Subject: WG followup discussions in gather.town (was: Re: [112attendees] HotRFC Gather followup)

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2021 22:45:14 +0100

I am a gather.town fanboy, and i think it is ridiculous that its
size was shrunken down this time because some IETF'er seem to have complained that
is was so big, that they couldn't find what they where looking for. I hope it
overflows next week from activity ;-))

Yes, HotRFC area is nice, but i think we should want to give good guidance
also to any WG related discussions in gather.town. Mine is this:

I would also recommend all WG/RG chairs to make themselves available after their
sessions in gather.town (as their time permits). Even if they themselves
may be busy in another session, a chairs (away) avatar is always a good place to seek
out followup discussions in gather.town after a WG/RG meeting. Same as what happens
in in-person IETFs after a WG meeting.

It is extremely easy to locate a person in gather.town:
- clock on participants
- find your person (e.g.: wg chair).
- click on that person, click on follow
- now your avatar will by itself walk to that persons avatar
- click again on the person and click on "Stop following"

Cheers
    Toerless

On Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 05:48:20AM -0700, Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote:
> I liked be able to talk to the author without the stress of having to formulate my questions right after the presentation, so Gather was nice for that, and I would suggest to continue using the same format after fixing the slowdown when a lot of people were on the floor.  I would also prefer to watch the presentations directly on Gather rather than on YouTube, after the problem of hearing other conversations is fixed.  A way to show that someone is interacting with video and other Gather objects would be nice too.
> 
> On 11/6/21 05:38, Deb Cooley wrote:
> > I liked the YouTube idea for the actual presentation.  I could watch it
> > more than once to understand the ideas better.
> > 
> > The Gather room part for discussion didn't work for me.  I'd suggest going
> > back to Meetecho for the discussion part.  It could be a two step process -
> > watch the YouTube videos 'session', then a Meetecho session to discuss.
> > 
> > Deb Cooley
> > [email-masked]
> > 
> > On Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 8:37 AM Alexandre PETRESCU <[email-masked]>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > For the 'what should change' part - I suggest to make it work ok fully on
> > > IPv6.  Last time I checked it worked only partially on IPv6: the sound
> > > quality was worse on IPv6, some buttons on left could not be clicked on
> > > IPv6, etc.
> > > 
> > > Yours,
> > > 
> > > --
> > > Alexandre [email-masked], tél 0169089223
> > > 
> > > Le 03/11/2021 à 17:33, Aaron Falk a écrit :
> > > 
> > > An update & 2 questions:
> > > 
> > > *Update:* The secretariat confirms that the HotRFC “rooms” will remain up
> > > and available for your use through the end of the IETF next week.
> > > 
> > > *Questions:*
> > > 
> > >     1. Should we use Gather to do this again?
> > >     2. If so, what should we change?
> > > 
> > > --aaron
> > > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Marc Petit-Huguenin
> Email: [email-masked]
> Blog: https://marc.petit-huguenin.org
> Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petithug

> -- 
> 112attendees mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/112attendees

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 09:21:04 -0600

I wanted to follow up on one point Toerless mentioned.

> also to any WG related discussions in gather.town. Mine is this:

When we started HotRFC ("request for conversations"), the goal was to allow
literally anyone with an Internet-related idea to get in front of the IETF
community at the beginning of the IETF meeting week, so that people had the
full IETF meeting to chase the presenters down.

We were thinking that many of these would be ideas that weren't baked
enough to request a BOF, or propose to a WG, so the reason to give a
4-minute talk was to find other people who cated, and were willing to help
you develop your ideas further (the abbreviation could have just as well
been "Request for Collaborators"), and tell them how to find you (could be
email, could be a side meeting, could be something else).

Aaron (and the IESG sponsors) haven't run a vetting function for HotRFC
slots, so people have also spoken, saying "I'm going to be presenting this
new thing in this working group/research group meeting, so if you care, you
probably want to come and participate there". At least that was the
expectation in 2018.

*Now that we are heavily meeting remotely, and are likely to be in hybrid
meetings for the foreseeable future, *it's probably worth thinking about
how people find out about new topics that have moved beyond "half-baked
idea I wrote on a napkin and sent slides to Aaron". If you're already on
the right mailing lists, you'd probably know about many of these things,
but that doesn't get you the kind of early cross-area awareness that we
think makes the IETF different from other standards organizations.

