Subject: Re: Barely literate minutes

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:40:00 -0500

On 11/29/2012 10:36 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> F2f meetings are explicitly managed, with significant control of the 
> room.  Mailing list exchanges are typically not managed at all.
>
> Given the difference, it's not surprising that one proves more 
> productive than the other.

Please don't confuse "management" with "encouraging productivity". In 
Atlanta I witnessed several f2f WG meetings that were explicitly 
managed, and completely unproductive.

(Hint: anytime the vast majority of a f2f meeting is devoted to 
presentations, it's almost certainly useless.  Even if there were 
occasions when participants were asked to hum.)

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:48:24 -0500

On 11/29/2012 06:06 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:
> On 11/29/12 3:45 PM, Lee Howard wrote:
>> I can't take notes while I'm standing up, facilitating discussion.
>
> Interesting. I am forced to (only somewhat facetiously) ask: Why are 
> *you* standing up, facilitating discussion, if you are the editor? 
> Shouldn't that be the chair's job? More seriously: Since we started 
> this PowerPoint/Comments-at-the-mic thing oh so many years ago, doing 
> document reviews in presentation form where the editor is the one 
> doing the slides has created this problem. Perhaps a better mode would 
> be for the editor to write up the list of open issues, have the chair 
> project them if need be, and the editor can get up to the mic with 
> explanations/questions as needed but otherwise remain seated so they 
> can jot down the notes they need. I think I've done something like 
> that a long time ago as an editor. Worth trying, I'd think.
+1

More generally, every time I go to IETF I'm appalled that working groups 
have gotten into the habit of filling the time with PowerPoint 
presentations.[*]   PowerPoint (and similar tools) should be used 
sparingly, if at all.   Most of the time, the projector should be off, 
or the screen blank.

The point of IETF meetings is to facilitate discussion, not to show 
things to people.

PowerPoint tells meeting participants to be passive, or that it's okay 
to take up space in the meeting room while browsing the web and not 
paying attention, not being engaged.  Both of these are detrimental to 
IETF work.

Keith

[*] And yes, I realize that this has been the case for over 10 years, 
but I remember when it was not the case.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:22:58 -0800

> occasions when participants were asked to hum.)

Please don't use individual exemplars to try to prove a general case.

The thread contained an assertion of /generally/ better exchanges f2f. 
I suggested some contributing factors in support of the claimed general 
case.

Many email exchanges go extremely well.  Many f2f go extremely poorly.

human behavior.  complicated.

group behavior.  more complicated.

belief is simplistic causes or outcomes would be silly.

d/

-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2012 14:41:23 -0800

At 9:48 AM -0500 12/1/12, Keith Moore wrote:

>>  Interesting. I am forced to (only somewhat facetiously) ask: Why 
>> are *you* standing up, facilitating discussion, if you are the 
>> editor? Shouldn't that be the chair's job? More seriously: Since 
>> we started this PowerPoint/Comments-at-the-mic thing oh so many 
>> years ago, doing document reviews in presentation form where the 
>> editor is the one doing the slides has created this problem. 
>> Perhaps a better mode would be for the editor to write up the list 
>> of open issues, have the chair project them if need be, and the 
>> editor can get up to the mic with explanations/questions as needed 
>> but otherwise remain seated so they can jot down the notes they 
>> need. I think I've done something like that a long time ago as an 
>> editor. Worth trying, I'd think.
>  +1
>
>  More generally, every time I go to IETF I'm appalled that working 
> groups have gotten into the habit of filling the time with 
> PowerPoint presentations.[*]   PowerPoint (and similar tools) 
> should be used sparingly, if at all.   Most of the time, the 
> projector should be off, or the screen blank.
>
>  PowerPoint tells meeting participants to be passive, or that it's 
> okay to take up space in the meeting room while browsing the web 
> and not paying attention, not being engaged.  Both of these are 
> detrimental to IETF work.
>
>  Keith
>
>  [*] And yes, I realize that this has been the case for over 10 
> years, but I remember when it was not the case.

When I started, WGs had projectors on, but were used as white boards, 
to facilitate discussion.  The editor or anyone wanting to discuss an 
issue would write out the topics on a transparent sheet of plastic 
and project it.  As the discussion developed, points would be written 
on it.  It seemed to work.

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again,
it was probably worth it.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 15:19:40 +0900

sadly, too many of us remember writing on scrolls of acetate.  i
imagine that some remember stone and chisels.

ok, just for a gedanken experiment of one extreme,

  o remove the projector.  [ omg!  how will we show the note hell? ]

  o if there is an active draft that *really* needs f2f discussion,
    allocate time to discussing it.  if it does not *clearly* need
    face-time, discuss it on the mailing list.

  o no one is at the mic in front because there is no mic in front.

  o if folk really need to see a diagram, that is why the $dieties
    invented laptops.  the few people who do not have laptops have
    those new-fangled tablet thingies.

  o if someone has not read the draft, stay seated and shut up.

  o if someone wants to float a new idea worth describing, then give
    them five or ten minutes on the agenda to ask others for input,
    no preso/ppt.

randy

---

Power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.  -- Vint Cerf

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:29:44 -0900

> imagine that some remember stone and chisels.

At the last meeting, for my own stuff I went with the old one-slide
approach.  However, it did occur to me that by doing that the slide(s)
lost its archival value (slim as that may have been) for people not
in the room.  Anyway.

Not really sure what can be done about this - you can say "discussion,
not presentation" until you're blue in the face and the outcome of all
that will be a blue face but presentations during the meetings anyway.
Ultimately I expect it comes down to how individual chairs want to
run meetings.

Melinda

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2012 23:32:11 -0800

>      them five or ten minutes on the agenda to ask others for input,

Seeing something visual can help people grasp what someone is saying.

>  Power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.  -- Vint Cerf

I love that quote of Vint's; it's been in my random sig tag file for *years*

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
A "gaffe" occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells
the truth.
      -- Michael Kinsley

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:07:27 -0500

> Ultimately I expect it comes down to how individual chairs want to

I think that organizations sometimes get into habits of doing things 
regardless of whether those things work well.  And the habits sometimes 
become so entrenched that it's considered heresy to suggest that they be 
changed.   Even individual chairs might have a difficult time changing 
those habits for their own working groups.

Keith

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:27:43 +0000

> Seeing something visual can help people grasp what someone is saying.

