Subject: Meeting room layout experiment at IETF 92 in Dallas

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>, Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 08:41:26 -0500

Lars Eggert, IRTF Chair, has been talking with the research group chairs 
about ways to make their meetings more effective, and one topic that 
came up, is that when some of the research groups meet in one of the 
smaller "round table" conference rooms, they tend to have discussions, 
and when they meet in one of the IETF working group meeting rooms, they 
tend to have presentations with a few people asking questions, and 
almost no discussion. At least a couple of the research group chairs 
have asked to meet in "round table configurations".

The IESG would like to find out whether there are IETF working groups 
that would like to experiment with similar room configurations during 
IETF 92 in Dallas.

We recognize that the constraints on IETF working groups aren't the same 
as for IRTF research groups. BCP 25, "IETF Working Group Guidelines and 
Procedures", says "participation is open to all", so we would need to 
ensure that working group participants aren't excluded simply because 
room size, and that remote participants are supported at least as well 
as today. That likely translates into a meeting room about the size 
working groups typically usually use today, but with a large conference 
table surrounded by chairs, plus additional rows of chairs around it to 
accommodate everyone, with additional microphones around the table, and 
mics elsewhere in the room available to everyone, etc. (The ISOC 
Advisory Council meetings that meet on the Friday of IETF week use a 
similar setup, if you have ever attended one of their meetings.)

But before we ask folks who are skilled in the art to figure out (for 
instance) what Meetecho could do for remote participants in a room 
configuration like this, we want to ask working group chairs if you 
would like to participate in an experiment with your working group(s), 
at IETF 92 in Dallas.

Pete & Spencer, for the IESG

---

From: Bill Cerveny <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:52:54 -0400

Clarifying question ... how large of a table or round table setup are we
talking about (how many seats or chairs)? My initial, perhaps obvious,
impression is that if the number of seats at a round table setup is
greater than the number of people who typically speak at a meeting with
the "old" format, it could be a win. It'd be an even bigger win if
everyone in a smaller working group meeting could be seated at the round
table. However, I'm not sure if there'd be a difference in participation
if the number of seats at the round table is less than the number who
typically participate.

Thanks,

Bill Cerveny

---

From: Yaron Sheffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:55:50 +0300

Hi Pete,

Over the last few years, I have mostly participated remotely, so my 
interest is somewhat academic. Having said that, IMHO this is not a good 
idea, at least for my WG.

Like most working groups, we have the active participants and the 
tourists. A central table can easily accommodate the regular 
participants but the current proposal ("additional rows of chairs around 
[the table] to accommodate everyone") will have most of the non-regulars 
in the back of the room, effectively excluded from the discussion.

I think it is our job to encourage the non-regulars to participate, and 
this idea would run counter to that.

Thanks,
	Yaron

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 11:59:31 -0500

> if the number of seats at the round table is less than the number who

I think we definitely envisioned that the table would be large enough to 
hold at a minimum the number of folks that normally speak, and hopefully 
more. If I had to divine logistics, I'd guess that when you put in your 
meeting request, you'd say that you wanted the round (well, really an 
open square in all likelihood) table format, and indicate how many you 
want at the table and how many additional seats you'd want.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:20:53 -0500

On 9/22/14 11:55 AM, Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> interest is somewhat academic. Having said that, IMHO this is not a 
> good idea, at least for my WG.
>
> participants but the current proposal ("additional rows of chairs 
> around [the table] to accommodate everyone") will have most of the 
> non-regulars in the back of the room, effectively excluded from the 
> discussion.

For some WG's, we'll be able to get everyone around the table. For 
others, perhaps set up like the ISOC AC meetings, you'll have three 
sides of the table have just a few rows each of chairs set up behind 
those sitting at the table, so it's not like the "back of the room" is 
all that far back. And you'll note that below we mentioned "mics 
elsewhere in the room available to everyone"; the expectation is that 
anyone in the room could get up to a mic and speak. I don't think that's 
"effectively excluded". But I don't want to dismiss your point: I agree 
that it does change the dynamic, and folks at the table (and perhaps the 
immediate row behind) are much more likely to feel comfortable 
participating than folks further back. That said:

> I think it is our job to encourage the non-regulars to participate, 
> and this idea would run counter to that.

While I think it is *a* job of the chair to encourage non-regulars to 
participate, it's certainly not the *primary* job. Getting productive 
work done is. Making it seem more open to non-regulars *at the expense 
of* productivity is probably not a great idea either. The reason for 
this experiment is because we've heard that there are WGs where it would 
help productivity to move away from the lecture/Q&A style format to a 
more round-table discussion format. I've certainly chaired WGs where we 
could get everyone (participants and just observers) around a single 
table, and others that could be accommodated with just a couple of rows 
of additional seating, and could have benefited tremendously from 
getting rid of the "presentation format". Perhaps there are WGs where 
this doesn't make sense at all. But this is why we expect this to be the 
choice of the chair and the WG. The question is whether anyone of you 
would like to give it a shot.

pr

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:35:49 -0800

On 9/22/14 9:20 AM, Pete Resnick wrote:
> The question is whether anyone of you would like to give it a shot.

I think we're probably interested.  I think it's a good idea.  Getting
back to the productivity question, I tend to think that presentations
are often (but not always) a complete waste of valuable meeting time and
that we need to be better about finding ways to facilitate discussion.
It also seems to me that a more (for the lack of a better word)
egalitarian room layout might help working group participants who
don't have the editor token for a document feel more directly involved.
I can also see where thing could become chaotic in those situations
where there's strong disagreement and not a lot of self-restraint.
Worth a shot in any event, and I do tend to think that it could lead to
a more productive use of meeting time.