And I mean cross-area awareness, not cross-area review.

Does that make sense?

Best,

Spencer

> > I liked be able to talk to the author without the stress of having to
> formulate my questions right after the presentation, so Gather was nice for
> that, and I would suggest to continue using the same format after fixing
> the slowdown when a lot of people were on the floor.  I would also prefer
> to watch the presentations directly on Gather rather than on YouTube, after
> the problem of hearing other conversations is fixed.  A way to show that
> someone is interacting with video and other Gather objects would be nice
> too.
> >

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 17:34:42 +0100

Spencer: 

"Request For Collaborators" is very nice. Maybe rename from HotRFC to RFCollab or
the like. [Insert standard rant how today, drafts are the real RFC]

I think that the goal of "awareness" at early stages of the document is
good. But i specifically liked the opportunity for actual discssion,
which was new with the gather.town instance vs. prior HotRFC. This may
not be the original intent, but it very worth keeping IMHO.

My point was that the same type of discussions we did have in HotRFC this
time where also core element of WGs on the hallways, and we should try to
also enable them as well.

But right now, i think the mayority of participants are too lazy to
give gather.town enough playtime that they would start to see benefits *sigh*

Cheers
    Toerless

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 12:49:07 -0600

Hi, Toerless,

> not be the original intent, but it very worth keeping IMHO.

Full disclosure - I was asked to work with Aaron and Alexa on HotRFC for
this IETF, so all the good ideas are theirs and the other ideas are, of
course, mine ...

I didn't have a clear idea what would happen in the HotTFC spaces last
Wednesday - I was expecting a lot of drop-in traffic just to find out about
side meetings and ways to talk this week, but people came in, we started
talking, and THEY NEVER LEFT!!! We stayed in my space until about 15
minutes after the slot ended, which was fine, but I didn't expect that.

So, yeah, if we think discussion during the HotRFC slot is a good thing, we
might think about how to make that more likely to happen.

> also enable them as well.

That seems very reasonable.

> give gather.town enough playtime that they would start to see benefits

Gather gets better at almost every IETF meeting (modulo Randy's observation
about spyware, etc.), so it's getting easier to find someone or something
that you need to run into, but definitely having things in Gather that give
people a reason to pop in would help with that.

Best,

Spencer

> > > I would also recommend all WG/RG chairs to make themselves available
> after
> > > their
> > > > > The Gather room part for discussion didn't work for me.  I'd
> suggest
> > > going
> > > > > > quality was worse on IPv6, some buttons on left could not be
> clicked
> > > on
> > > > > > IPv6, etc.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Yours,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2021 13:06:48 -0800

> Gather gets better at almost every IETF meeting (modulo Randy's
> observation about spyware, etc.), so it's getting easier to find
> someone or something that you need to run into, but definitely having
> things in Gather that give people a reason to pop in would help with
> that.

imiho, putting any ietf act worthy of the note well MUST NOT be behind
a spy-wall.  that we are allowing this is really unbelievable.

there are things i wanted to attend which i simply can not.

randy

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 15:55:08 -0800

> On Nov 8, 2021, at 8:34 AM, Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

You describe yourself as a "fanboy". I have looked into it, and I'm not. I think you'll find that it's not about people being forced to use a tool they don't like and as a result liking it, I think it's a difference of opinion.

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 05:05:00 +0100

On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 03:55:08PM -0800, Fred Baker wrote:
> You describe yourself as a "fanboy". I have looked into it, and I'm not. 

> I think you'll find that it's not about people being forced to use a tool they don't like and as a result liking it,

Thats sounds more like stockholm syndrom than what i said.

> I think it's a difference of opinion.

Ok. So, what are your top issues with gather.town ? 