Yes. It escapes me why we would hamper ourselves by *not* using diagrams
to explain complicated new ideas. The first time. Not the second and
subsequent times; that's why we have proceedings.

It also escapes me why we would hamper ourselves by not projecting lists
of open issues. True, almost everyone has a little screen on their knee.
Mine is usually full of jabber sessions for clashing WG meetings, the
text currently under discussion, etc. I prefer to see the current
discussion item on the big screen.

We should also remember that in our community with very diverse ways
of pronouncing the English language, the words on the big screen are
sometimes better understood than the words spoken.

I do agree that the ability to write new stuff on the screen in real
time was a significant advantage of the old acetate sheet. That is
clumsy to do with PPT.

    Brian

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:01:22 -0800

Hi Melinda,
>Ultimately I expect it comes down to how individual chairs want to

Yes.

Powerpoint is intended 'for interpretation by a program that 
understands the data on the recipient's system.  Recipients need to 
understand that they are at the "mercy" of the sender, when receiving 
this type of data, since data will be executed on their system, and 
the security of their machines can be violated' [1].

These powerpoint presentations are good enough to keep people 
entertained for the duration of the session.  They mask the fact that 
there hasn't been any discussion of the issues on a mailing 
list.  Pete Resnick mentioned that "doing document reviews in 
presentation form where the editor is the one doing the slides has 
created this problem" [2].  This comes down to "we have seen others 
doing it and that's why we do it".

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/assignments/media-types/application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg76080.html

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:40:57 -0500

> time was a significant advantage of the old acetate sheet. That is

I have no objection to using PPT to display diagrams or lists of open 
issues.  And I understand that PPT can be of aid to those (including me) 
who have trouble with understanding the diverse ways that English is 
spoken.

But I still maintain that there's something about PPT and similar tools 
that tend to degrade interaction rather than facilitate it, and that 
this is tremendously damaging to the way IETF working groups conduct 
their face-to-face sessions.

For example, PPT is much better at conveying short, bulleted lists than 
diagrams.   It's tedious to draw diagrams with PPT, and I suspect, with 
most similar tools.  Most computers still have keyboards which are good 
for inputing text, but most computers don't have an input stylus for 
drawing.  And it's much more time consuming to draw adequate drawings 
with a mouse or trackpad than to draw them on acetate with a pen.

For another, PPT's ability to rearrange slides actually makes it really 
good for working out the order of things to be presented. There's 
nothing at all wrong with using PPT in that way, as long as the slides 
aren't actually projected on the screen, and the speaker doesn't feel 
compelled to follow them closely.   (The PPT files could still be made 
available for download, even in advance, thus inviting participants to 
prepare their own questions and counterpoints in advance.)

Also, there's something about PPT that seems to encourage speakers to 
attempt to capture everything that's possibly relevant to a topic, and 
thus, to fill up all available time, leaving none for discussion.

Maybe this is why the best way that I've ever discovered to use PPT is 
to help me collect my thoughts and organize them into a logical sequence 
for presentation; then to identify the points which are best conveyed by 
drawing and to incorporate those drawings into the presentation; then to 
"hide" all or almost all of the text-only slides.

If we want to work effectively, we must not let our work habits be 
dictated by newer technology, especially when older and simpler 
technology works better.   If slide projectors, sheets of acetate, and 
appropriate pens are no longer readily available, perhaps we need to 
ship large dry-erase boards and markers for those to every meeting.

Keith

p.s. I certainly acknowledge the difficulty in understanding different 
dialects of English.  But it strikes me that part of the problem is the 
high level of ambient noise in the presentation environment, resulting 
in large part from having large numbers of people in the room who aren't 
paying (much) attention and who are each generating small amounts of 
noise, say by typing on laptops, or chatting quietly with those sitting 
near them.   This is just one way that people who are just "camping out" 
in a room distract from what is going on.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:45:04 -0500

--On Sunday, December 02, 2012 08:40 -0500 Keith Moore
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I have no objection to using PPT to display diagrams or lists
> of open issues.  And I understand that PPT can be of aid to
> those (including me) who have trouble with understanding the
> diverse ways that English is spoken.
> 
> But I still maintain that there's something about PPT and
> similar tools that tend to degrade interaction rather than
> facilitate it, and that this is tremendously damaging to the
> way IETF working groups conduct their face-to-face sessions.

Part of that, as both Randy's indirectly pointed out, is that we
lost something going from overhead projector transparencies to
PowerPoint (or PDF decks, etc.).  The former could be used to
facilitate a discussion by combining the best features of
previously-prepared outlines, diagrams, agendas, etc., with with
ability to for a speaker or chair mark up slides, or make new
ones, in real time.  By contrast, PowerPoint and those
projectors mostly permit only the "go forward" and "go back"
buttons.

> For example, PPT is much better at conveying short, bulleted
> lists than diagrams.   It's tedious to draw diagrams with PPT,
> and I suspect, with most similar tools.  Most computers still
> have keyboards which are good for inputing text, but most
> computers don't have an input stylus for drawing.  And it's
> much more time consuming to draw adequate drawings with a
> mouse or trackpad than to draw them on acetate with a pen.

Yes.  But I am less concerned about how long it takes to prepare
a presentation than I am about what goes on during the meeting
discussion.  If the diagrams are going into a PowerPoint
package, there is always the "draw with pencil, scan, and insert
into deck" possibility.

>...
> Also, there's something about PPT that seems to encourage
> speakers to attempt to capture everything that's possibly
> relevant to a topic, and thus, to fill up all available time,
> leaving none for discussion.

I think the same could be said for any outline that is prepared
before a meeting and made available to the audience.  Speakers
have to understand what they are (or should be) trying to do,
why the purpose of their presentations is (almost always) to
frame and stimulate discussion and not just to show the
speaker's mastery of the subject matter (and WG Chairs and
others need to reinforce that understanding).

>...
> If we want to work effectively, we must not let our work
> habits be dictated by newer technology, especially when older
> and simpler technology works better.   If slide projectors,
> sheets of acetate, and appropriate pens are no longer readily
> available, perhaps we need to ship large dry-erase boards and
> markers for those to every meeting.

