Subject: Jabber watchers instead of Jabber scribes

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 12:52:15 -0700

Greetings again. At <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62820.html>, Melinda Shore notes that "Far more disturbing, however, was the session in which the chair looked for volunteers, but limited volunteers to people physically present." I think I was taking minutes in the same WG she was talking about.

I was in many WGs where the chairs could not find a "Jabber scribe". However, those requests might have gotten a more traction if they asked for a "Jabber watcher" who would monitor the Jabber room for questions and, in Melinda's case, responses to requests for volunteers.

Does Jabber watcher seem like an adequate replacement for a Jabber scribe in cases where no one wants to scribe?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: "Bert (IETF) Wijnen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:12:29 +0200

> Does Jabber watcher seem like an adequate replacement for a Jabber scribe in cases where no one wants to scribe?
I normally assume that participants DO listen to the audio.
I also try very hard to make sure all presentation materials
are ONLINE. That means people who speak to slides MUST send
them at least a few days in advance.

So with the above in place, I think a jabber watcher is fine.

He/she would relay responses to hums, relay questions.

Bert

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 14:20:01 -0700

Another important duty is keeping track of where in the agenda a session is
(for the, uh, infrequent, occasions where sessions don't exactly track the
agenda).
Sometimes I find it necessary to track two meetings at once, and I find the
updates of which item we're on very useful.

-Ekr

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Bert (IETF) Wijnen <[email-masked]>wrote:

> Paul Hoffman wrote:
>
>> Greetings again. At <
>> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62820.html>, Melinda
>> Shore notes that "Far more disturbing, however, was the session in which the
>> chair looked for volunteers, but limited volunteers to people physically
>> present." I think I was taking minutes in the same WG she was talking about.
>>
>> I was in many WGs where the chairs could not find a "Jabber scribe".
>> However, those requests might have gotten a more traction if they asked for
>> a "Jabber watcher" who would monitor the Jabber room for questions and, in
>> Melinda's case, responses to requests for volunteers.
>>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:40:28 -0400

--On Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:52 -0700 Paul Hoffman
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Greetings again. At
> <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62820.ht
> ml>, Melinda Shore notes that "Far more disturbing, however,
> was the session in which the chair looked for volunteers, but
> limited volunteers to people physically present." I think I
> was taking minutes in the same WG she was talking about.
> 
> I was in many WGs where the chairs could not find a "Jabber
> scribe". However, those requests might have gotten a more
> traction if they asked for a "Jabber watcher" who would
> monitor the Jabber room for questions and, in Melinda's case,
> responses to requests for volunteers.
> 
> Does Jabber watcher seem like an adequate replacement for a
> Jabber scribe in cases where no one wants to scribe?

Yes, but...

I think we first need to figure out what our expectations are
for supporting of remote participation in WG sessions. I don't
have a clear picture of what those expectations should be.   One
extreme model is that, since everything will be repeated and
checked on the mailing list, remote input does not need to be a
goal but, as Melinda's note suggests, I think we have passed the
point where that view is plausible.  

But, whatever that level is, I think my position is the same: if
a WG isn't ready to meet --with drafts, agendas, and whatever
scribing/ watching/ minute taking is required to support remote
participants and/or the permanent record -- then its meeting
should be cancelled and any already-allocated slot freed up for
informal meetings or last-minute expansion of meeting time for
WGs that are on top of things.

That may sound harsh but, ultimately, I think we are either
serious, as an organization, about openness to participation
from those who are not present at the f2f meetings, or we are
not.  If we are not, we should stop pretending that work gets
done primarily on mailing lists and be prepared for two-week
IETF meetings.

    john

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:59:17 +0900

On 2010/08/05 4:52, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Greetings again. At<http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62820.html>, Melinda Shore notes that "Far more disturbing, however, was the session in which the chair looked for volunteers, but limited volunteers to people physically present." I think I was taking minutes in the same WG she was talking about.
>

It's definitely better than nothing.
If the audio is good, then even somebody remote can help jabber 
scribing. Some of these people may be better motivated, because that's a 
way to stay in touch, and because they feel the need to help other 
remote participants more than maybe the people in the room.

Regards,   Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:37:04 -0400

That's what I did for IETF 78, but I called it a "jabber channeler".

     Tony Hansen

PS. See slide 3 of the YAM chair's slides.

