Subject: IETF support for remote participation/virtual meetings

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:42:40 -0700

We are seeing more and more IETF WGs holding “virtual
Interim meetings” nowadays.   This was a topic of discussion at
the WG chairs meeting at IETF 75.  Given this, I’m wondering what the IETF can do in
order to make it easier for WGs to host “virtual interims” and “virtual participation” at IETF meetings themselves.  

Some potential issues that I’ve encountered with this
(may be due to my own ignorance/lack of experience, so feel free to enlighten
me):

a.      
Uploading of interim meeting materials.  Interim
meetings have their own slides, minutes, etc.  But the Meeting Materials
tool seems oriented toward IETF meetings, not interims.  Is there a way to
upload interim meeting materials/agendas as you would with regular meetings?

b.     
Online Meeting tools.  At the WG chairs meeting,
we discussed WebEx.  It was noted that the IETF had “limited use”
of this.   I tried to get info from the Secretariat on what the
policy was or how a WG could get access to Webex for an interim Virtual Meeting
or Meeting, but was not successful.  Do we have a policy or information on
this? 

c.      
Remote participation.  What is the model for
remote participation at an IETF meeting going forward?   Is it
audio/Meeting Manager/jabber or is there something more/less?  Now that we
have audio, the role of the “jabber scribe” seems to be decreasing
(though it’s really nice to have if the audio goes out).  For  IETF
76 do we have plans to support web conferencing tools as well?

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:13:33 -0700

I don't have answers to all of your questions but I've attempted to  
address some of them, inline:

On Oct 14, 2009, at 9:42 AM, Bernard Aboba wrote:

>
> We are seeing more and more IETF WGs holding “virtual Interim  
> meetings” nowadays.   This was a topic of discussion at the WG  
> chairs meeting at IETF 75.  Given this, I’m wondering what the IETF  
> can do in order to make it easier for WGs to host “virtual interims”  
> and “virtual participation” at IETF meetings themselves.
>
> Some potential issues that I’ve encountered with this (may be due to  
> my own ignorance/lack of experience, so feel free to enlighten me):
>
> a.       Uploading of interim meeting materials.  Interim meetings  
> have their own slides, minutes, etc.  But the Meeting Materials tool  
> seems oriented toward IETF meetings, not interims.  Is there a way  
> to upload interim meeting materials/agendas as you would with  
> regular meetings?
>

Right now most people send their interim meeting materials in via the  
ticket system. This is not ideal, and we are addressing it. At the  
moment we are rewriting the Proceedings tool and one of the things we  
are changing is the way interim meetings are organized. Currently they  
are stored with the following IETF meeting;  moving forward, we intend  
to make the interim meetings proceedings distinct, easier to scan and  
search. As a part of this process, the meeting materials upload tool  
will also be rewritten and it will be possible to upload interim  
meeting materials via the tool.

> b.      Online Meeting tools.  At the WG chairs meeting, we  
> discussed WebEx.  It was noted that the IETF had “limited use” of  
> this.   I tried to get info from the Secretariat on what the policy  
> was or how a WG could get access to Webex for an interim Virtual  
> Meeting or Meeting, but was not successful.  Do we have a policy or  
> information on this?
>

I apologize that you did not get the information you requested. Right  
now we are still trying to determine how we are going to support the  
use of WebEx for interim and other meetings, so I think it's likely  
that you didn't hear back because we aren't yet sure. However I'm  
actively engaged in coming up with the solution and I will inform the  
community as soon as we have that in place.

> c.       Remote participation.  What is the model for remote  
> participation at an IETF meeting going forward?   Is it audio/ 
> Meeting Manager/jabber or is there something more/less?  Now that we  

We hope to have WebEx available in at least one meeting room for the  
duration of IETF 76, but the logistics have not been finalized yet.

Alexa

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---

From: Thomas Heide Clausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:51:40 +0200

> 76 do we have plans to support web conferencing tools as well?

Couple of thoughts on Jabber-scribing in general.

As chair, I've often used the Jabber logs as a complement to the  
minute takers for when editing the final meeting minutes. It does  
provide a good additional record-taking, especially when discussions  
are running too fast for one person to capture all.

Remote meeting participants (as opposed to "attendees") following the  
audio-stream, generally, seem to appreciate when someone can channel  
their questions or comments at the mike. Currently, for IETF meetings,  
audio is otherwise one-way. I noticed, and did, a lot more "channeling  
of jabber questions" in SF in the sessions that I participated in,  
than at previous IETFs. I think that having this feed-back-channel for  
remote participants is a good thing (but, a dedicated "Jabber  
channeler" is probably something chairs should consider for meetings  
with many remote participants.

Finally, when physically present in one session, I often open Jabber  
to follow some other session concurrently -- scheduling constraints  
have increased collisions between sessions I want to follow. A good  
Jabber scribe/channeler makes it (almost) possible to participate in  
two sessions at once without developing real physical manifestations  
of schizophrenia.