They are still available.  Having dragged my own flip chart
easel (in a bag and checked as baggage) to a few meetings in
ancient times, I imagine all surviving ones of of those aren't
in museums either.  But rigs for cameras that are set up to be
pointed down onto sheets of paper on which drawings and notes
are being made are a lot more compact, compatible with the
projectors we are using already, and, like overhead
transparencies and PowerPoint-like decks, leave traces that can
easily be incorporated into minutes -- something that is less
feasible with any whiteboard technology we'd be likely to be
able to drag around.

best,
   john

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:53:21 -0500

On 12/02/2012 09:45 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> But rigs for cameras that are set up to be
I'd love to see us adopt such technology and strongly encourage its use, 
while at the same time actively discouraging the use of these meeting 
slots for /presentations/ and instead treating them as /discussions/.

(Another way to put is that even if we provide such cameras in meetings 
along with colored pens and paper, we will continue to see PowerPoint 
being used as it is today unless there's a community-wide effort to 
change our entrenched habits.)

Keith

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:03:25 -0500

--On Sunday, December 02, 2012 09:53 -0500 Keith Moore
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> (Another way to put is that even if we provide such cameras in
> meetings along with colored pens and paper, we will continue
> to see PowerPoint being used as it is today unless there's a
> community-wide effort to change our entrenched habits.)

Sure.  But it is the now-entrenched habits that are the problem.
The overuse of PowerPoint for purposes of which neither of us
approve is merely a symptom, not, IMO, a cause (even if it
reinforces the behaviors).

Anyone for incorporating a slide (!) into the Newcomer's
Presentation (!!) that says "a presentation in a f2f meeting
that makes extensive use of PowerPoint decks with many and/or
dense slides brands the presenter as either a newcomer, someone
who is trying to avoid an actual discussion, or a fool"?   :-(

   john

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:12:08 -0500

> reinforces the behaviors).
Agreed, though sometimes when changing habits it helps to focus 
attention on the most visible or tangible part of the habit.

It's always been possible, and will presumably remain possible, to build 
small PowerPoint decks that consist of only a few diagrams, to leave 
some blank slides in the middle of the deck for the purpose of typing in 
comments made at meetings, etc.  -- all for the purpose of facilitating 
discussion.  I wouldn't have a problem with PowerPoint being used in 
that way, though I suspect that it will be difficult for people to 
restrain themselves to using PowerPoint in that way as long as that's 
the tool that they're using.
> who is trying to avoid an actual discussion, or a fool"?   :-(
Yes, but first we need to get existing WG chairs to say that to their 
participants, and to push back on people who continue to do use 
PowerPoint in that way in meetings.

Keith

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 Dec 2012 16:26:19 -0000

>who is trying to avoid an actual discussion, or a fool"?   :-(

No, just hand out copies of this:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:35:47 -0800

At 05:40 02-12-2012, Keith Moore wrote:
>p.s. I certainly acknowledge the difficulty in understanding 
>different dialects of English.  But it strikes me that part of the 
>problem is the high level of ambient noise

It is not about different dialects of English.  There are people in 
one part of the world who speak English.  There are people from other 
parts of the world which do not understand that English because of:

  (a) The way English is spoken

  (b) The speed at which English is spoken

  (c) The vocabulary used

The people face a high barrier for active participation at a 
meeting.  The one language that the two groups have in common is 
code.  There is also a barrier for participation on mailing lists as 
the people do not use email in the same way as the (North American) group.

Accommodating the group of people is not enough.  It is up to the 
group of people to say what they would like done to make the IETF 
easier for them.  It is up to the (North American) group to, if you 
excuse me, shut up and take what they say at face value instead of 
trying to prove them wrong.

Stephen Farrell wrote [1] the following:

   "Whatever. Its a reality."

Barry Leiba replied [2] that:

   'No, Stephen, this isn't a "whatever".  You're proposing an experiment
    for changing process.  I'm reminding you that what you're proposing is
    not a change in formal process, but something you can do *right now*,
    today, if you and a WGC want to.  Please don't dismiss that with
    "Whatever."'

Yes, I am using a bad example.  My excuse is that it is to illustrate 
the difference between two groups.

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg76116.html
2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg76120.html

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:19:36 -0500

There is another unfortunate community habit that I have noticed.
It is, I believe, a consequence o their being simply too much stuff to 
look at.

If you have a working group that is considering new ideas (looking to 
recharter), you are more likely to get folks to read the draft, either 
before or shortly after the meeting, if you get a presentation slot in 
the meeting.  In particular, if the presentation sounds interesting, he 
odds of readership go up.

This is not discussion.  The odds of getting much discussion if the idea 
is competent are pretty low.  (I am putting aside the useful result 
where the participants go to the mike and bash the idea hard.  That at 
least is discussion, even if not the discussion the presenter wanted.) 
But it seems to be one of the few ways we have to get folks to pay 
attention.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:21:05 -0500

--On Sunday, December 02, 2012 08:35 -0800 SM <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> 
> It is not about different dialects of English.  There are
> people in one part of the world who speak English.  There are
> people from other parts of the world which do not understand
> that English because of:
> 

(d) Their reading-English is much better than their spoken
English and they have trouble keeping up even if (b) is quite
moderate.

> meeting.

But can be considerably aided in many cases by written material
(slides, summaries, or both) well in advance especially if those
material are also used at the meeting, thereby aiding
synchronization.

>...
> Accommodating the group of people is not enough.  It is up to
> the group of people to say what they would like done to make
> the IETF easier for them.  It is up to the (North American)
> group to, if you excuse me, shut up and take what they say at
> face value instead of trying to prove them wrong.

Sigh.  Some of the comments above are derived from exactly the
types of discussions you are trying to encourage.  Other parts
of it derive from trying to understand and participate in
presentations and discussions in languages in which I can sort
of get around but am not real-time fluent (while the issue in
the IETF is the set of languages, dialects, and pronunciations
we call "English", the problem isn't unique).  

Cultural styles also make some of the most affected parties less
likely to speak up for their specific needs on this list than
one might like.  That leaves the rest of us with a choice
between trying to synthesize from other conversations and
experiences and taking the position that, until the people with
the most severe versions of the problem speak up, there is no
problem.  I believe the latter would be unfortunate for many
reasons, not least of which is that better use of meeting time
and presentation aids/ materials would help those of us who are
native speakers as well.

   john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:42:19 -0800

> material are also used at the meeting, thereby aiding

This is a very specific matter of technique.

As I started doing more presentations outside the US or with mixed 
audiences, I was told that the challenge of slide content is to make it 
neither too terse nor too verbose.  Too terse imparts too little 
information for a reader who is using them to augment listening to the 
English.  Too verbose, of course, takes too much time to read for real-time.

In addition, slides often circulate later and need to have enough text 
to be useful without the speaker's commentary.

