Subject: Minutes of IETF 101 WG Chairs Lunch Session

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2018 14:18:49 +0200

Hi all,

Please see below the draft notes from the IETF 101 WG chairs session.
Let me know if there is anything wrong or missing.

Kind regards,
Mirjam Kühne
=============

IETF 101, London, UK
Wednesday, 21 March 2018
WG Chairs Lunch Session

Link to agenda slides:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-edu-sessc-
agenda-00

1. Alexa Morris and Stephanie McCammon, IETF Secretariat
Managing conflicts and how to make the IETF better for everyone
Link to slides:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-edu-sessc-
secretariat-managing-conflicts-00

The questions of first, second an third priority for WG slots has been
discussed by the IESG. They are considering to only have first and
second priority.

Discussion:

Kent Watson suggested to take the attendance numbers for a particular
session and the IETF meeting as a whole into account, because some
IETF meetings have higher attendance numbers than others.

Carsten Bormann said it would be useful to have a file on github so WG
chairs can send the session request from there. JSON would also work.

Andy Malis suggested to open the scheduling tools before all the BoFs
are known or to finalise the lists of BoFs earlier. That would make it
easier to detect potential scheduling conflicts.

Al Morton added that it would be helpful if the IESG could send a mail
to all session chairs once the BoFs are approved and scheduled.

Jonathan Lennox (?) asked to send more reminders to the chairs and at
the same time send the list of scheduled BoFs. He also noted that the
bluesheets have actual start and end times and that it would be
helpful to inform chairs about how long the chair actually lasted.

Barry Leiba wondered what the purpose of the four levels are that were
proposed on the slides Stephanie and Alexa showed. He further
explained the three levels of priority and why they are important to
WG chairs. He added that it would be useful to find out early on if
another WG thinks that it cannot be in conflict with his WG.

Someone else asked not to leave decisions to the last minute, because
this make travel arrangements more difficult.

David Black suggested WG chairs could list conflicts with BoF
candidates (even before they are approved).

Stephanie clarifies how BoFs are registered in the datatracker in the
“special request” field.
(Stephanie, do you want to add something here?)

Karen agrees that all those special requests should actually be in the
special requests field

Juan Carlos Zuniga said that a little more dynamic would be helpful:
often the chairs already know beforehand what the group would conflict
with. Alternatively adding one more cycle could be useful before the
actual publication of the agenda.

David Waltermire thanked the secretariat for all their work to deal
with this mess (Applause!) and asked if there is anything the WG
chairs can help with?

Stephanie responded that the special request field really helps and
urges WG chairs to also specify if only parts of the meeting should
not conflict for instance.

Barry Leiba suggested the IESG could help by moving the deadlines:
three weeks before the BoF call; only then issue the BoF call. And
then use the remaining time to discuss potential conflicts.
(Stephanie, I am not sure what Barry meant here).

- --

2. Stephanie McCammon, IETF Secretariat

Stephanie went through some of the things people usually asks her:

Q: Can we meet at a particular day of the meeting week?
If people clearly specify if there is a specific day or a range of
days they want to meet, the secretariat will not ignore that request.

Q: Where are my bluesheet?
The bluesheets are usually on the clipboard on the desk or in the
folder that is also on the desk in the meeting room

Q: What is the red button on the desk for?
It unmutes the Meetecho queue.

Q: What to do in case of A/V issues?
 Please send a ticket to [email-masked] (stands for “meeting trouble
desk”) or just grab Stephanie when she is in the room. It’s usually
easy to figure out before the meeting starts.

Q: Where are the clickers to change the slides?
The clickers are in every room on the desk in front. They usually
work, but if they don’t please find Stephanie.

Someone suggested to send short reminders about this to all WG chairs
before the meeting.
Stephanie said that the Secretariat is considering to put together a
short video explaining all this.

Pete Resnick mentioned that none of this is in the current WG chairs
meeting info on the website. He was also wondering what happened to
the experiment about the different room set up.

Stephanie said she will find out.

Karen said that we (the Edu Team together with the WG chairs) really
need to take a look at all the WG chairs training material and
onboarding for new WG chairs.

Someone mentioned that he had never heard anything about WG chairs
training material.

