Subject: [edu-team] Edu Team Meeting Minutes 26 March 2015

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2015 14:22:39 +0200

Hi,

Here are the notes from our meeting last Thursday. I didn't catch 
everything. If you think I left out something important, please fill it in.

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

Edu Team Meeting, IETF 92, 26 March 2015
Brian, Stephanie, Alexa, Ray, Alice, Scott, Mirjam on skype, later Jari

1. Feedback from tutorials at IETF 92:

- Feedback from IETF tutorials
   - Alexa distributed feedback forms to the participants (via the speakers)
   - Suggestion for next time: to print it out and hand it to 
participants after the tutorials

1.1. Newcomers:
- Mostly feedback came from newcomers tutorial
- Scott received the highest scores and people found it very helpful

Suggestion to provide an overview of the week for newcomers (in the 
newcomers tutorials). Scott says there is one slide in the newcomers 
tutorial. Brian said that there used to be a Monday morning 9:00 to do 
that, but that might not be practical anymore. Make information 
available on the newcomers pages on the web site for those who don’t 
come to the tutorial. Or maybe provide a handout?

Alexa mentions the ISOC video for newcomers (ten things to know before 
attending an IETF meeting). Maybe also include that in the newcomers 
tutorial or is it too late at that point?
Transport area
- Brian Trammell spoke too quickly, but generally happy and good that 
there was time left for questions

1.2. WG Leadership:
- Margaret said about 20 people attended the session, many of them 
existing WG chairs, and they seemed happy with it.

1.3. Kramdown:
- people found it very informative
- one suggestion: XML2RFC tutorial
- Alice went to the tutorial and suggested to combine with another 
topic; didn’t fill the time. It is only a tool, maybe combine it with 
something else for IETF 94?
- Sarah Banks also suggested to re-do the tutorial at one of the next 
IETF meetings and combine with other tools?

1.4. WG chairs lunch:
- Brian said it went really well, people seemed to be happy. Well 
attended. Possibly become a Sunday tutorial at IETF 94.

2. Tutorials for IETF 93:

- 13:00 Newcomer's Tutorial (Scott Bradner)  (Confirmed) - Buenos Aires 
will the last time for Scott.
- Routing Area Overview (Adrian Farell) (Confirmed; need to confirm time)
- 15:00 Document Editing and Shepherding (Barry Leiba) - Mir will 
confirm with Barry
- Measurements (Vinayak Hedge) (TBD) - Mir will double check
- SDN OpenFlow? & ForCES (Yaakov Stein, Evangelos Haleplidis) (TBD) - 
Mir confirm and ask for outline

3. Tutorials for IETF 94:

- 13:00 Newcomers (Scott Bradner) (Confirmed)
- i18n & PRECIS (Andrew Sullivan) (TBD) - Confirm with Andrew later
-  Internet area overview (Suresh Krishnan) - ADs suggested speakers in 
the meantime
- How to create an ID (Alice)
    - there are a lot of choices for which tools people use to write an ID
    - maybe use kramdown as one tool, github as  another

Short discussion about the use of github. Maybe a tutorial on github? 
But the RFC editor will not accept this as a proper submission.

kramdown ++ (Carsten and Sarah) maybe combined with XML2RFC tutorial? Or 
is that weird,  if the new RFC format is coming soon? Alice mentions 
that the new RFC format only happening in a year or so. Only then new 
tutorial will be necessary. In the meantime “How to create an ID with 
various tools” will be useful.

———

Jari joined

3. Future of the Edu Team
3.1. Scope and mission of Edu Team (still up to date?)
        - What else can we do in addition to the tutorials on Sunday?
        - Info on the IETF web site
        - Coordination with other initiatives

Brian says we need to coordinate with other initiatives even if that’s 
not explicitly our responsibility, for instance:
   - Mentoring for newcomers; generally dealing with newcomers
   - Information on the web site in general; for newcomers but also 
other audiences. Alexa says the web site redesign is to make sure that 
the web site is useful to other audiences as well.
   - Coordination with ISOC (rebranding effort)
   - ISOC Board approved large project and passed it on to Cathy Brown 
to implement it.
   - Jari suggests to coordinate with Greg Wood. Do we need an ISOC 
member on the Edu Team? Mirjam initially joined to coordinate between 
ISOC and Edu Team activities (e.g. the IETF Journal was also an Edu Team 
initiative at that time).

Jari says we need to make sure we amend according to changes in 
technology. Also need to take different audiences into account and the 
different ways people are participating (newcomers). How do they work? 
Do they come and deal with an issue and then leave again? Or do they 
make a career out of IETF work?

Brian says there are two types of people attending the IETF, we need to 
address both.

Some people come, because the topics at the IETF are important for their 
employers.
Should we not also cater more to the open source community?
There are also people that come form other SDOs (ITU) and need to be 
taught how the IETF works (they are in fact newcomers to the IETF 
processes, but do we reach them with the newcomers tutorial?).
Maybe we need  a tutorial that explains the processes and the values of 
them a bit more (apart from the newcomers tutorial).