So I try to use "telegraphic" text that stands on its own.  That is, 
it's a terse as I can make it, while still making sense without my 
commentary.  (It turns out this also provides the opportunity to have 
the speaking commentary go beyond the slide text, since I can let the 
audience rely on the slides for key points.)

d/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:50:09 -0500

--On Sunday, December 02, 2012 12:19 -0500 "Joel M. Halpern"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> It is, I believe, a consequence o their being simply too much
> stuff to look at.

Of course, having too much stuff to look at is ultimately a
consequence of the inability of the Steering Group to prioritize
and structure work enough (even if it means saying "no" to
reasonable, but less-important, proposals) that the number of
things people (and they) have to look at bears a reasonable
relationship to available time and resources. 

That really fundamental problem is one that restrictions on
PowerPoint or presentations, or even ideas about how to
fast-track some work, are not going to fix.  In fairness to the
IESG, it is also impossible for them to fix unless the community
is willing to support their saying "no" or "insufficient
resources" to some proposals for WGs or for work within WGs.
But, as long as they simply accept almost all proposals that
"someone wants to work on" and that are not obviously
technically stupid, there is no chance of knowing whether the
community would support pushing back on lower-priority work.

> If you have a working group that is considering new ideas
> (looking to recharter), you are more likely to get folks to
> read the draft, either before or shortly after the meeting, if
> you get a presentation slot in the meeting.  In particular, if
> the presentation sounds interesting, he odds of readership go
> up.
>...

Yes, but see above.

best,
   john

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:51:06 -0500

On 12/02/2012 12:42 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> audiences, I was told that the challenge of slide content is to make 
> it neither too terse nor too verbose.  Too terse imparts too little 

I think you're missing the point.   The core problem is the overuse of 
presentations, and presentation tools, for working group face to face 
meeting time which is better suited for discussion.

For those occasions when presentations are appropriate, or for "slides" 
that are provided as background material in advance of the discussion, 
the above is good advice.

Keith

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:57:45 -0800

> meeting time which is better suited for discussion.

stop blaming the tool.  focus on the folks doing the speaking.

tools can be used well or poorly.  technique matters, but what matters 
most is whether the speaker is saying useful things in useful ways.

d/

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:58:28 -0500

> relationship to available time and resources.
I'd add working group chairs (though I'm sure there are a few 
exceptions) to the list of those with an apparent inability to 
prioritize and structure work.   Or perhaps WGs should have to get 
approval from their supervising AD before they can take on new documents.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:06:00 -0500

> stop blaming the tool.  focus on the folks doing the speaking.
The tool is a big part of the problem.  The tool encourages a certain 
style of interaction that is generally inappropriate for face to face 
working group meetings.

Of course, strictly speaking, the focus is on the people who are using 
the tool, and more broadly, on using the habit and community expectation 
that keeps encouraging people to use a poorly suited tool.  But they're 
using the tool poorly precisely because it's very difficult to use that 
tool well for that purpose.   A different toolset, (e.g. pens and paper 
and overhead cameras coupled to projectors), would likely produce better 
results if that toolset did not encourage laziness in preparing 
materials to facilitate discussion.

Keith

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:06:40 -0900

> approval from their supervising AD before they can take on new

There's a whole nexus of connected issues here, I think, and what
a given person complains about depends on that person's pet peeves.
It seems to me that if we were better about moving work forward
between meetings (<- peeve!) meeting time wouldn't be chewed up
with presenting the current state of the work.  I think design
teams are a handy tool for keeping things moving and have the
side-effect of potentially improving meeting quality.  I'll be the
first to admit the possibility of abuse/things going wrong but
I think keeping work moving is one of the keys to solving this
problem.

I know the EDU team is working hard and has a tough task, but
I also wonder if improving however it is that we acculturate
newer participants might not help, as well.  I would guess that
if you polled meeting participants you'd get a majority of
respondents thinking that meetings are for presentation and
that meetings are used for document adoption and document
content decisions.

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:37:26 -0500

On 12/02/2012 01:06 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> with presenting the current state of the work.
While I fully agree that most WGs could be better at moving work forward 
between meetings, I don't think it would solve the problem of face to 
face meeting time being filled up with presentations.

I suspect that most WG participants have difficulty keeping up with the 
traffic on their WGs' mailing lists for various reasons (too much 
"distraction" from normal work, the sad state of mail user agents, 
etc.). By forcing people to travel away from work, face-to-face meetings 
serve as useful interruptions from normal distractions and opportunities 
to catch up on IETF work.  If working groups moved forward even faster 
than they do now, that might actually be seen to increase the need for 
presentations at face-to-face meetings.

Occasionally I've wondered if IETF meetings should have "presentation" 
sessions separate from (and in advance of) "working" sessions.    The 
difference between the two types of session would be clearly indicated 
in the schedule.   The presentation sessions would be geared toward 
presenting an overview of current state of the proposals, including a 
summary of recent changes.   Perhaps participants would be allowed to 
ask questions for clarification, but discussion should be discouraged 
and any kind of polling of the room or other decision making would be 
forbidden.  The presentation meetings would therefore be optional for 
those who had kept up on the mailing list.   And presentations would be 
forbidden in discussion sessions.

I can imagine these being useful in several ways, e.g. in facilitating 
better cross-group and cross-area review.   People who were active 
participants in working groups could attend presentation sessions of 
other groups, without sacrificing their attendance in the discussion 
sessions of the groups in which they were active.

Perhaps roughly the first 2(?) days of an IETF meeting could be largely 
devoted to presentation sessions, and the remainder of the time to 
discussion sessions.    Having a strict allocation of time for each kind 
of session isn't so important as having the presentation sessions for a 
particular group well in advance of the discussion session for that group.

This is something that could be tried on a small scale, by a few working 
groups (say one in each area) before being widely adopted. It might 
help, however, to have explicit support for the idea in the tools that 
maintain and display the meeting schedules.

Keith

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:41:46 -0900

On 12/2/12 9:37 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
> discussion sessions.   

I think you'd end up with 2 days of presentation sessions and the
remainder of the meeting given over to presentation sessions.