Dave Thaler had an advice for people that have problems with the
projector: he suggested to lower your screen resolution if there are
projection issues.

- --

3. Charles Eckel:
The IETF Hackathon and it’s relation to progressing work in the IETF
Link to slides:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-edu-sessc-
hackathon-00

Someone was wondering if those hackathon participants who wen’t
staying for the IETF meeting, were local. Charles responded that this
is indeed predominantly the case.

Great to see that quite a number of hackathon projects were presented
during WG or RG sessions during the week.

Linda Dunbar suggested to organise an intro to TCP/IP and the IETF for
highschool kids (maybe remotely).

Thomas Watteyne said that he used the code lounge quite a bit and
likes the idea. He suggested to add some info to the code lounge wiki
saying who is responsible for what project.

Charles asked to let him know if there is anything else they could do
in the hackathon.

David Black praised the hackathon team! “Very well done. Keep it up!”

——

4. Open Mic Session

Karen suggested to set up a design team to review material that is
currently available for WG chairs and look at how to improve it (for
new WG chairs, but also ongoing material for more experienced WG chairs)

Uma Mahesh acknowledged the efforts John Scudder did with the doc on
how to present at WG session. It was very useful and it would be good
to expand it so that more WGs can make use of it.

Tim Chown: +1

Dave Thaler: +1. He agreed that if we can come up with a more generic
version, it would be even more useful. But he wondered where we would
put such a document? What would be the best way to make presenters
aware of it?

Charles Eckel added that a template could be a good help.

John Scudder clarified that in his WG it goes in the call for topics.

Someone suggested to send a link to the newcomers tutorial, some of
the things are explained in there.

Mirjam added that the Edu Team also has a document that we send to
tutorial presenters.

David Waltermire and Jeff Haas volunteered to be in the design team
described above. Karen will send a mail to the WG chairs list to ask
for more volunteers.

---

From: Bron Gondwana <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2018 23:54:08 +1000

On Fri, 6 Apr 2018, at 22:18, Mirjam Kuehne wrote:
> Someone else asked not to leave decisions to the last minute, because> this make travel arrangements more difficult.

This was me.  I had someone interested in one of my sessions who wanted
to do the hackathon and the session, but wouldn't hang around for the
rest of the week if it wasn't necessary, so knowing which day they could
go home helped decide flight and hotel bookings.
--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, FastMail Pty Ltd
  [email-masked]

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2018 09:05:57 -0700

I think it’s a pretty general case.

Sent using a machine that autocorrects in interesting ways...

> On Apr 7, 2018, at 6:54 AM, Bron Gondwana <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> This was me.  I had someone interested in one of my sessions who wanted to do the hackathon and the session, but wouldn't hang around for the rest of the week if it wasn't necessary, so knowing which day they could go home helped decide flight and hotel bookings.
> 
> --

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:27:56 -0400

> (Stephanie, I am not sure what Barry meant here).

I've brought it to the IESG, and they understand and agree, so I
think/hope we'll see a schedule change coming up.

What I said was this:
- Currently, the BoF deadline is immediately before the IESG/IAB BoF
coordination call.  That means that if people submit their requests at
the last minute, which most do, the ADs have no time to preview BoF
requests and figure out if anyone needs help, and there is no
opportunity for feedback and revision of the request before an
approve/deny decision is made.
- If we move the deadline three weeks earlier, there's still plenty of
time to get requests made between IETF meetings, but there are now
three weeks for review, feedback, and revision.
- ADs should commit to reviewing BoF requests in the first week after
the deadline -- ideally within the first few days -- and to giving
feedback, requesting an IAB shepherd when needed, etc.

I think this will give us a better chance of having good BoF requests
and of knowing when BoFs are really not ready.

Barry

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:11:12 -0700

I would say something similar for posting internet drafts. My working group, and I think many, want list discussion of drafts in part to see what merits agenda time. We have several folks who post minutes before the deadline, which means that if we applied that rule as we’d like to, we would be in a position to ask for a slot every other meeting. In addition, the deadline for filing working group agendas is the same day as the draft deadline. I’d far rather have the draft deadline a couple of weeks earlier so that we can ask people to read and comment on the drafts while the agenda is being developed.