(note: "must run on IPv6" is already sold ;-)

Cheers
    Toerless

---

From: Marc Petit-Huguenin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 03:17:57 -0800

Gather.town feels like a prototype, or a sketch, of something that could be useful to the IETF.  I still hope that a group of devs, somewhere, somehow, will rise and build the Meetecho of hallways, inspired by the good stuff in Gather.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 04:31:10 -0800

> On Nov 8, 2021, at 8:05 PM, Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Well, yes, it appears to have that issue. Mostly, I would say that it has a number of the needed attributes, but I find it borderline usable. It would be more usable if I thought in terms of tree structures populated with people. Personally, I don't.

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 14:40:44 +0100

> Well, yes, it appears to have that issue. Mostly, I would say that it has a number of the needed attributes, but I find it borderline usable. It would be more usable if I thought in terms of tree s…

Not sure what the Tree structure is, but it could explain why i like it ;-)

How would you like to see it changed to increase its usefulness to you ?

And if that is not the right question then maybe:

How would a tool have to look like that would enable the best informal
discussions between IETF online participants (including orgs like secretariat,
eitor, hackathons, hotRFC, nomcom, etc-and-pp) ?

Cheers
    Toerless

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2021 09:02:13 -0500

FWIW, I agree with Fred about the points made in this note and
others.  Gather feels strange and difficult for those of use who
think about human relationships  and many tasks in terms of
partially interconnected and overlapping networks with different
connectivity strengths rather than trees.  I could tell you what
my social psychologist colleagues call the many people who can
think only in terms of linear or tree-like relationships, but it
would probably violate the Code of Conduct.  The app is also
difficult because it does not capture the differences among
"stand there listening", "waiting to speak to someone in the
conversation about something else", etc., as well is "we are
trying to discuss a problem for which you don't have context,
please stop interrupting", at all well (in f2f conversations...
well, their avatars can't frown, glare, or growl).  Its UI/UX
design is a disaster for those who are sufficiently
vision-impaired to be able to see the screen but not make fine
distinctions among icons and avatars much less read tiny type
(especially when it is moving).  Those are examples, not the
whole list.

And that leaves out the issues raised by Randy and others about
the IETF supporting privacy-intrusive and other behaviors that
the IETF claims to reject, ones that I personally agree are
important and would be important symbolically even if every one
of us knew how to block those mechanisms and did so.

back to lurking,
   john

--On Tuesday, November 9, 2021 04:31 -0800 Fred Baker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Well, yes, it appears to have that issue. Mostly, I would say
> that it has a number of the needed attributes, but I find it
> borderline usable. It would be more usable if I thought in
> terms of tree structures populated with people. Personally, I
> don't.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2021 06:27:52 -0800

assuming gather can not cut it for many reasons, some of which you
enumerated well, what would work?

back in the day, lisa dusseault tried to get us to use second life.  it
overcomes a lot of your and my issues with gather.  but, imiho, the
barrier to entry (what it takes for an individual to get in and make it
useful) is too high.  and it has not grown in years.  i speak from
experience, having helped my wife produce ballet in second life for over
15 years.  otoh, that one can produce ballet there says a lot for it.

a numbr of academic/research meetings i attend(ed) use zoom with side
rooms.  being able to go into side rooms is critical, imiho.  due to
unforseen circumstances, we have all learned to use zoom; i.e. the
baarrier to entry has already been overcome.  and it overcomes many of
the social issues you raise; we get to see each others' faces.  no, you
can not make cute stage settings, but it sure has proven that folk can
get work done.  [ don't get me started about teams; and i have not used
goog's product enough to have a useful opinion. ]

i use jitsi, like it, run a server, etc.  but it does not have side
rooms.  barrier to entry negligible as everyone's zoom exterience
transfers directly.

can others tell us about experience with environments which could meet
our needs?

randy

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 15:29:41 +0100

On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 09:02:13AM -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
> connectivity strengths rather than trees. 

I still do not understand eiher Freds nor your comment here.
Were is the tree ? I see a map. It visuales to me not that
different to the map i have of the physical IETF meeting places
and how to navigate and interact with people as a result of that
movement (vicinity). Is the concern that you only see your
vicinity ? Or do you not want something that attempts to
reproduce the physical meeting experience in this way ?

> I could tell you what
> would probably violate the Code of Conduct.

> The app is also
> conversation about something else", etc.

Godd description.
Any suggestion how this could be resolved ?

>, as well is "we are
> well, their avatars can't frown, glare, or growl).