---

From: "Jiankang YAO" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 11:41:37 +0800

jabber scribers are better than jabber wachers.

if there are no jabber scribers, jaber watcher is a option.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:40:54 +0300

Speaking as someone who has participated remotely and who frequently 
needs to track two meetings even when not participating remotely: I do 
think that full jabber scribing is at times unnecessary, at least for 
true remote participants who would be on audio anyway. For tracking two 
meetings at once jabber scribing might make more sense though.

I have had two specific needs for remote participation. One, I needed a 
jabber watcher who would be able to relay what I said to the room. 
Finding such a person can be difficult at times -- when the discussion 
gets most heated and most interesting to participate, everyone stops 
paying attention to the jabber.

The second need is to follow what is happening while I'm participating 
in some other physical room. Most of time this is just knowing when a 
particular presentation begins so that I can switch rooms. Sometimes I 
also want to participate the discussion and make a comment. In the 
latter case having minutes show up real-time in jabber would be useful. 
In any case, if I am in another room physically I am unable to listen to 
the audio, so the jabber watcher needs to relay the progress of the 
meeting. What I normally do is ask the persons in the room for the level 
of detail that I need (please tell me when we switch topics, or please 
tell what comments are being made).

I would suggest that having a jabber watcher who can do things on 
request (even scribe some small part of the meeting) would be more bang 
for the buck than full scribing. (Unless, of course, the note taker puts 
his notes to the jabber directly without spending any extra effort.)

(There may be other people who would benefit from full jabber scribing 
due to language/culture issues, however.)

Jari

---

From: "Soininen, Jonne (NSN-FI/Espoo)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:49:08 +0300

Hi Jari,

I do agree. The problem with scribes are that you mostly need a native
English speaker - at least my ability to scribe effectively in English is
limited in the time a jabber scribe needs to.

I think it would be good that the watchers could announce when an agenda
point starts, and then answer questions. That wouldn't be much work, but
would be useful.

Anyways, shouldn't we call them xmpp watchers/scribes? ;)

Cheers,

Jonne.

-- 
Jonne Soininen
Nokia Siemens Networks

Tel: +358 40 527 46 34
E-mail: [email-masked]

---

From: Aaron Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 23:20:13 +0200

To have a person both physically and jabberically present to note any
non-jabberable events is important.

On Aug 4, 2010, at 21:52, Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Greetings again. At <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62820.html
> >, Melinda Shore notes that "Far more disturbing, however, was the
> session in which the chair looked for volunteers, but limited
> volunteers to people physically present." I think I was taking
> minutes in the same WG she was talking about.
>
> However, those requests might have gotten a more traction if they
> asked for a "Jabber watcher" who would monitor the Jabber room for
> questions and, in Melinda's case, responses to requests for
> volunteers.
>
> Does Jabber watcher seem like an adequate replacement for a Jabber
> scribe in cases where no one wants to scribe?
>
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:45:57 -0400

I'm not saying that this will work for all working groups .... but
what we do for the pwe3 meetings is the chairs have obtained the
volunteer services of a working group secretary, who takes the minutes
during the meeting and also watches jabber for incoming questions.
Also, with two chairs, we have one of the chairs running the
presentations for the projector and for Webex, and the other chair
keeping track of the agenda and also watching jabber. In fact, thanks
to watching jabber, we were alerted to a problem with the audio
streaming (not all of the mikes could be heard over the streaming)
that we were able to get very quickly resolved.

Thanks to Webex, having all of the presentations online prior to the
meeting, and the audio streaming, we don't see the need for a jabber
scribe per se.

So if you have some committed participants in your WG (or good
friends, or work colleagues), see if you can draft one of them into
becoming your WG secretary. Then you won't have to do the usual
last-minute scramble for a scribe.

Cheers,
Andy

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:05:06 -0700

As others have said, there are two primary forms of remote 
participation: people not at the meeting, and people in another 
meeting room who want to follow the discussion and participate when 
possible.  The former can be expected to listen to the audio stream, 
but the latter are greatly helped by real-time Jabber notes/minutes. 
(People who are not at the meeting but are trying to follow two 
meetings would fall into the first group for one meeting and the 
second group for the other meeting.)