Melinda

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2012 10:45:28 -0800

At 9:45 AM -0500 12/2/12, John C Klensin wrote:

>  easily be incorporated into minutes

I like it this suggestion.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
People must not attempt to impose their own 'truth' on others.  The
right to profess the truth must always be upheld, but not in a way
that involves contempt for those who may think differently.
                                              --John Paul II, 1/1/91

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:46:53 -0800

> style of interaction that is generally inappropriate for face to face 

We have non-native english speakers and remote participants both working 
at a disadvantage to follow the discussion in the room. We should make 
it harder for them by removing the pretext that the discussion is 
structured around material that they can review and follow along on? I 
don't think that's even remotely helpful.

> the tool, and more broadly, on using the habit and community 
> expectation that keeps encouraging people to use a poorly suited 
> tool.  But they're using the tool poorly precisely because it's very 
> difficult to use that tool well for that purpose.   A different 
> toolset, (e.g. pens and paper and overhead cameras coupled to 
> projectors), would likely produce better results if that toolset did 
> not encourage laziness in preparing materials to facilitate discussion.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:15:15 -0500

On 12/02/2012 01:46 PM, joel jaeggli wrote:
> We have non-native english speakers and remote participants both 
> working at a disadvantage to follow the discussion in the room. We 
> should make it harder for them by removing the pretext that the 
> discussion is structured around material that they can review and 
> follow along on? I don't think that's even remotely helpful.

In general, the purpose of those meetings is *discussion*, not 
presentation.   I'm all for exploring better ways to facilitate 
*discussion* among the diversity of IETF meeting attendees.  But our 
experience with use of previously-prepared PowerPoint presentations to 
facilitate *discussion* shows that use of that tool, in that way and for 
that purpose, is a miserable failure.

Of course I'd encourage speakers to make available for download 
summaries of the material to be discussed in advance of the meeting, for 
the benefit of non-native English speakers and others. PowerPoint (or 
better, PDF of material prepared in PowerPoint) seems like a reasonable 
format for that.

I also think it would be quite helpful to arrange for the topics 
discussed and points raised in the discussion to be displayed in the 
room in real time, as they are typed.   This would provide non-native 
speakers with visuals similar to what they see now with PowerPoint, but 
without the undesirable side-effect of coercing discussion time into 
presentations.   This would also reinforce the need for a minute-taker 
and help to keep the minute-takers honest.

(I doubt that PowerPoint is the best tool for this purpose, since it 
would be highly desirable to convey the same information, at the same 
time, to remote participants.)

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:18:07 -0500

> remainder of the meeting given over to presentation sessions.
In which case the ADs should fire the chairs on the spot.

Keith

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:21:17 -0900

> In which case the ADs should fire the chairs on the spot.

If that's the solution to the presentation problem, then why not
apply it to chairs who mismanage meetings now, rather than creating
new processes/structures?

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:25:42 -0500

> new processes/structures?
It's pointless to tell people to stop doing what they're accustomed to 
doing, unless you give them a better way and let them experience that it 
works better.

As I pointed out earlier, this is something that can be tried on a small 
scale.  If it's not found to work well, there's little harm done.

Keith

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:27:56 +0000

On 02/12/2012 18:06, Melinda Shore wrote:
...
> that meetings are used for document adoption and document

We get exactly two shots at new participants: the newcomers
tutorial, and the newcomers reception, both on Sunday afternoon
(i.e. before some people even arrive). After that, they are in
the mix, and further acculturation happens in the WGs and
corridors (plus, no doubt, some extreme puzzlement in plenary).

The newbie presentation has about 68 slides. They include these words:

Working Groups
* this is where the IETF primarily get its work done
* most discussions on a WG mailing list
* face-to-face meetings focused on key issues (ideally)
	note: face-to-face meetings generally quite short
...
* no defined membership
* just participants
* “Rough consensus and running code...”
* no formal voting  (can not define the constituency)
	can do show of hands or hum - but no count
* does not require unanimity
* chair determines if there is consensus
* disputes resolved by discussion
* mailing list and face-to-face meetings
* final decisions must be verified on mailing list
  to ensure those not present at face-to-face are included
* but taking into account face-to-face discussion

A Working Group Session
* WGs only meet for a few hours at an IETF meeting
* most working group work is done on the WG mailing list
* often only specific unresolved issues are discussed at meetings
  so read the IDs and mailing list before the session

     Brian

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:07:37 -0800

Hi John,

Yes.

>material are also used at the meeting, thereby aiding

As a personal opinion I would say yes but I'll leave it to the 
consensus of the group.

>one might like.  That leaves the rest of us with a choice

Probably.

Please note that I don't know the solution.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:57:08 -0800

On 12/2/12 11:15 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
> facilitate *discussion* shows that use of that tool, in that way and 
> for that purpose, is a miserable failure.
Since you and I attend a significant number of the same working groups 
we should have some shared experience, but I'm going to flat out 
disagree. It's possbile that we had completely different experiences in 
the same meetings, but I do firmly believe that slides are facilitatiing 
both the speakers coverage of the problems they're trying to address, 
and the participants dicussion of the problems enumerated.

As a chair one should be engaged in some editorial oversight of the 
contents of slides.
> summaries of the material to be discussed in advance of the meeting, 
> for the benefit of non-native English speakers and others. PowerPoint 
> (or better, PDF of material prepared in PowerPoint) seems like a 
> reasonable format for that.
>
the reflexive reference to a particular tool isn't a helpful point of 
this discussion imho... It doesn't matter to me what format the slides 
are in so long as these serve to structure the conversation. Powerpoint 
is a tool (and one I don't use), there are plently of others that can 
serve to get the point across.  If a state diagram benefits from 
animation, then you should pick the appropiate tool. whichever tool it 
is the assumption is that the output will be projected and potentially 
displayed remotely. The import conceit, imho is that the material is 
prepared prior to the meeting so that it can be distributed (and this 
may be the point of actual contention for you).
> speakers with visuals similar to what they see now with PowerPoint, 
> but without the undesirable side-effect of coercing discussion time 
> into presentations.   This would also reinforce the need for a 
> minute-taker and help to keep the minute-takers honest.
This is a meeting workflow change, I can think of several ways to 
approach it. as with note taking, jabber scribing and managing remote 
participants it requires someone to do the work (though it may overlap 
with one of the other activities).
> time, to remote participants.)
it would be helpful abstract the tool dicussion away from particular 
applications, at the heart of the problem, is not which text/media 
formatting application is used.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 22:02:48 -0500

On 12/02/2012 03:57 PM, joel jaeggli wrote:
>> experience with use of previously-prepared PowerPoint presentations 
>> to facilitate *discussion* shows that use of that tool, in that way 
>> and for that purpose, is a miserable failure.
> disagree. It's possbile that we had completely different experiences 
> in the same meetings, but I do firmly believe that slides are 
> facilitatiing both the speakers coverage of the problems they're 
> trying to address, and the participants dicussion of the problems 
> enumerated.
>
I saw very little productive discussion happening in Atlanta in the vast 
majority of working group meetings which I attended.  True, there were 
times when people queued up at the microphones.  (though that's actually 
a pretty inefficient way to have a discussion.) The vast majority of the 
time in nearly every session I attended was occupied by speakers 
standing at the front of room in front of a screen of mostly text, and a 
room full of people who were mostly not paying attention.