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:26:10 -0500

So, we've been doing effectively what Fred suggests with the DISPATCH WG
since 2009 - i.e., we have earlier deadlines per our wiki:
https://trac.ietf.org/trac/dispatch/wiki

They were even earlier initially and we got a lot of pushback and even now
some folks aren't sure they're necessary.

We have been very flexible lately in giving agenda time to items that don't
meet those deadlines as time allows, but we had a very tight schedule last
time based on late requests.

I personally would be in favor of moving up the deadlines to allow time for
people to actually read drafts.  I can't tell you how many times people
have gotten up to the microphone and the first thing they say is: "I
haven't read your draft, but I think ...."

Regards,
Mary.

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 5:11 PM, Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> I would say something similar for posting internet drafts. My working
> group, and I think many, want list discussion of drafts in part to see what
> merits agenda time. We have several folks who post minutes before the
> deadline, which means that if we applied that rule as we’d like to, we
> would be in a position to ask for a slot every other meeting. In addition,
> the deadline for filing working group agendas is the same day as the draft
> deadline. I’d far rather have the draft deadline a couple of weeks earlier
> so that we can ask people to read and comment on the drafts while the
> agenda is being developed.
>

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 02:25:47 -0400

Hmm.  Some of the deadlines were moved closer to the IETF meeting at the 
request of the community.  Sure, from a chair perspective, having the 
deadling earlier makes our life easier.  But observing the work 
participants actually do, it makes things observably harder for folks.

Yours,
Joel

On 4/24/18 7:26 PM, Mary Barnes wrote:
> They were even earlier initially and we got a lot of pushback and even 
> now some folks aren't sure they're necessary.
> 
> We have been very flexible lately in giving agenda time to items that 
> don't meet those deadlines as time allows, but we had a very tight 
> schedule last time based on late requests.
> 
> I personally would be in favor of moving up the deadlines to allow time 
> for people to actually read drafts.  I can't tell you how many times 
> people have gotten up to the microphone and the first thing they say is: 
> "I haven't read your draft, but I think ...."
> 
> Regards,
> Mary.
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 5:11 PM, Fred Baker <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     I would say something similar for posting internet drafts. My
>     working group, and I think many, want list discussion of drafts in
>     part to see what merits agenda time. We have several folks who post
>     minutes before the deadline, which means that if we applied that
>     rule as we’d like to, we would be in a position to ask for a slot
>     every other meeting. In addition, the deadline for filing working
>     group agendas is the same day as the draft deadline. I’d far rather
>     have the draft deadline a couple of weeks earlier so that we can ask
>     people to read and comment on the drafts while the agenda is being
>     developed.
> 
>     On Apr 24, 2018, at 2:27 PM, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>

---

From: "Eric Vyncke (evyncke)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 12:23:19 +0000

Fair point, and as both a chair and an author, I prefer to have draft deadline + agenda item submission closer to the meeting: time pressure helps ;-)

On 25/04/18 08:25, "WGChairs on behalf of Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:

    Yours,
    Joel

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:07:18 -0700

> On Apr 25, 2018, at 5:23 AM, Eric Vyncke (evyncke) <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

The time pressure is the same whenever the deadline is placed; the issue is the observance of the deadline. And no, while time pressure might motivate the author, it doesn't help the working group. If anything, I'm trying to get the working group to do more on the list between meetings rather than occupying space at the meetings. Packing everything close to a travel date works against that.

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 12:27:59 -0500

I kindof agree with Fred.  But, there really is nothing from stopping a
chair from saying that they will give priority on the agenda based upon the
amount of list discussion prior to the meeting.  For DISPATCH, the earlier
deadlines resulted in drafts submitted earlier and more discussion prior to
the meeting, which was the intent.  I do think the current model introduces
a delay in getting new items in progress because the first time people are
even aware of some of the items is during the WG session.

On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 12:07 PM, Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> > Fair point, and as both a chair and an author, I prefer to have draft
> deadline + agenda item submission closer to the meeting: time pressure
> helps ;-)
>
> The time pressure is the same whenever the deadline is placed; the issue
> is the observance of the deadline. And no, while time pressure might
> motivate the author, it doesn't help the working group. If anything, I'm
> trying to get the working group to do more on the list between meetings
> rather than occupying space at the meetings. Packing everything close to a
> travel date works against that.
>