Having someone capture into Jabber he essence of what is being said, 
even without attribution or good grammar, is a great help, but of 
course it can be hard to find volunteers.  Two or three people can 
split the job, so one can go to the mike when others take over, and 
the minute-taker could take minutes into the Jabber room.

Having someone who just types the speaker's name and where the group 
is on the agenda, plus channels remote comments, is very helpful for 
the first group of remote participants but no so much for the second 
group (still better than nothing).

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
We adore chaos because we love to produce order.
                                  --M. C. Escher

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:57:21 -0400

There is a third (fourth?) group of jabber users - those who use
jabber as a back channel to hold a side-conversation about the ongoing
conversation. 
Having a jabber scribe recording the equivalent of minutes will
interfere with the side conversations; having the side conversations
will interfere with the main conversation.
We could try to train people to take their side conversations into
side rooms, but it would probably be much easier to train the actual
scribes to record their "minutes" in a side room.
I suggest getting a minute-taker volunteer to write their minutes into
a session-specific minutes side-room.
(I am not sure how well various xmpp tools handle such a capability)

dbh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Randall Gellens
> Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 3:05 PM
> To: Aaron Stone; Paul Hoffman
> Cc: [email-masked]
> participation: people not at the meeting, and people in 
> another meeting room who want to follow the discussion and 
> participate when possible.  The former can be expected to 
> listen to the audio stream, but the latter are greatly helped 
> by real-time Jabber notes/minutes. 
> (People who are not at the meeting but are trying to follow 
> two meetings would fall into the first group for one meeting 
> and the second group for the other meeting.)
> 
> Having someone capture into Jabber he essence of what is 
> being said, even without attribution or good grammar, is a 
> great help, but of course it can be hard to find volunteers.  
> Two or three people can split the job, so one can go to the 
> mike when others take over, and the minute-taker could take 
> minutes into the Jabber room.
> 
> Having someone who just types the speaker's name and where 
> the group is on the agenda, plus channels remote comments, is 
> very helpful for the first group of remote participants but 
> no so much for the second group (still better than nothing).
> 
> --
> Randall Gellens
> -------------- Randomly selected tag: --------------- We 
> adore chaos because we love to produce order.
>                                   --M. C. Escher

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:16:34 -0400

In practice, I haven't seen much difficulty from having side 
conversations get mixed into the jabber scribing and getting things 
channeled. Asking people to prefix their comments with "Channel" or 
something similar when they want their comments channeled seems to help 
with that respect.

     Tony

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:21:08 -0700

At 4:16 PM -0400 8/12/10, Tony Hansen wrote:

> something similar when they want their comments channeled seems to 
> help with that respect.

I agree -- I haven't noticed problems with everything being mixed together.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
        (Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas.  Which one asked for the clean glass?"

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:32:19 -0500

I'm not telling you guys that I have mad jabbering skills (yeah, that would 
impress the NomCom), but I HAVE gotten pushback on capturing discussion at 
line rate in a jabber room, both as jabber scribe for IETF working groups 
and as IESG scribe for informal telechats, IETF-week meetings, etc.

I know that when RAI working groups had the transcriptionist hooked to 
jabber, they ended up with with two jabber rooms (one for the line-rate 
capture, the other for side conversations), just as David intuited.

Spencer

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:12:35 -0700

At 9:32 PM -0500 8/12/10, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

>  I'm not telling you guys that I have mad jabbering skills (yeah, 
> that would impress the NomCom), but I HAVE gotten pushback on 
> capturing discussion at line rate in a jabber room, both as jabber 
> scribe for IETF working groups and as IESG scribe for informal 
> telechats, IETF-week meetings, etc.

You got pushback for capturing more of the discussion?  Wow.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
mokita (moe-KEE-tah; New Guinean; noun): truth everybody knows but
nobody speaks.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:27:43 -0500

>>  I'm not telling you guys that I have mad jabbering skills (yeah, that 
>> would impress the NomCom), but I HAVE gotten pushback on capturing 
>> discussion at line rate in a jabber room, both as jabber scribe for IETF 
>> working groups and as IESG scribe for informal telechats, IETF-week 
>> meetings, etc.
>

Well, in the IESG context, the issue was that the ADs couldn't spot side 
questions because they scrolled off the jabber window too quickly.

the transcriptionist issue was actually worse, because (1) she types faster 
than I do, and (2) she seems to high carriage return more often than I do, 
too. so it was unlikely that anyone would spot questions from remote 
listeners.

