Subject: Notes of IETF 96 WG Chairs Forum

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 12:01:37 +0200

Hi all,

See below the notes of yesterday's WG Chairs Forum. It is also attached
as pdf and uploaded to the IETF wki:

https://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/wiki/IETF96

Whatever you find easier :-)

Kind regards,
Mirjam Kuehne
==============

IETF 96 - WG Chairs Lunch

around 50 people in the room

Agenda:
1. Ombudsteam Processes Update
2. Revisiting the IETF Newcomer Experience
(next steps in EDU and Mentoring and beyond) 3. New IETF website update
and feedback
4. Techniques for keeping work moving in a WG 5. Open Forum - Advice and
Feedback
(ask your fellow WG chairs questions, provide feedback)

——

1. Ombudsteam Processes Update (Pete Resnick)
slides: http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/attachment/wiki/IETF96/96-
Ombudsteam.pptx?format=raw

Pete Resnick introduced the Ombudsteam and talked about cultural
assumptions and the responsibility of WG chairs to make everyone feel
welcome and heard.

Daniel Kahn Gillmore said that we need to work to make the IETF a more
representative place. He was also wondering if there is also advice and
guidance when we as a WG chair make mistakes ourselves. It may be useful
to have a safe way to point something like this out. He also mentioned
that face-to-face time is essential to get work done, but it is
expensive and that remote participation needs to be made easier.

Bernand Aboba talked about the huge efforts made in the area of remote
participation efforts and that they are increasingly successful. At this
meeting hundreds of people participated remotely. Bernard himself has
been participating remotely over the last years and it’s working well.

Allison Mankin said that there are many things WGs can do to encourage
the right things and to be inclusive (for instance by choosing editors
who haven’t done this before etc.)

Pete said that the ombudsteam is personally happy to talk about tricky
issues with WG chairs. He added that his personal reaction would always
be to admit your mistake and recognise it and be honest about it without
being defensive.

Barry Leiba said that one thing WG chairs can do to be more inclusive is
to appoint people as document editors. Often the authors also become
editors. He suggested to identify additional editors to give more people
the opportunity to contribute.

Pete added that this is related to the unconscious bias we all make: We
tend to pick our friends or people we know rather than finding a new person.

Michael Richardson thought that we pick friends and acquaintances,
because we can twist their arms. Because there are not enough
volunteers. He also asked for some more details about what the
ombudsteam actually does - maybe in contrast to other ombudspersons.

Pete explained that traditionally ombudspeople act as a go-between
between leadership and members. This is not how the role is defined in
the IETF. It’s more about dealing with reports of harassment and
different kinds of bad interactions. The team gives confidential advice
and council if people have issues. They can possibly investigate and
help resolve serious issues.

Linda Dunbar said that she believed WG chairs selecting designated
people as editors is a convenient way to discriminate people who are new
or have a different opinion. In order to create a fair opportunity for
everybody, she suggested to involve those people more.

Collin Jennings noted that only on very few occasions he saw WG chairs
asking for volunteers. But each time he has seen it, he was very
surprised by who and how many people actually volunteered.

Pete added that even when asked it that way, you might not get all
people who might actually volunteer. He suggested to approach people who
you see a lot, but maybe aren’t interacting as much as others, and ask
them directly to do a favour to you - this might work better for various
cultures and people.

Rick Taylor said that there are some incredibly smart people, who are
painfully shy. We also need to reach out to these people.
Sue Hares said she is really interested in having remote participation
by lots of people in her WG. She also said that she would like to talk
some more about increasing remote participation.

Karen responded that there are a lot of activities ongoing in that area
right now. But maybe this could be a good topic for the next WG chairs
session.

2. New IETF website update and feedback (Greg Wood)
slides:
http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/attachment/wiki/IETF96/96-ietf-website-
revamp.pdf.zip?format=raw

Alia said it looks nice :-)

3. Revisiting the IETF Newcomer Experience (Karen O’Donoghue)
(next steps in EDU and Mentoring and beyond)
slides:
http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/attachment/wiki/IETF96/96-WG-Chairs-
Discussion.pptx?format=raw

The Edu Team is looking for input from WG chairs on how to better reach
out to new communities, such as the open source community, researchers etc.

Yaron Sheffer talked about priorities in the area of outreach.
Experience shows that we don’t get many people from the research
community and if we do they don’t usually stay very long. He was
wondering how much efforts we want to spend to get students to the IETF
meeting. He also said that we might be missing some countries. He
personally comes from Israel and there aren’t many people from Israel at
the IETF.

Karen responded that getting researchers to the IETF is indeed
challenging. Maybe we also need to think about how we can be more
efficient so that researchers don’t time out. But maybe we’re also not
looking for long-term attendance by researchers, but instead on a
short-term project/problem-solving basis?

Alia Atlas added that outreach is increasing, but that we should also
encourage low- volume participation. She believes it should be easier to
participate for people to just work on a few number of things. We
shouldn’t have a large learning curve and the expectation of full-time
involvement. She also mentioned the idea of remote hubs to pull people
together from time to time in areas where there are people who are
interested in IETF work. The key-point is that we need to keep
experimenting and try new things.

Tim Chown commented that one of the problems is that an RFC doesn’t
count as academic publication. Whether we can fix that, is a different
questions. We could produce material that explains what the IETF is
about and how it can be relevant to your research. How to engage with
the IETF as a researchers. Maybe do presentations on hot topics at the IETF.

Kenny (?) responded that it is not true that students don’t get credit
for work in the IETF. He said it depends on country and environment and
mentioned an example in the UK.

Nalini said that a lot of work is already done by people in Latin
America and India. We shouldn’t duplicate efforts, but coordinate them
better.

Mat Ford mentioned the Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW) that
took place for the first time in conjunction with this IETF meeting (on
Saturday prior to IETF 96). Peer-reviewed academic papers were being
presented. This will be organised once a year from now on.

Tim Chown agreed that this is a fantastic initiative and suggested to
produce a generic slide deck that teachers and professors can grab from
the web site and present it to their students.
Karen said that on the other hand some of the WGs and RGs met in
conjunction with other external events.

Michael asked (the Ombudsteam) how one can deal with people who are very
vocal, loud and often wrong. They’ve got passed the newcomers phase and
it’s a big struggle to contain the enthusiasm from people who don’t get
where we are going.

Robert Sparks noted that at this venue there are a lot of open break-out
places and people are taking strong advantage of that. He asked WG
chairs to consider to make their WG session shorter or don’t meet at all
and to leave time to take advantage of working sessions outside the
official WG slot.

Barry Leiba asked the WG chairs to re-evaluate the conflict list,
lengths of the time needed and size of room needed each time (rather
than just copying the information provided last time).

Karen agreed and added that a number of sessions had been canceled. She
was wondering if people schedule sessions just in case and then cancel
them later?

Alia urged people to think about what discussions people don’t want to
have and actually make them happen. She suggested to have a conversation
about what issues are actually blocking things. Maybe experiment with
other formats: Pick issues and break into smaller groups and then report
back to each other at the end.

Collin mentioned some reasons why people cancel WG session: some drafts
and changes to existing drafts were not delivered even though they were
promised.

Karen suggested to keep the work moving throughout the year.
Barry added that we have a general draft submission deadline, but we can
also set our own deadlines.

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2016 13:59:45 +0000

Thanks for such detailed notes.  I wanted to be there, but a side-meeting took over....  (BTW, it's Cullen not Collin)