(and when people did try to discuss things, the chairs kept trying to 
cut the lines short because they had more PRESENTATIONS to get 
through....arrgh.)

> this discussion imho...

I think people understand that I'm not talking specifically about a 
particular tool for creating presentations.   It doesn't matter which 
tool you use, the problem is the notion that meeting time should consist 
primarily (or even significantly) of presenters standing in front of a 
screen on which mostly-text is being displayed, and the content of what 
is being said closely corresponds to what is on the screen.   A related 
problem is that people are paying attention to the words on the screen 
which is distracting them from what is actually being said.    And 
because the bitrate of the information being presented is low, people 
tend to not pay much attention anyway, and they tend do things that 
further distract from the meeting.

"PowerPoint" is just a convenient one-word shorthand for this 
phenomenon.   The problem isn't the specific tool that's being used, but 
the phenomenon almost inherently comes with use of PowerPoint or any of 
several similar tools.   And everybody has seen it happen and associates 
it with the word PowerPoint.

What matters is that a lot of meeting time is being wasted by filling it 
up with presentations, and by trying to have discussions using media and 
techniques and habits that are better suited for presentations.  (though 
the idea that PowerPoint and similar tools even help to facilitate good 
presentations is itself pretty dubious.)

> with one of the other activities).

Of course.  And I'm not set on a particular approach; I just want to 
facilitate more effective discussion (and in a way that tries to 
accommodate those who have trouble understanding the speakers).

But I do suspect that somehow the job of typing something that appears 
immediately on the screen, might be more appealing than the job of 
taking minutes or being a Jabber scribe.   If one person typing could do 
an adequate job of all of the above, that would be nice, as we'd need 
fewer volunteers.
> formatting application is used.
I don't think you can completely divorce the discussion from mention of 
these tools and still have a useful discussion.

Keith

---

From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:49:15 -0800

On 12/2/12 19:02 , Keith Moore wrote:\
> a pretty inefficient way to have a discussion.) 

I'm unclear on how we'd carry on a discussion without a floor management
discipline.

Shouting?

If the case is that you're in a room with 200 people and you have people
listening remotely, then fundamentally more discipline is required then
if you have 20 people around a table.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:52:28 +0900

> I'm unclear on how we'd carry on a discussion without a floor management

i know it's a leap, but maybe presume people are adults

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 23:04:46 -0500

> I'm unclear on how we'd carry on a discussion without a floor management

We used to do it fairly well in IETF, in the days before the rooms had 
(or needed) microphones.  We did it successfully in days when IETF 
meetings were about as big as they are now.

Unfortunately, when the microphones were introduced, chairs started 
insisting that people queue at the microphones in order to say 
something, and this helped considerably to degrade discussion.

> Shouting?

The discussions could indeed get lively.  But participants generally 
respected each other.   On the rare occasions when they didn't, the 
chairs could (and did) intervene.
> if you have 20 people around a table.

Perhaps.  But if the meeting rooms weren't such good places to sleep, 
read email, randomly browse, play Solitare, whatever, perhaps they 
wouldn't be so filled with mostly-inactive attendees.

Keith

---

From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:05:24 -0800

> i know it's a leap, but maybe presume people are adults

and that everyone of them has a microphone

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:08:52 +0900

>>> I'm unclear on how we'd carry on a discussion without a floor
>>> management discipline.

so we build our meetings around the fears, will someone speak
unacceptably, will someone appeal, will someone pass gas in 
class?  next we can have the tsa screen people at the door.

can we please play the upside.  there is a high road, let's
take it.

randy

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:33:26 -0800

> class?  next we can have the tsa screen people at the door.
currently we don't do it that way (hand everyone a mic) because it's 
infeasable.  Oddly I have none of the above fears.
> can we please play the upside.  there is a high road, let's

I thought I was. Mic discipline exists because, we have big rooms that require sound reinforcement, and remote participants and a recording. So if you're concerned about being heard, or hearing or the historical record, you should be in favor of it in general

I've never noted the existence of a mic line at an IETF precluding 
statements which I find disagreeable, so I have trouble imagining them 
being used for that purpose.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:54:35 -0800

...
>>> people are adults
...
> ...there is a high road, let's
> take it.

A series of glib catch-phrases are certain not to facilitate meaningful 
discussion, any more than does treating the use of particular 
technologies as a problem.

The question put forward was serious and relevant.  It warrants serious 
response.

Microphones introduce a consideration to the process, but then so does 
the 'presence' of remote participants.  It's not that difficult to 
manage the room productively given these realities.  Chairs do it all 
the time.

The discipline they impose varies, but, for example, a per-participant, 
random interpretation in the style of "do whatever you think is the 
adult behavior" isn't one of the choices.  They /manage/ the process.

In very small scale, with a few active participants who share the same 
meeting management model, the chairs have a particularly easy time.  But 
let's not confuse that with an amorphous "act like adults" reference.

d/

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:03:12 -0900

> manage the room productively given these realities.  Chairs do it all

This is off the topic at hand but I do think it's worthwhile
to circle back to one point in particular that Keith made, and
that's that it's kind of weird that we cut off discussion so
that we can proceed to the next presentation.  It's done all
the time (I've done it, myself) and while there's definitely
a sense that we need to cover the material we've said we're
going to cover in a meeting, why does breadth take priority
over depth?

Melinda

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2012 19:12:26 +0000

On 29 Nov 2012, at 18:51, SM <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi Ed,
> At 06:54 29-11-2012, Edward Lewis wrote:
>> Earlier in the thread I saw that someone expressed dismay that BOFs seem to be WG's that have already been meeting in secret.  I agree with that.  At the last meeting in Atlanta, I filled in sessions with BOFs and found that the ones I chose seemed as if they were already on the way to a predetermined solution.  Only one had a presentation trying to set up the problem to be solved, others just had detailed talks on draft solutions.  In one there was a complaint that the mail list wasn't very active - not a WG, a BOF!  Not very engaging.