There is now the personal bubble you can create.
Thats a fairly strong indicator of a private discussion.

There could also simply be a space with private meeting
tables, but alas, the map was shrunk and eliminated most of them.

> Its UI/UX
> (especially when it is moving).

Would it help if the map could be popped out to a different
window so you can two-finger zoom into it without loosing
chat and participants ?

>  Those are examples, not the whole list.

Would be great to suggest actionable improvements.

> of us knew how to block those mechanisms and did so.

Is ietf.slack.com any better in this ? 

Cheers
    Toerless

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 15:45:24 +0100

I looked at Second Live in its first hype wave. I agree with yor
assessment. I think marketing people with a lot of budget to invest
into the second live design cold find good use-cases, but IMHO
not for the IETF use case.

I used zoom side meetings. COmparison between it and gather is
IMHO not binary but i see pro/cons for either. And i wouldn't
have an idea for a simple common superset. But i wold contend that
what is missing in meetecho is better amended by gather than
zoom style side meetings.

Cheers
    toerless

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2021 09:01:01 -0800

> a spy-wall.  that we are allowing this is really unbelievable.

+1.

I understand that running tools has costs, and that this has to be paid 
for. There are at least two valid options. First, whoever provides the 
tool eats the costs, maybe because using the IETF participants will be a 
great test of their tools, or maybe because it will increase the 
visibility of these tools. Second, the IETF pays for using the tools. 
What is not an option is a quid-pro-quo in which the provider supplies 
the tools and the IETF supplies targets for surveillance capitalism.

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 06:36:23 -0600

Trying to behave, but I wanted to pop in on one point.

> zoom style side meetings.

OK, maybe two, but they're related.

I was hosting a Zoom meeting yesterday with about 60-ish participants, and
it looked to me (as host) that it would have been useful if someone could
have said

   - here's a large space that we can spread out into,
   - so that the people who (here's the key) "think  that 'media' means
   'interactive video' can talk to each other, and people who think it means
   'streaming video' can talk to each other, and people who think it includes
   'gaming' can talk to each other",
   - and (for extra credit) maybe even come back, or send a
   participant back, and report on what happened in their breakout room.

It seems that's more Gather-ish than Zoom-ish, and it's definitely an IETF
kind of thing.

(at a minimum, AFAIK, don't you have to be the Zoom meeting host to assign
people to breakout rooms? and if I'm in one Zoom breakout room and want to
pop into another one, can I do that?)

My second thing is that what I do in Gather is mostly "look at the
participant list, find someone I need to talk to, and Follow them until I
find them". If I was just wandering around in Gather, and didn't recognize
most of the names for people I need to talk to (whether I know them or
not), I'd be pretty frustrated, too. That's what I did, at the first IETF
where we had Gather, and I'm getting a lot more out of Gather now..

If it was possible to look up people by roles ("editor for
draft-foo-bar-baz"?), that would be a bit more useful for new participants.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Best,

Spencer, who has other thoughts, perhaps best expressed on a post-IETF 112
survey, which I will definitely fill out!

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 04:38:29 -0800

> I was hosting a Zoom meeting yesterday with about 60-ish participants,
> and it looked to me (as host) that it would have been useful if
> someone could have said
> 

you may want to explore zoom side rooms

randy

---

From: Theresa Enghardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 09:09:52 -0500

Hi Spencer,

On 11/10/21 7:36 AM, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:
> […]
>
> (at a minimum, AFAIK, don't you have to be the Zoom meeting host to 
> assign people to breakout rooms?

According to my experience with Zoom breakout rooms:

Yes, if you are the Zoom meeting host, or if you have been assigned 
co-host, you can create breakout rooms, and you can assign people to 
breakout rooms, either randomly or by "dragging" specific people into 
specific rooms. However, if you want everyone to choose their own 
breakout room, I think you have to make everyone co-host of the Zoom 
meeting, which gives them other permissions as well, and which might not 
scale well to a meeting of 60-ish people. But we have successfully done 
this with meetings of 30-ish people, most of whom were already sort-of 
experienced with Zoom.

> and if I'm in one Zoom breakout room and want to pop into another one, 
> can I do that?)

