Subject: Meetings in other regions

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:38:38 -0400

Just to give some extra *valuable* info about my comment in the plenary.

1) Meetings cost money. Doing meetings in Latin America/Caribbean and
Africa, will save a lot of cost to IETF as an organization.

2) There are a few locations in both regions, which have the
facilities+connectivity, and flying there is cheaper than flying to some of
the usual regions (I'm referring to the average participant flying cost).

3) Often, visa requirements for those locations are much lower and
affordable for all that for example North America, so we all will be more
comfortable. I think is much mort important to allow more people to actually
come to the meeting than making sure that it is close to some specific
region.

4) Probably attendance could grow, not just from locals, but also in general
if overall participant cost is lower.

5) There have been already some offers to sponsor meetings there (even if I
believe the sponsorship should be changed from what we have now, but this is
a different topic).

I only see advantages.

Regards,
Jordi

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:56:15 +0300 (EEST)

> Africa, will save a lot of cost to IETF as an organization.
....
> believe the sponsorship should be changed from what we have now, but this is

No doubt some parts of such a meeting cost would be cheaper. 
Actually meetings don't "cost" IETF money though, as Ray's slides 
showed, meeting revenues are higher expenses.  Perhaps the bottom line 
(facilities cost, food/beverages, sponsorship, hosting expenses, 
network connectivity, etc.) has not been significantly different from 
a more traditional and less risky location or logistics haven't worked 
out.

Personally, I have no particular desire to meet in Africa or Latin 
America/Caribbean but if the IAOC feels that makes a significant 
difference financially I'd have no problem with it.  They've been 
chosen to make that call so that we don't need to worry about it.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 08:08:12 -0400

Meetings cost a lot of IETF money and some times that cost doesn't allow to
provide the revenues to sustain IETF. That's why we need to plan ahead and
as cheap/convenient as possible.

This meeting has been an exception because we even got money to come here.
Some other meetings venues, often only un NA, don't charge for the meeting
rooms. Also in NA may be we pay more for the food, because breakfast is not
included in the hotel guest room cost, while in other locations is included
and thus IETF doesn't to pay for that. So at the end ... is not so easy as
it may seem !

Also we need to rely as much as possible, if available, in local volunteer
people willing to help even in the negotiations. That can save money and I
know very well an example of a failed situation because the local volunteer
was ignored, which we should avoid repeating in the future :-(

Saludos,
Jordi

> De: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
> Responder a: <[email-masked]>
> Fecha: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:56:15 +0300 (EEST)
> Para: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
> CC: <[email-masked]>
> Asunto: Re: Meetings in other regions
> 

Bye 6Bone. Hi, IPv6 !
http://www.ipv6day.org

---

From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:00:51 +0200

At 14:08 13/07/2006, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:

>  So at the end ... is not so easy as it may seem !

I think it is quite simple: What matters to me is the total costs of
meeting rooms, breakfast, coffee and connectivity, or the stuff covered
by the registration fee.   I'm prepared to pay a registration fee at
roughly the current level for those things, plus the costs of my hotel
room and plane ticket.

I couldn't care less how the money from the registration fees is split
over the various cost items, we have hired people to take care of that.

Henk

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---

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:56:41 -0400

On more reason to make sure that we make to as many continents as possible,
so we keep the balance among more people being able to participate from
different regions, w/o always needing to travel for two days almost the same
folks.

Regards,
Jordi

> De: Russ White <[email-masked]>
> Responder a: <[email-masked]>
> Fecha: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:05:15 -0400
> Para: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
> CC: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 
> Another point to consider is "reachability." While some folks don't mind
> flying two days in each direction to get to some location or another, I
> generally consider a good balance between time and cost to be more
> important than pure monetary considerations.
> 
> For instance, I would consider Latin America, but I generally don't
> attend Japan/Korea/etc, just due to time in flight constraints. Someone
> in Europe might consider Sand Diego a similar issue (where Africa might
> be easier to get to than Sand Diego).
> 
> Anyway, just another consideration to think about. It's not always a
> pure money issue.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Russ
> 
> Pekka Savola wrote:
>> No doubt some parts of such a meeting cost would be cheaper. Actually
>> meetings don't "cost" IETF money though, as Ray's slides showed, meeting
>> revenues are higher expenses.  Perhaps the bottom line (facilities cost,
>> food/beverages, sponsorship, hosting expenses, network connectivity,
>> etc.) has not been significantly different from a more traditional and
>> less risky location or logistics haven't worked out.
>> 
>> difference financially I'd have no problem with it.  They've been chosen
>> to make that call so that we don't need to worry about it.
>> 
> 
> - --
> [email-masked] CCIE <>< Grace Alone
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> 
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> UE2U3VzggFrG0WnJc0EwN2E=
> =i1TL
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Bye 6Bone. Hi, IPv6 !
http://www.ipv6day.org