Thomas

---

From: Thomas Heide Clausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:07:35 +0200

On Oct 14, 2009, at 7:51 PM, Thomas Heide Clausen wrote:

>> Meeting Manager/jabber or is there something more/less?  Now that  
>> we have audio, the role of the “jabber scribe” seems to be  
>> decreasing (though it’s really nice to have if the audio goes  
>> out).  For  IETF 76 do we have plans to support web conferencing  
>> tools as well?
>
> Remote meeting participants (as opposed to "attendees") following  
> the audio-stream, generally, seem to appreciate when someone can  
> channel their questions or comments at the mike. Currently, for IETF  
> meetings, audio is otherwise one-way. I noticed, and did, a lot more  
> "channeling of jabber questions" in SF

And that should read "Stockholm" not "SF"....

Thomas

> in the sessions that I participated in, than at previous IETFs. I  
> think that having this feed-back-channel for remote participants is  
> a good thing (but, a dedicated "Jabber channeler" is probably  
> something chairs should consider for meetings with many remote  
> participants.
>

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:39:04 -0700

Dave,

Yes, minutes from the Behave interim meeting will only become  
available after IETF 76, when the Proceedings for IETF 76 are in  
online in draft form.  This makes very little sense, but my guess is  
that it exists this way because the Proceedings tool was written at at  
time when interim meetings were not taking place, or not expected to  
be documented the way that IETF meetings are.

This is just one of the reasons why we are rewriting the Proceedings  
tool, which we hope to have in place by the Anaheim meeting.

In the meantime, we are happy to follow a different process with the  
interim meeting minutes if anyone has a suggestion as to where else  
they might be posted.

Alexa

On Oct 14, 2009, at 11:40 AM, Dave Thaler wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
>> Alexa Morris
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:14 AM
>> To: Bernard Aboba
>> Cc: [email-masked]
>> Subject: Re: [IAB] IETF support for remote participation/virtual
>> meetings
>>
>>> We are seeing more and more IETF WGs holding "virtual Interim
>>> meetings" nowadays.   This was a topic of discussion at the WG
>>> chairs meeting at IETF 75.  Given this, I'm wondering what the IETF
>>> can do in order to make it easier for WGs to host "virtual interims"
>>> and "virtual participation" at IETF meetings themselves.
>>>
>>> Some potential issues that I've encountered with this (may be due to
> The Behave WG has had several virtual interim meetings (via WebEx)
> since last IETF.  Although minutes were submitted, I cannot find
> them available online anywhere at present.  It sounds like they
> only become available online AFTER the following IETF meeting,
> which makes it hard for folks to review prior to the meeting.
> (Of course we post minutes to the list as well but still...)
>
> -Dave
>
>>> discussed WebEx.  It was noted that the IETF had "limited use" of
>>> have audio, the role of the "jabber scribe" seems to be decreasing
>>> (though it's really nice to have if the audio goes out).  For  IETF

-----------

---

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:58:34 -0700

If a WG isn't meeting at IETF 76, but has had an interim meeting, is it possible to upload

presentations/meeting minutes either before or after IETF 76?

---

From: "Bernard Aboba" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:35:56 -0700

Peter St. Andre said:

"This is consistent with my experience: the chatroom serves as a way to
take notes for the minutes, funnel questions from remote participants
into the IRL meeting room, and follow other concurrent sessions. XMPP
groupchat is far from a perfect collaboration tool (and I say that as
the person who wrote the spec!), but IMHO it serves several quite useful
functions."

I have noticed that scribing is more difficult in Virtual Interim meetings.
Since people are on a teleconference bridge, it typically isn't necessary for a scribe
to relay questions from jabber to the bridge.  So sometimes it is hard to
find someone who wants to scribe.  However, it is still really
useful to have a real-time minute taker, and since jabber.ietf.org
auto-archives, doing the scribing in the jabber room  both helps with minutes
as well as enabling people to continue to follow the conversation if there
are problems with the bridge (not that uncommon).  In several virtual interims
I've seen the jabber room used to help debug issues with the other facilities
(web conferencing, bridge, etc.).

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:33:44 -0700

On Oct 14, 2009, at 1:22 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

> --On Wednesday, October 14, 2009 12:39 -0700 Alexa Morris
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Dave,
>>
>> available after IETF 76, when the Proceedings for IETF 76 are
>> in online in draft form.  This makes very little sense, but my
>> guess is that it exists this way because the Proceedings tool
>> was written at at time when interim meetings were not taking
>> place, or not expected to be documented the way that IETF
>> meetings are.
>
> At the time the precedents were set (even before the
> "Proceedings tool"), interim meetings were rare enough that it
> made sense to incorporate their formal minutes in the next
> Proceedings to be published.  To put this in perspective,
> remember that Proceedings used to be distributed primarily in
> hard copy and then on physical CDs, rather than being primarily
> online.
>
> It seems to be time (or past time) to get over that, at least in
> the form of providing an interim and easy-to-find repository for
> such minutes until they are assembled into subsequent
> Proceedings.
>
>> ...
>> In the meantime, we are happy to follow a different process
>> with the interim meeting minutes if anyone has a suggestion as
>> to where else they might be posted.
>
> In the hope that this is _really_ easy (and hence can be done in
> some quick and dirty fashion... with the emphasis on "quick"),
> why not create an "unedited/draft interim meeting minutes" page
> somewhere?  Put links to it from at least a couple of the IETF
> main page, the "meetings" page, and the WG Charter pages (even
> if the latter have to be patched manually).   That leaves
> "official" publication, and any discussions we might need to
> have about what "official" means, until you get your tools
> sorted out but has the information readily available for
> people's preparation for WG sessions at the next IETF meeting.
>