So it's not like people were confused about what was happening...

Spencer

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:13:04 -0400

--On Friday, August 13, 2010 12:27:43 AM -0500 Spencer Dawkins 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> discussion at line rate in a jabber room, both as jabber scribe for
>>> IETF  working groups and as IESG scribe for informal telechats,
>>> IETF-week  meetings, etc.
>>

Yes; mixing line-rate transcription, questions from remote participants, 
and side discussion in the same room can become very confusing.  However, 
in the case of WG meetings, I think we want the side discussion to be "on 
the record" both in the sense of being considered IETF Contributions and in 
being available to participants after the fact, whether or not they were 
active in the side discussion at the time.  So, just telling people to take 
discussions into a separate room is not sufficient; at a minimum, I'd think 
we would want to have such rooms set up in advance and logged, just as the 
main rooms are.  And in fact, perhaps it's the transcription that should be 
moved into a (logged) side room.

-- Jeff

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:29:41 -0700

At 7:13 PM -0400 8/13/10, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:

>  Yes; mixing line-rate transcription, questions from remote 
> participants, and side discussion in the same room can become very 
> confusing.  However, in the case of WG meetings, I think we want 
> the side discussion to be "on the record" both in the sense of 
> being considered IETF Contributions and in being available to 
> participants after the fact, whether or not they were active in the 
> side discussion at the time.

It seems to me that the disadvantage of having details of the current 
discussion mixed into the same Jabber room as side conversations and 
requests for channeling is that it might be confusing, but the 
disadvantage of not having the details of the current discussion at 
all is that it prevents a class of remote participation.  So, my view 
is that it's better to have the conversation details than not.  (And, 
sure, having separate Jabber rooms might be better, or might a 
different set of problems.)

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
In my country, we believe (and rightly so) that mindless superstition
and meaningless ritual are what separate us from the animals.
                                            --'Latka Gravis' on _Taxi_

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:27:02 -0500

I am (mis?) remembering that, at a minimum, SIP and SIPPING were groups that 
were running parallel jabber rooms (normal and scribe). If anyone cares 
about details, it would be worth asking the chairs

- did Spencer dream this? and, if not,

- what worked and didn't work about that?

SIP chairs when the group closed: Dean Willis and Keith Drage.

SIPPING chairs when the group closed: Mary Barnes and Gonzalo Camarillo

Since we have had running code on this...

Spencer

>> the record" both in the sense of being considered IETF Contributions and 
>> in being available to participants after the fact, whether or not they 
>> were active in the side discussion at the time.
>
> disadvantage of not having the details of the current discussion at all is 
> that it prevents a class of remote participation.  So, my view is that 
> it's better to have the conversation details than not.  (And, sure, having 
> separate Jabber rooms might be better, or might a different set of 
> problems.)
>
> -- 
> Randall Gellens

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:28:03 +0200

I'm not aware of any such procedures concerning Jabber in SIP.

Keith 

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Spencer Dawkins
> Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 9:27 PM
> To: Jeffrey Hutzelman; Tony Hansen; Randall Gellens
> Cc: [email-masked]
> I am (mis?) remembering that, at a minimum, SIP and SIPPING 
> were groups that were running parallel jabber rooms (normal 
> and scribe). If anyone cares about details, it would be worth 
> asking the chairs
> 
> >> confusing.  However, in the case of WG meetings, I think 
> we want the 
> >> side discussion to be "on the record" both in the sense of being 
> >> considered IETF Contributions and in being available to 
> participants 
> >> after the fact, whether or not they were active in the 
> > -------------- Randomly selected tag: --------------- In my 
> country, 
> > we believe (and rightly so) that mindless superstition and 
> meaningless 
> > ritual are what separate us from the animals.
> >                                            --'Latka Gravis' 
> on _Taxi_
> 
>

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:40:39 -0500

I think Spencer is talking about IETF 68, during which we had Renée 
transcribe both the SIP and SIPPING meetings into the 
"[email-masked]" and "[email-masked]" Jabber 
rooms, respectively:

http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/sipscribe/2007-03-20.html
http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/sipscribe/2007-03-21.html
http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/sippingscribe/2007-03-23.html

/a