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:38:39 -0400

If you want a really inexpensive hotel, food that is very good, and  
an environment in which you are perfectly safe because everyone  
around you has guns and none of them are pointed at you, I have a  
suggestion for a meeting spot. Take a look at

	ftp://ftpeng.cisco.com/fred/march-ietf-meeting/proposal.html

This details a trip I took to visit a university and several smaller  
schools last September, with a view to supporting the deployment of  
an NRN in the country and laying a fiber plant throughout the  
university. It details the city I traversed entering the region  
(coming from Europe, where I had other business), and then left  
through on my return home.

There were a few problems with the location. Electric power, for  
example, is unpredictable, and large hotels non-existent. Meat is  
readily available, but refrigeration isn't, so meat makes its way to  
market under its own power and must be purchased daily. Communication  
from the university was via a NATO communications network called the  
Silk Road. Now, the Silk Road network works, but on the Internet  
connection from the hotel I at one point experienced a two minute  
period in which ping RTTs ramped up from their normal 630 ms to 24-25  
seconds (yes, you read that right), held at that for two minutes, and  
then returned to normal. In three years there will be a fiber plant  
around the country, so says the Ministry of Communications, but the  
laying that fiber is hampered by the fact that they have to clear  
land mines before they can trench.

I intended this note as a reductio ad absurdum. But on second  
thought, it might actually be good for us to visit the location. Take  
a gander at

	http://www.skyimagelab.com/earatnitlar.html

My observation is that the places on earth that are not well lit with  
city lights - many of which I have been to, as have others among us -  
are not generally well "lit" with fiber either. I wonder whether  
having a meeting in a place that is not connected by a red carpet  
throughout the Western Europe/North America/AsiaPac/Australia fiber  
corridor would change our perspective on the requirement for routing  
to not simply develop A route but to develop a GOOD route, for the  
development of services where bandwidth comes at a premium, and for  
consideration of the number of RTTs it takes to accomplish something  
in an application.

I spoke a week ago with Franck Martin, from Fiji. If you're looking  
for "places", Fiji would be a wonderful. He complained that while  
many GBPS of fiber traveled within a few miles of his home, but due  
to the cost of the landing site he was limited to tens of kilobits.  
If you're looking for OC-3 to the hotel...

My point is that it is not about the price of the hotel, nor is it  
about taking the Internet gospel to those who haven't been able to  
participate in its development, as if they would as a result have the  
capability to meaningfully participate in our efforts. It's not about  
interesting places in which to have many fine lunches and dinners.  
It's about having productive meetings in an atmosphere conducive to  
them that is reasonably convenient for 1200-or-so people to travel to  
for a week while maintain daily connectivity with home, family, and  
their daily workplace.

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:17:27 -0400

> If you're looking for OC-3 to the hotel...

As an aside on Fiji, I think the price issues with access to Southern  
Cross from Fiji have more to do with effective regulation. In other  
words, the price of the connectivity from a meeting's perspective  
probably depends greatly on who your sponsor is (or, more  
specifically, whether they happen to be the people with the exclusive  
local access to the cable head).

Franck would no doubt get much most cost-effective and higher- 
performance access to his house if he acquired sponsorship of this  
kind :-)

APNIC 18 was held in Fiji, and very nice it was, too. I have fond  
memories of SIP over wifi from the beach.