The complaint about a quiet mail list may have been a comment I made at the mdnsext BoF.  The reason for that is that the guidance we have for holding a BoF (RFC 5434) recommends forming a public mail list a couple of months before the IETF meeting where the BoF is planned and to have substantive list discussion in advance of the BoF, which should help form a solid problem statement and draft charter.

>  Extensions of the Bonjour Protocol Suite (mdnsext) BoF
> 
> The agenda [5] mentions "Goals of the BoF" with a link.  I don't recall whether any proposed solution was discussed.

Some views on potential solutions were made at the mic in the BoF.  But the draft that was presented was a requirements draft, not a solutions one. I'll speak to Ralph soon about moving this forward. 

>> Bringing in baked work because there are multiple independent and non-interoperable solutions is what the IETF is all about.  Bringing in a baked specification just to get a stamp on it is not.

The former is a driver for mdnsext, i.e. a number of vendors producing potentially non-interoperable mDNS proxying solutions. I don't see a problem with the latter, especially if it documents something useful that is otherwise opaque.

Certainly some WG lists have a lot of traffic, and on lists it's easy for a small number of vocal people to dominate the discussion, which is less likely to happen face to face (where people have to queue and take turns).

Tim

---

From: "George, Wes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 08:53:37 -0500

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Melinda Shore
> it's kind of weird that we cut off discussion so that we can proceed to the
> next presentation.  It's done all the time (I've done it, myself) and
> while there's definitely a sense that we need to cover the material
> we've said we're going to cover in a meeting, why does breadth take
> priority over depth?
>

[WEG] I think this requires making a judgment call between a ratholed discussion, or an impasse between two strongly held opinions vs. meaningful progress. Sometimes the former and the latter masquerade as each other and are therefore mishandled.

Again, comes down to how the meeting is structured - do you prioritize a set of current drafts that need to have meaningful discussion, and accept the fact that presentations on new work might lose their timeslots if discussion runs long? I think that's an acceptable risk, especially since anyone who is technically on the agenda can build a presentation and have it be in the proceedings so that people can review after the meeting. I know I had more than one meeting where there were many valuable presentations, and a large number of them were added to the agenda with zero minutes allocated, so that they'd be ready if we had time to discuss them during the meeting once the priority discussions were completed, but also so they'd be in the proceedings when we didn't.

Wes George

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---

From: "George, Wes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 08:57:04 -0500

> Keith Moore
  A different toolset, (e.g. pens and paper
> materials to facilitate discussion.

[WEG] I don't know about anyone else here, but you do *not* want me to attempt to facilitate a discussion using freehand drawings and writing. My handwriting and drawing skill was bad before I discovered a keyboard, and years of atrophy have made its usefulness approach zero as a meaningful method of communication. You'd be better off with the aforementioned stone tablets and cuneiform in terms of understanding.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/handwriting

And I echo what Dave said - quit blaming the tools and assuming that forcing people to use tools they're not used to using will fix this. You have a very specific opinion of what an effective WG session should be like and what people should and should not be doing to facilitate such. Sounds like you need to work with the EDU team to give a Sunday afternoon training session entitled "how not to turn a WG session into a broadcast-only medium" possibly with a section for WG chairs and a section for potential speakers.

Wes George

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:28:40 -0500

> [WEG] I don't know about anyone else here, but you do *not* want me to attempt to facilitate a discussion using freehand drawings and writing. My handwriting and drawing skill was bad before I disc…

Nothing would prevent you from preparing drawings in advance (even using 
PowerPoint, if you wished) and bringing them to the meeting on paper.   
And you could still annotate them with pens during the discussion if you 
found it useful to do so.   For that matter, nothing would prevent you 
from plugging your laptop into the projector, except perhaps the groans 
from the participants who might think you were about to start a 
presentation.

> And I echo what Dave said - quit blaming the tools and assuming that forcing people to use tools they're not used to using will fix this.
I've seen over and over again that the choice of tools significantly 
affects how people interact and the quality of their interaction, and 
I'm frankly amazed that others in IETF haven't seen this also.

And I don't really propose that people be forbidden to use PowerPoint.  
There will still be times when it's an appropriate tool, and 
hard-and-fast process rules can create as many problems as they solve.

But I do suggest that if someone is alloted a discussion session in an 
IETF WG meeting, that he should think twice before sitting down to use 
PowerPoint to crank out a deck of slides for it.

I also realize that people don't like to change the tools that they're 
accustomed to using.  But the whole point of this discussion is to 
encourage this community, and people in this community, to make better 
use of precious meeting time, have better discussions, produce better 
specifications, and to do so more quickly.  To the extent which our 
community's habits have contributed to poor use of meeting time and 
degraded the quality of discussion, it makes sense to reexamine those 
habits.  And use of PowerPoint is one of those habits which I believe 
should be reexamined.

> You have a very specific opinion of what an effective WG session should be like and what people should and should not be doing to facilitate such. Sounds like you need to work with the EDU team to give a Sunday afternoon training session entitled "how not to turn a WG session into a broadcast-only medium" possibly with a section for WG chairs and a section for potential speakers.
Years ago, my impression was that that Sunday training sessions were 
pretty much ignored by anyone experienced in the organization.  Is this 
still the case?

Keith

---

From: "George, Wes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 12:44:10 -0500

> From: Keith Moore [mailto:[email-masked]]

> pretty much ignored by anyone experienced in the organization.  Is this

[WEG] Depends on the subject matter. If they're all targeted at new attendees, it follows that no experienced attendees would be interested. At 5 years in, I guess you could call me experienced in the organization, and I attended one during IETF84 about crypto and security.

Wes George

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 18:11:01 +0000

On Dec 2, 2012, at 10:46 AM, joel jaeggli wrote:

> We have non-native english speakers and remote participants both working at a disadvantage to follow the discussion in the room. We should make it harder for them by removing the pretext that the discussion is structured around material that they can review and follow along on? I don't think that's even remotely helpful.

To my mind, that is a key concept. Also, a prepared slide showing a graphic and a whiteboard rendition of the same graphic both show a graphic. What is different is that the prepared slide will be more readable (a font is much clearer than my handwriting), and will take less (real) time to produce (I can show a slide instantly, but it may take a couple of minutes to draw the picture). And third, the prepared slide is thought through in advance; the drawn graphic needs to be as well to really be useful, but may be dreamed up on the spot, written over several times as the discussion proceeds, etc.

