Subject: draft-secretaries-good-practices

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 17:10:39 +0200

I just read through the draft and it provides useful advice.

Three questions:

a) Since many of the actions relate to the actual face-to-face meetings
I was wondering whether this imposes requirements on the selection of
the secretary itself. Having a secretary that is not attending the f2f
meetings may not seem to be optimal.

2) Is there anything to say about the number of secretaries per working
group? For example, LISP has 2 secretaries in addition to the 3 working
group chairs. Is that a bit too much?

3) Would it be good to also talk about (virtual) interim meetings,
interop events, and design team meetings? Finding a suitable dates and
organizing the meeting can be quite time consuming.

Ciao
Hannes

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 08:28:50 -0700

Hi Hannes,
>meetings may not seem to be optimal.

There is a significant amount of work that can be done in between 
meetings.  I would suggest balancing that against the ability to 
attend face to face meetings.

>group chairs. Is that a bit too much?

You mean like "it is not a well-thought decision"? :-)  Having five 
persons in working group roles begs the question of who is left in 
the working group to do the reviews.  In my opinion having two 
secretaries is too much.

>organizing the meeting can be quite time consuming.

No.  There is a WG Chairs Wiki to discuss about the finer details of the work.

It is up to the WG Chair to see how to make good use of the help 
provided by a secretary.  The WG Chair might also wish to consider 
what incentives he/she will provide for the secretary to do the time 
consuming work for free.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Martin Vigoureux <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 18:14:52 +0200

Hannes,

thanks for taking the time to read the document.

> meetings may not seem to be optimal.

First, whether is does or not impose requirements is outside the scope 
of the document.
Now, regarding your question specifically, which has two dimensions:
I do not think you need to attend to do the job/do a good job. The 
hardest piece would be to do what is described in 3.1.2. WG Session 
Phase, but all the rest is done electronically, and that echoes what SM 
said: a lot happens between meetings
As for the selection, in the absence of a process and criteria, it is 
really up to the chairs to decide whether or not having physically met 
someone is a necessary condition for selecting that person as a secretary.

> group chairs. Is that a bit too much?

Discussing the adequate number of secretaries per WG is outside the 
scope of the document. This in my view relates to a selection process 
(which does not exist for WG secretaries) and that we have no intent to 
define in that document.
> organizing the meeting can be quite time consuming.

That is true. We have a short sentence about interim meetings. But that 
might not be enough.
On the other hand and more generally, there are a number of WG related 
events that we did not discuss, mainly because they are rare ones.
The document is more about the typical life of a WG Secretary than about 
the full life of a WG.
Having a sentence, saying that elements were not covered and why, might 
nevertheless be valuable, so I'll try to work along that line.

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 20:32:37 -0400

Well, in the LISP case they both offered, and we decided that we would 
get better support if we accepted both of them.  And it would give two 
people more exposure to the system and better leadership development. 
One of them is now a WG co-chair, and we appointed a new willing second 
secretary.  The secretary count is NOT the problem in getting things 
done in the WG.  Other things are.

Yours,
Joel

On 5/20/14, 11:28 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
>...
> persons in working group roles begs the question of who is left in the
> working group to do the reviews.  In my opinion having two secretaries
> is too much.
...

---

From: Terry Manderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 17:41:04 -0700

I concur with Joel,

The 3 chairs in LISP is a temporary measure to assist as a handover
technique to a new co-chair who came to the chairing role via the
secretary route. In fact, that is exactly how I learnt the ropes of the
chair role - via the secretary role in the first instance.

If there are insufficient bodies or engagement in the WG to review
documents, I think that speaks louder about the topic the WG is tasked
with than the number of secretaries, or co-chairs, or ... etc

Cheers
Terry

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 23:26:48 +0200

I was just wondering whether the document could say anything about the
number of secretaries. I understand the argument to introduce more
people to the process. Of course, more people require more coordination
(which should not be underestimated). So, there might be a sweet spot
somewhere.

Ciao
Hannes

PS: If there is of interest to make the wider IETF community aware of
the process then we should make the WG chair training sessions held
during the IETF week also available to non-WG chairs. To my knowledge
only the WG chairs get invited to that education session (hopefully also
the secretaries?!).

---

From: Martin Vigoureux <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 11:45:39 +0200

Hannes,

in my view, it shouldn't be specific on that point as this would the 
beginnings of the definition of a selection process.
We already say that it is up to the Chairs to decide and also that for 
some WGs the function is not necessary, so that's 0, and for some it is, 
so that's 1 or more.

-m

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 08:35:02 -0400

> only the WG chairs get invited to that education session (hopefully also

I would like to suggest that the tools training session be given version
numbers,  such that people would realize that there is new material there.
Maybe the first hour is "intro" and the second hour is "new things in version
5".   Included in that would be explanation of the various processes that are
being implemented.    Some of the new features also warant plenary time.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
IETF ROLL WG co-chair.    http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/roll/charter/