Scott mentioned that he has been giving courses at Harvard extension 
school since 1995 consisting of a 2-hour lecture a week for 14 weeks per 
semester. The lecture is in-person, streamed and recorded for playable 
for the distance students. It’s being restructured to be all-on-line 
with a bunch of smaller 1-20 minute taped sections,
some optional and some mandatory, interspersed with exercises etc.

Scott suggested do do something similar with the IETF edu efforts. So, 
for instance for YANG we could do a bunch of short segments such as:
- What is YANG (only say what the purpose is - no technical detail)
- What a YANG module looks like
- Walking through a sample YAN module
- Tools for building/checking YANG modules
- YANG in the real world - (systems that use YANG)
- Future directions for YANG
- Developing a YANG module in the IETF

Jari and others like the idea and Jari suggested to think about topics 
such as:
- This is what you need to know when you are an open daylight developer, 
and how you should be working with the IETF.

Maybe 20 minute video/webinar for specific audiences. That would also be 
good for remote participants.
It takes time, infrastructure and maybe even money. Ray says this 
shouldn’t be a problem. Also, it requires a different process than Edu 
Team was doing before. Needs more management outside the three weeks per 
year.  Jari disagrees: maybe other people can contribute. But yes, it 
needs certain management and coordination.

Alice reminded people about the writing-lab: positive feedback, but 
significant workload. Heather is considering to set up a mailing list 
for English language usage questions, with volunteers from the community 
participating to help other authors. No plans to do one-on-one writing 
labs for now.

- Jari says this something about coordination between ISOC and Edu Team 
which Brian likes (didn’t catch that :-/).

3.3 New Edu Team members
     - How do we want to go about this?
     - Finding members via general announcements wasn't successful in 
the past.
     - Better approach individuals directly?
     - Maybe we can try it via the WG chair?
     - Do we need some sort of a job description  (responsibilities, 
expectations, tasks, time needed etc.)

Jari agrees that a general call for volunteers doesn’t work. He suggests 
to think about the tasks and activities first and then find the people. 
Make it attractive for people to join.

Mirjam says it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem: We need to attract 
new members by doing new things. But we first need to find people to be 
able to do new things. We don’t have enough resources.
Jari says yes, if we only concentrate on what we’re doing now. But if we 
come up with new ideas then it might be easier to find people. In 
general we’re not in a bad space. We’re generally doing a good job. But 
we need to plant some new ideas.

Potential new members
- Nalini Elkins (was interested when Brian asked her, but warned that 
she might cause trouble)
- Sarah Banks (she would be a good addition)
- Someone from ISOC?

Edu Team officially reports to the General Area Director.

Actions:
- All to review job description (Brian will send new version to list)
- Mir will follow-up with Nalini and Sarah
- Mir to contact inactive edu team members
- Jari will reach out to Benoit re. open daylight (open source 
community) - DONE (What do we need to do next?)
- Jari will reach out to IESG about potential names
- Jari will reach out to WG chairs about the video ideas.

---

From: Alice Russo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2015 10:41:05 -0500

>   - maybe use kramdown as one tool, github as  another

pandoc2rfc is another.

AFAIK, github is a repository service used for version control to hold intermediate files as the authors are working on a document. The authors still upload a text file using the I-D Submission tool in order to post an I-D.

> 
> Short discussion about the use of github. Maybe a tutorial on github? But the RFC editor will not accept this as a proper submission.

An I-D (which by definition exists in the I-D repository -- not just github) that is approved for publication as an RFC may have a source file that is in github. It's fine if the authors point the RFC Editor to github to retrieve the source file.  (Typically, they either have uploaded the source file using the I-D submission tool or they send the source file via email.)

Thanks,
Alice

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 07:34:01 +1300

> An I-D (which by definition exists in the I-D repository -- not just github) that is approved for publication as an RFC may have a source file that is in github. It's fine if the authors point the…

The point is that people seem to use a version posted on github, and therefore
visible to anybody, as the basis for discussion *before* posting it as an I-D.
Authors have always discussed such drafts of drafts among themselves, but what
is new is discussing drafts of drafts in a public way.

If this becomes popular I expect we will get requests to integrate github
in some way with other tools.

   Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 07:46:10 +1300

Just a few comments on the minutes, below. Also I guess if we
are to follow up on the discussion it might be useful to post an
action list with names and target dates in the EDU wiki?

   Brian

> Transport area
> - Brian Trammell spoke too quickly

Probably better say "One speaker spoke too quickly." When
I mentioned this comment to David Black, he said "No, I'm the
one who speaks too quickly."

> - Sarah Banks also suggested to re-do the tutorial at one of the next IETF meetings and combine with other tools? 

I think she only asked for a repeat; it was Alice who suggested (correctly IMHO)
to combine with other tools.

> Brian says there are two types of people attending the IETF, we need to address both.

That is not very informative - maybe insert (traditional standards specialists
and people mainly motivated by coding and implementation) or something like that.

> - Jari says this something about coordination between ISOC and Edu Team which Brian likes (didn’t catch that :-/). 

I think that was just another reference to the ISOC rebranding, maybe just delete.

  Brian