>From my perspective, a white board or flip chart is a good thing and I usually ask from one to be present when I speak. The prepared slides are useful for everyone and especially ESL folks. And BTW, the listener with the slides on his own computer can flip around in the deck on his own ("wait a minute, didn't he just say [flip flip]... Oh, he's saying …") where an erased whiteboard can't be flipped back to.

I agree with the notion that the primary purpose of the meeting is discussion. What you and I tell those who present in v6ops is that we want the presentation to guide and support a discussion, and anything that is pure presentation should take no more than half of the time allotted to them. I don't see that the tool is the problem, it's the user of the tool, and we all vary in our presentation/discussion skills.

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 13:29:42 +0000

> I agree with the notion that the primary purpose of the meeting is discussion. What you and I tell those who present in v6ops is that we want the presentation to guide and support a discussion, and…

Exactly. If the "presentation" is one slide listing the key changes in the document since the last revision/meeting, and one slide per key question/issue being asked of the room, then that should help facilitate good discussion, not hinder it.

What doesn't work is a 15 minute presentation of the current contents of a draft that leaves a couple of minutes for questions.

It's not the tool, it's how it's used.

And fwiw I think Fred and Joel have done a decent job of this in v6ops, and one of the things that's helped there is trimming out drafts that don't have evidence of a decent level of mail list discussion.

Tim

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:55:29 -0500

> It's not the tool, it's how it's used.

I'm somewhat amused that so many IETFers seem to be saying "don't blame 
the tool, blame the people".   Blaming people is such an effective way 
to encourage them to change their habits. :)

Keith

---

From: Steven Bellovin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 12:50:17 -0500

> and presentation aids/ materials would help those of us who are

I started making up really good slides (in a variety of settings)
after noticing non-native-English speakers at the IETF taking
pictures of the screen -- it *really* helped them.

		--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:34:18 -0500

On 12/3/2012 9:28 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
>> You have a very specific opinion of what an effective WG session 
>> should be like and what people should and should not be doing to 
>> facilitate such. Sounds like you need to work with the EDU team to 
>> give a Sunday afternoon training session entitled "how not to turn a 
>> WG session into a broadcast-only medium" possibly with a section for 
>> WG chairs and a section for potential speakers.
> pretty much ignored by anyone experienced in the organization.  Is 
> this still the case?
>

Yes. However, the pan-galactic plenaries are still sort-of 
paid-attention-to by those who are present at the meetings, except for 
those totally distracted by the bad-attitude room.

     Tony Hansen

---

From: "Lee Howard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 18:22:20 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
Keith Moore
> Years ago, my impression was that that Sunday training sessions were
pretty much ignored
> by anyone experienced in the organization.  Is this still the case?

I've been to the newcomers tutorial at least five times in the last three
years.
I've been to tutorials on tools for creating internet-drafts two or three
times.
I continue to learn, and things change.  I recommend more attendees attend
more of these
sessions (in listening mode).

Lee

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:03:42 -0500

On 12/04/2012 12:50 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
> pictures of the screen -- it*really*  helped them.
I used to see that also, but I don't recall seeing anyone do that in 
Atlanta.  Maybe people just download the slides now?

---

From: Steven Bellovin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 08:45:06 -0500

On Dec 4, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I used to see that also, but I don't recall seeing anyone do that in Atlanta.  Maybe people just download the slides now?
> 
That's my assumption -- the infrastructure and policies are better
set up now for that sort of thing.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:28:53 -0500

--On Wednesday, December 05, 2012 08:45 -0500 Steven Bellovin
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> I used to see that also, but I don't recall seeing anyone do
>> that in Atlanta.  Maybe people just download the slides now?
>> 
> That's my assumption -- the infrastructure and policies are
> better set up now for that sort of thing.

But it does reinforce the importance of getting materials posted
well before the meeting begins.

  john

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:32:00 -0800

At 1:37 PM -0500 12/2/12, Keith Moore wrote:

>  While I fully agree that most WGs could be better at moving work 
> forward between meetings, I don't think it would solve the problem 
> of face to face meeting time being filled up with presentations.
>
>  I suspect that most WG participants have difficulty keeping up with 
> the traffic on their WGs' mailing lists for various reasons (too 
> much "distraction" from normal work, the sad state of mail user 
> agents, etc.). By forcing people to travel away from work, 
> face-to-face meetings serve as useful interruptions from normal 
> distractions and opportunities to catch up on IETF work.  If 
> working groups moved forward even faster than they do now, that 
> might actually be seen to increase the need for presentations at 
> face-to-face meetings.
>
>  Occasionally I've wondered if IETF meetings should have 
> "presentation" sessions separate from (and in advance of) "working" 
> sessions.    The difference between the two types of session would 
> be clearly indicated in the schedule.   The presentation sessions 
> would be geared toward presenting an overview of current state of 
> the proposals, including a summary of recent changes.   Perhaps 
> participants would be allowed to ask questions for clarification, 
> but discussion should be discouraged and any kind of polling of the 
> room or other decision making would be forbidden.  The presentation 
> meetings would therefore be optional for those who had kept up on 
> the mailing list.   And presentations would be forbidden in 
> discussion sessions.
>
>  I can imagine these being useful in several ways, e.g. in 
> facilitating better cross-group and cross-area review.   People who 
> were active participants in working groups could attend 
> presentation sessions of other groups, without sacrificing their 
> attendance in the discussion sessions of the groups in which they 
> were active.
>
>  Perhaps roughly the first 2(?) days of an IETF meeting could be 
> largely devoted to presentation sessions, and the remainder of the 
> time to discussion sessions.    Having a strict allocation of time 
> for each kind of session isn't so important as having the 
> presentation sessions for a particular group well in advance of the 
> discussion session for that group.
>
>  This is something that could be tried on a small scale, by a few 
> working groups (say one in each area) before being widely adopted. 
> It might help, however, to have explicit support for the idea in 
> the tools that maintain and display the meeting schedules.

My initial reaction was "No!" with a gut reaction that it would 
worsen the problems we have, but the more I've thought about this, 
the more I like it.  I've now come around to thinking this could be a 
really good idea.  Instead of fighting to hold back the tide, we 
accept it and figure out how to deal with it.  Yes, let's try it.

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There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way
is to make is so simple that there are obviously no
deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies."     --C. A. R. Hoare