Yes, as a host or co-host, you can pop in and out of breakout rooms (and 
back to the main room) at any point.

The participants who are not (co-)hosts only have the option to either 
enter their assigned breakout room or not, and to then either leave that 
breakout room by going back to the main room or not.

> participant list, find someone I need to talk to, and Follow them 
> until I find them". If I was just wandering around in Gather, and 
> didn't recognize most of the names for people I need to talk to 
> (whether I know them or not), I'd be pretty frustrated, too. That's 
> what I did, at the first IETF where we had Gather, and I'm getting a 
> lot more out of Gather now..

I think having clearly marked areas in Gather definitely helps, e.g., 
the Transport ADs are making good use of the "TSV" spot at the bottom 
right of the main room in Gather.

Maybe the next step could be to enable folks to create such areas 
ad-hoc, and/or to make them easier to discover.

Yesterday, the TSV "dinner" had been planned to be at the bar, but then 
we discovered that there was no bar... But at least we had the "TSV" 
spot to fall back to.

Best,
Reese, aka Theresa

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:14:07 +0100

On Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 09:09:52AM -0500, Theresa Enghardt wrote:
> Yesterday, the TSV "dinner" had been planned to be at the bar, but then we
> discovered that there was no bar... But at least we had the "TSV" spot to
> fall back to.

Theresa,

If that TSV tabl was crowded as i imagine, please send an email to the
secretariat which did shrink the gather.town universe and thell them
that you would like to have a bar back. So far it seems, the only folks
who complained to secretariat (or indirectly to them), where those who
gost in the "vast expanse of the gather.town map", hence the shrinkage.

Or go to the secretariats table on gather.town and speak with them.

Cheers
    toerless

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 08:34:58 -0600

(Not the Wizard of Zoom)

> you may want to explore zoom side rooms

I am informed that zoom can allow participants moving freely between
multiple breakout rooms.

I did not know that. Is it also possible for participants to wander off
into a breakout room? If so, that would make me feel a lot better about
exploring this for IETF work.

(I use Zoom pretty heavily, but I haven't hosted Zoom meetings with a large
enough number of simultaneous topics to investigate breakout/side rooms for
my own meetings)

It looks like
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Breakout-Rooms
does give me some hope, but
https://www.uab.edu/elearning/news/technology-tips-updates/new-zoom-feature-self-select-breakout-rooms
still seems to require a host to set up breakout rooms, even if people can
wander between them.

Still, the situation isn't as clear as I understood. Thanks for the
pointers.

Best,

Spencer

---

From: Wes Hardaker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 06:51:58 -0800

> I am informed that zoom can allow participants moving freely between

I've used both gather and side rooms for random discussions and both can
work well.

One of the big differences is who is structuring the "event".  Zoom (and
webex) is absolutely fantastic for breakout sessions to let people
wander to topics they want to participate in, and change rooms, etc.
But, it works best when there is top down direction that creates the
right number of rooms, assigns names to them, etc.  Perfect for
workshops with chairs, etc.  However, if you want bottom-up driven
conversations than gather is better, as people can be crazy and split
off in their own side groups more easily.

TL;DR: there is no perfect -- use the right tool for the right job
-- 
Wes Hardaker
USC/ISI

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:18:17 -0500

>> people to breakout rooms?

    > Yes, if you are the Zoom meeting host, or if you have been assigned co-host,
    > you can create breakout rooms, and you can assign people to breakout rooms,
    > either randomly or by "dragging" specific people into specific
    > rooms. However, if you want everyone to choose their own breakout room, I
    > think you have to make everyone co-host of the Zoom meeting, which
    > gives them

No, at least not for the event I was at last week (that overlapped the plenary).
We were not co-hosts, but we could choose our side meetings.

It is, as many said, very top-down.

In the side room, however, random participants couldn't screen share.
That is, there were no back-of-the-envelopes available.

And the malware.
And the BS calendar integration.
And the last-minute, "oops, you need the native app"
And the video freezing every time for my karate class.
And the lack of ability to lock the screen to my Sensei, even when other
people were talking. (That's a bit fixed now)

Gather.town is not perfect, but I think it works very well for my use.
I'd like to understand more of why Fred hates it, though.