Joe

---

From: Russ White <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:05:15 -0400

:-)

Russ

- --

---

From: "Darryl \(Dassa\) Lynch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 23:36:37 +1000

|> -----Original Message-----
|> From: Russ White [mailto:[email-masked]] 
|> Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 6:05 AM
|> To: Pekka Savola
|> Cc: [email-masked]; JORDI PALET MARTINEZ
|> Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions
|> 
|> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
|> Hash: SHA1
|> 
|> 
|> Another point to consider is "reachability." While some 
|> folks don't mind flying two days in each direction to get to 
|> some location or another, I generally consider a good 
|> balance between time and cost to be more important than pure 
|> monetary considerations.
|> 
|> For instance, I would consider Latin America, but I 
|> generally don't attend Japan/Korea/etc, just due to time in 
|> flight constraints. Someone in Europe might consider Sand 
|> Diego a similar issue (where Africa might be easier to get 
|> to than Sand Diego).
|> 
|> Anyway, just another consideration to think about. It's not 
|> always a pure money issue.

Speaking as one who follows what is happening online but doesn't have much
chance to participate otherwise, money plays a big part.

The closer the events are  to  my location, the more likely  it  is   I may
make it.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch

---

From: Patrick Vande Walle <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:00:40 +0200

Fred Baker said the following  on 13/07/2006 13:38:
> participate in its development [...]
> them 
Fred,

The place where we had the ICANN meeting in Marrakech provided fast
connectivity, very good mobile phone coverage and all you would need for
a productive meeting, despite the fact that it was located  in Africa.
This is a counter example to what your are trying to demonstrate. There
are many places places in Africa, Asia-Pacific  and Latin America where
you could have a productive meeting. One only needs to look for them.

In terms of image, I tend to think that it would indeed help the IETF to
have meetings outside the Northern America  and European regions. It is
not so much about spreading the Internet gospel - others do it better -
although it would help.  It is more in terms of interacting with the
local community  to find out  what they expect to come out  of a
standardization process. The hypothesis by which whatever is good for
the Northern hemisphere is automatically fine for the rest of the world
seems slightly colonialist to me.

Best,

Patrick Vande Walle
ISOC Luxembourg

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:13:34 -0400

That does not match the report I received from another attendee.
He commented on
2 days of travel to get there,
multiple 1 hour plus outages of external connectivity
and generally concluded that it would be a very bad choice of locale 
for the IETF.

Personally, I find the view that we hold meetings where we have 
active participants makes good sense.
And folks can actively participate by email / I-D writing without 
attending meetings.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

---

From: Patrick Vande Walle <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:27:39 +0200

> 2 days of travel to get there,
... but 2 hours from  Europe ...
> multiple 1 hour plus outages of external connectivity
I did not, once I switched to wired ethernet. The technical team took
some time to identify the guy who purposely created ghosts APs to break
other people's connectivity. So, it was not the external connectivity
which was broken, but only the local WLAN.

Best,

Patrick

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:46:44 +0200

On 15-jul-2006, at 17:00, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

> standardization process.

I don't see how some 1300 engineers running around who are more than  
busy enough with technical work and the endless IETF process stuff  
(was it just me or was the difference between the "administrative"  
and "technical" plenaries especially hard to determine this time?)  
helps a community found out what to expect from a standardization  
process. A much, MUCH smaller number of engineers taking the time to  
do this specific job would be much more effective and efficient than  
having all IETF attendees incur extra travel time/costs and other  
inconveniences.

> The hypothesis by which whatever is good for

If you remove the northern hemisphere there isn't much inhabited  
world left.

I don't think the problems of the developing world can be solved  
through protocol standardization... Being able to reuse protocols  
designed and standardized elsewhere allows these parts of the world  
to focus on other problems.

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:44:51 +0200

+1

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:36:14 +0200

Patrick,

It may have got lost in this thread, but Fred has got the nub of
the argument here: the IETF's goal is to do its work as efficiently
as possible, and that means assembling at locations that are
(on some sort of average) convenient for our active participants.
In practical terms, that means assembling in countries or regions
with a good number of current participants.  I show a pie chart
at every plenary (a tradition started by my predecessors) that
gives a pretty strong indication of what those countries or regions
are. You saw the version of that pie chart from IETF65 in the
ISOC Board meeting in Marrakech. The IETF66 version is in the
Wednesday plenary proceedings from this week.
(temporary location:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=66 )

Outreach is important, and welcoming new active contributors
is important, but the dominant consideration is a location that
is convenient and effective for our current active contributors.

Regards

     Brian

---

From: "Stephane H. Maes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:02:48 -0700

Brian,

Possibly.