Melinda

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:38:25 -0400

Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>, wrote:
    > translates into a meeting room about the size working groups typically
    > usually use today, but with a large conference table surrounded by
    > chairs,

Do you mean a single table, or a square of tables, with an empty space in the
middle?

Thank you for doing this experiment.
(my WG is not meeting, so it's moot point)

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: "Morteza Ansari (moransar)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:45:11 +0000

+1  I totally agree with what Melinda said maybe with the exception of the
last bit. Not sure how room arrangement would make things more chaotic in
case of strong disagreement.

Cheers,
Morteza

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:43:23 -0500

I think it depends upon the size of the WG.  I personally think this could
be quite effective for WGs with 30 or less participants (including
tourists).  I think a horseshoe layout can work for a group that size.
Although I personally like the idea of having a horseshoe for 12-18 and
having people, that are there just to have a table to put their computer to
type or read email, sit in classroom style seating behind the horseshoe.

Mary.

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Yaron Sheffer <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> tourists. A central table can easily accommodate the regular participants
> but the current proposal ("additional rows of chairs around [the table] to
> accommodate everyone") will have most of the non-regulars in the back of
> the room, effectively excluded from the discussion.
>

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:28:57 -0500

On 9/22/14 12:38 PM, Michael Richardson wrote:
> Pete Resnick<[email-masked]>, wrote:

I expect whether it's a single table or a square of tables, with or 
without an empty space in the middle, will depend on the size requested.

pr

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:29:09 -0500

> For some WG's, we'll be able to get everyone around the table. For
others, perhaps set up like the ISOC AC meetings, you'll have three sides
of the table have just a few rows each of chairs set up behind those
sitting at the table, so it's not like the "back of the room" is all that
far back. And you'll note that below we mentioned "mics elsewhere in the
room available to everyone"; the expectation is that anyone in the room
could get up to a mic and speak. I don't think that's "effectively
excluded". But I don't want to dismiss your point: I agree that it does
change the dynamic, and folks at the table (and perhaps the immediate row
behind) are much more likely to feel comfortable participating than folks
> While I think it is *a* job of the chair to encourage non-regulars to
participate, it's certainly not the *primary* job. Getting productive work
done is. Making it seem more open to non-regulars *at the expense of*
productivity is probably not a great idea either. The reason for this
experiment is because we've heard that there are WGs where it would help
productivity to move away from the lecture/Q&A style format to a more
round-table discussion format. I've certainly chaired WGs where we could
get everyone (participants and just observers) around a single table, and
others that could be accommodated with just a couple of rows of additional
seating, and could have benefited tremendously from getting rid of the
"presentation format". Perhaps there are WGs where this doesn't make sense
at all. But this is why we expect this to be the choice of the chair and
the WG. The question is whether anyone of you would like to give it a shot.

For what it's worth, I'm sure there are working groups this experimental
format would not work for, at all. The question is whether it would work
for some WGs.

Amusingly, we've had several conversations within the IESG where one AD
said, "obviously, you couldn't do this in WG X", and another AD said "
actually, this is the format they use for interims".

After a couple of rounds of that, we decided to ask the chairs :-)

Spencer

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 08:48:28 +1200

> without an empty space in the middle, will depend on the size requested.

I think it depends tremendously on the style of the WG and whether it
is one that has a relatively small, intense group of active contributors
vs one that has a wide range of less active contributors. In the first
case, it's fine and would increase effectiveness, and in the second
case it would create a harmful first class/second class split among the
contributors, since the people not sitting at the main table would
find it much harder to break into the conversation. It would also
confuse and complicate the microphone discipline, which we need for
remote participants.

And like it or not, everybody needs to see the screen. Whatever your
view on the merits of Powerpoint, there is always a need to see
the screen.

BTW, there was an experiment in 2005, stimulated by Alex Zinin, in
using a "herring bone" or semi-circular setup, so that the setting
was more intimate even with 100 or more people in the room. It didn't
catch on but I thought it was an interesting idea. It might be worth
another try.

   Brian

---

From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:53:40 +0000

CC'ing the IRSG

On 2014-9-22, at 19:11, Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Lars Eggert, IRTF Chair, has been talking with the research group chairs about ways to make their meetings more effective, and one topic that came up, is that when some of the research groups meet in one of the smaller "round table" conference rooms, they tend to have discussions, and when they meet in one of the IETF working group meeting rooms, they tend to have presentations with a few people asking questions, and almost no discussion. At least a couple of the research group chairs have asked to meet in "round table configurations".
> 
> The IESG would like to find out whether there are IETF working groups that would like to experiment with similar room configurations during IETF 92 in Dallas.
> 
> We recognize that the constraints on IETF working groups aren't the same as for IRTF research groups. BCP 25, "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", says "participation is open to all", so we would need to ensure that working group participants aren't excluded simply because room size, and that remote participants are supported at least as well as today. That likely translates into a meeting room about the size working groups typically usually use today, but with a large conference table surrounded by chairs, plus additional rows of chairs around it to accommodate everyone, with additional microphones around the table, and mics elsewhere in the room available to everyone, etc. (The ISOC Advisory Council meetings that meet on the Friday of IETF week use a similar setup, if you have ever attended one of their meetings.)
> 
> But before we ask folks who are skilled in the art to figure out (for instance) what Meetecho could do for remote participants in a room configuration like this, we want to ask working group chairs if you would like to participate in an experiment with your working group(s), at IETF 92 in Dallas.
>