Yes, we can do that. We'll work on getting something up by the end of  
next week.  The only exception is that we can't do this for the WG  
charter pages because they are dynamically generated and, while we do  
plan to rewrite those as well, that is another, much larger, project.  
However we'll put links up from other pages so that the draft interim  
meeting minutes are easy to find.

Alexa

>    john

-----------

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:46:42 +0300

> I noticed, and did, a lot more "channeling of jabber questions" in SF 
> in the sessions that I participated in, than at previous IETFs.

And it was very useful for me at least. Thank you.

> I think that having this feed-back-channel for remote participants is 

Agreed, and I think that the ability to send comments back is not just a 
nice to have feature, but the motivation for anyone to attend virtually. 
If you can't voice your comments, you might as well read the minutes later.

It was my experience that we have some work left here. I was in the 
fortunate situation where I knew well the other participants in the 
discussion, they knew I was only participating on jabber and that I 
wanted to make comments. Still, there were times in some working groups 
when it was really hard for me to make a comment, presumably because 
everyone was on the mike like in the heat of the discussion. I am sure 
the situation would be worse for a newcomer, for instance, or someone 
who was not familiar with the WG in question. Having a designated 
"question relayer" or making sure that the Jabber scribes know this is 
their task would be very helpful.

Jari

---

From: "Bernard Aboba" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:08:44 -0700

Thomas Narten has been developing a draft providing recommendations on how to move
forward with remote participation (draft-narten-ietf-remote-participation-00.txt). 
He's looking to put out an -01 before the draft deadline, and would probably appreciate
any suggestions/input. 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Jari Arkko
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 12:47 AM
To: 'Thomas Heide Clausen'
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IETF support for remote participation/virtual meetings

Jari

---

From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:40:00 +0000

-Dave

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:22:49 -0400

john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:42:52 -0400

--On Wednesday, October 14, 2009 22:33 -0700 Alexa Morris
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> In the hope that this is _really_ easy (and hence can be done
>> in some quick and dirty fashion... with the emphasis on
>> "quick"), why not create an "unedited/draft interim meeting
>> minutes" page somewhere?  Put links to it from at least a
>> couple of the IETF main page, the "meetings" page, and the WG
>> Charter pages (even if the latter have to be patched
>> manually).   That leaves "official" publication, and any
>> discussions we might need to have about what "official"
>> means, until you get your tools sorted out but has the
>> information readily available for people's preparation for WG
>> sessions at the next IETF meeting.
> 
> Yes, we can do that. We'll work on getting something up by the
> end of next week.  The only exception is that we can't do this
> for the WG charter pages because they are dynamically
> generated and, while we do plan to rewrite those as well, that
> is another, much larger, project. However we'll put links up
> from other pages so that the draft interim meeting minutes are
> easy to find.

Great.  The limitation on the charter pages actually doesn't
surprise me but I note that they don't contain links to minutes
in the Proceedings either.  As long as there is a reasonably
intuitive way to find them, I think it will be fine and the
other two should be more than adequate.

It occurs to me that, as you redesign the Charter pages and
tools, links to each of the Proceedings in which minutes for
that WG appear might be helpful both in themselves and as a
convenient historical record.  I don't know if it would be worth
the trouble and clutter: you might at least want to poll others
on that question when the time comes.

Many thanks for the quick response and schedule.

   john

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:39:26 -0400

Alexa:

How hard would it be to put a place on the web site for interim 
meeting minutes that will appear in the next set of proceedings?

Russ

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:54:56 -0700

This is live now at http://www.ietf.org/meeting/

Alexa

-----------

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:12:39 -0500

Hi, Alexa,

> duration of IETF 76, but the logistics have not been finalized yet.

This is way too late for me to be asking, but ... did I miss a note about 
finalizing the IETF 76 WebEx situation?

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:49:06 +0100

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> This is way too late for me to be asking, but ... did I miss a note 
> about finalizing the IETF 76 WebEx situation?

I haven't seen anything either and I do have a participant
who wants to join through webex.

Henk

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---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:42 -0700

Yes, we are going to have WebEx available in two meeting rooms:  
Cattleya East and Orchid West. So far we've received four specific WG  
requests for WebEx support and these four groups are in the WebEx  
rooms. This will be entirely volunteer-supported. We are preparing  
guidelines to help WG Chairs and presenters not currently familiar  
with WebEx, and these guidelines will be available by the start of the  
meeting.

Alexa

-----------