at every IETF,
and start acting like this was normal. 

Spencer

p.s. I am using the word "decision" to describe "sense of the
room", of course.

---

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 09:48:20 -0700

I usually look for people active in the working group to take minutes,
and, hence, end up selecting from a relatively small pool -- in
effect nearly-dedicated minutes takers who understand an important
point when they it is raised in a meeting.  

A problem with this approach is that these folks often want to get
involved in the discussion and so the minutes I get from them have big
holes in them when the minute taker gets very involved in the
discussion (often at important points).  I'm not sure that a
position of wg secretary would solve this problem.  

One idea I've been toying with is to make an audio recording of the
meeting.  Primarily this would help me be sure I get all the important
points that arise.  It also might be made available along with the
minutes, although there are probably some privacy issues we need to
worry about.  (Or maybe not, this isn't so different from MBONE
coverage...) I'd be interested in feedback on this.  Audio recording
technology (digital or analog) is cheap and many hotels have the
ability to take a feed from the sound reinforcement system.  Just a
thought... 

Of course, this doesn't address the quality or timeliness of the
minutes.  It does however, put me in a position to ensure that I, as a
wg chair, can do something about it.

A final thought: pointing to some exemplary minutes might be
educational.  My observation is that Geoff Huston's minutes are
really, really good.  I don't know how much effort goes into putting
them together but the few times I've consulted them (for example
http://iab.potaroo.net/documents/docs/iab-open-meetings/ietf57/), I've
been impressed.

--aaron

---

From: "bill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 23:16:26 -0700

Ok, I have seen some of the discussions on this... Now we are a
technology based organization...

How large would the files be to store voice quality audio of the
meetings (so we meet for about 180 hours a year * about 10 WG per hour
or 1800 hours of audio a year  -- how much space exists on the hard
drives at www.ietf.org ???  Can we make useful usable voice recordings
for posterity ?

The other interesting question is quality of notes - it might be worth a
word by word blow by blow notes with an overview/summary by the WG
chairs.  That said there are transcription services that can turn audio
into a typed file (heck some of us can do it on the cheap - but I am
assuming we value our time at X and we can find some service to do it
for X/4) I am not suggesting that the IETF pay for this at this time -
but if someone told me I could spend 20 bucks to turn an hour of mp3
that I capture at the meeting into blow by blow notes, I'd be tempted to
pay the cash out of my pocket, and produce a summary myself

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 8:09 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

Generally, there are problems with both quality and timeliness of
meeting 
minutes - they are often late to the secretariat, or do not arrive at
all; 
their format varies widely, and it can be very hard from some of the 
minutes to identify the decisions the WG thought that it reached at the 
meeting.

Since this forms part of the record of the standards process, which is 
important in order to document that we have followed our open process,
this 
is not great.

6.2. WG Secretary

I checked with the secretariat - it's a relatively trivial job to add
the 
role of "WG Secretary" to IETF WG charters, so that there's both public 
knowledge of who has the post and some "payback" for it - and having the

people be formally identified and committed would also allow us to do 
things like targeting them for information, or engaging them in
discussion, 
on how this role needs to be performed.
One could also imagine this role subsuming the role of "WG facilitator",

But the obvious overhead is that the WG chairs have to identify and
recruit 
people to fill these positions.

What do the WG chairs think? Is anyone doing this at present? Is it
worth 
trying?

                      Harald

---

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:36:42 +0200

Hi  Aaron

> ability to take a feed from the sound reinforcement system.  Just a

The AVT WG has been doing audio recordings since way back through 
tapping the speaker or MBONE system. As new chair I have only had the 
pleasure to write the minutes from the audio recording once. It 
certainly helps to know what happened, there a few minor problems that 
might arise. First is that the speakers do not say they names before 
talking at the microphone. For the one not voicing there opinion more 
than a few time it can be hard to recognize the voice. Second problem is 
if people makes comments away from the microphone which is not caught on 
tape. These issues can be improved by the chairs ensuring order when 
talking to the mike.

Having been using tape one can run of it an lose parts of the session if 
they are long. However this is something that can be solved by using 
digital recording devices with enough storage for several hours.

But as final note it certainly helps ensuring that one gets correct 
minutes.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund

Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research EAB/TVA/A
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ericsson AB                | Phone +46 8 4048287
Torshamsgatan 23           | Fax   +46 8 7575550
S-164 80 Stockholm, Sweden | mailto: [email-masked]

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:48:22 -0400

On Friday, October 10, 2003, at 04:36 AM, Magnus Westerlund wrote:
> Having been using tape one can run of it an lose parts of the session 
> if they are long. However this is something that can be solved by 
> using digital recording devices with enough storage for several hours.

I recorded the Vienna problem wg meeting (2.5 hours) on minidisc
with plenty of room to spare.  I haven't uploaded it yet, but
it was definitely helpful when getting the minutes together.  The
other *very* helpful mechanism has been the jabber logs.

Melinda

---

From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 09:20:01 -0700

Hi Harald,

I think it would be worthwhile to have a designated secretary. However, as
with draft editors, finding someone who can take good minutes may be
difficult. Minute taking skill is not the same as draft writing or editing
skill, for example. One of the difficulties currently is that randomly
picking volunteers sometimes gets someone who is not particularly skilled at
minute taking. By recording that person as the officially designated "WG
Secretary" on the WG Web page, it becomes difficult if a person lacking in
minute taking skill is chosen, to change the position. This is a similar
problem to having a draft editor lacking in writing or editing skills, a
problem that crops up from time to time in WGs. Thus, care would need to be
exercised in selecting someone for this position. Currently, if a volunteer
doesn't happen to have particularly good minute taking skills, they aren't
chosen at the next meeting and it's not much of a problem. But I do agree
that having a designated secretary on the Web page would be much more
helpful for people who need to account for their time.

            jak

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 8:09 PM
Subject: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

this
discussion,
recruit