But when putting all under consideration even from that point of view, travel (time and cost) is only one factor. Cost of facilities, facilities it self, quality of service, cost for participants on site etc is also important and often way lower in some of the locations not considered so far by IETF.

Attendance of the usual contributors is important. But that arguments seems to have be rehashed endlessly. Still I have seen this year WG meetings organized in NA and in a (far away) Asia location outside currently typical IETF locations. There were more than double of active participants at the meeting away from NA...

So I think so me of the basic assumptions may be revisited (or at least more carefully stated) namely 1) that cost / time is really higher outside NA (and sometimes selected European or Asian location) - it is often not true even factoring in travel costs and travel time is a quite relative considerations 2) that main contributors mostly come only to NA (and sometimes selected European or Asian location) and that therefore we would not have active participants when going there...

Stephane

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 9:36 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions

Patrick,

It may have got lost in this thread, but Fred has got the nub of the argument here: the IETF's goal is to do its work as efficiently as possible, and that means assembling at locations that are (on some sort of average) convenient for our active participants.
In practical terms, that means assembling in countries or regions with a good number of current participants.  I show a pie chart at every plenary (a tradition started by my predecessors) that gives a pretty strong indication of what those countries or regions are. You saw the version of that pie chart from IETF65 in the ISOC Board meeting in Marrakech. The IETF66 version is in the Wednesday plenary proceedings from this week.
(temporary location:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=66 )

Outreach is important, and welcoming new active contributors is important, but the dominant consideration is a location that is convenient and effective for our current active contributors.

Regards

     Brian

Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
>>participate in its development [...] It's about having productive 
>>meetings in an atmosphere conducive to them
>
> Fred,
>
> connectivity, very good mobile phone coverage and all you would need 
> for a productive meeting, despite the fact that it was located  in Africa.
> This is a counter example to what your are trying to demonstrate. 
> There are many places places in Africa, Asia-Pacific  and Latin 
> America where you could have a productive meeting. One only needs to look for them.
>
> In terms of image, I tend to think that it would indeed help the IETF 
> to have meetings outside the Northern America  and European regions. 
> It is not so much about spreading the Internet gospel - others do it 
> better - although it would help.  It is more in terms of interacting 
> with the local community  to find out  what they expect to come out  
> of a standardization process. The hypothesis by which whatever is good 
> for the Northern hemisphere is automatically fine for the rest of the 
> world seems slightly colonialist to me.
>
> Best,
>
> Patrick Vande Walle
> ISOC Luxembourg
>

---

From: JFC Morfin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:47:50 +0200

Brian,
it may have got loast in this thread too, but Patrick has got the nub 
of your argument there. The IETF goal is to efficiently do a work 
which is as afficient as possible. RFC 3935 says that the IETF has to 
"influence" the world. I say that it has to "serve" it, what also 
means to educate its own members about what is efficient in our real 
world. A world where "NA" is understood as the country code for 
Namibia. IMHO you and Patrick are equally true. And so I am: there 
are three meetings a year. Why not one for efficiency, one for 
efficient deliverables, one for more efficient working methods?
jfc

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:11:07 -0400

Speaking as a working group chair, what is important to me is the
ability to make progress on the milestones the working group is
committed to achieve.  Traveling to some far away location in order
to fill the seats with spectators does not result in work being
accomplished.   I require that not only can I afford to travel there
but that the half dozen active participants be able to do so as well.
We are already at the point where I and others are experimenting
with methods to improve the capabilities of remote participants to
actively partake in the working group sessions.

My belief is that working group sessions should avoid presentations
whenever possible.  The working group gets two hours of face to face
time every four months.  I'm not going to waste that time on
presentations meant to instruct the locals and if you don't know what
is going on before you arrive in the meeting room chances are you will
not be able to contribute in a meaningful way.

At IETF66 the Kitten, Kerberos and SASL working groups used a format
that involved wandering microphones in the audience to permit natural
dialogs among the active contributors in the room similar to that
experienced at any technical design meeting while ensuring that those
listening on the audio stream do not miss a beat.  At the same time
the Jabber room was projected on a second display in order to enable
all of the participants in the meeting room to see the input of those
not physically present.  This model worked so well in fact that in
SASL one of the primary document authors who was not present at the
meeting was able to lead the discussion with him typing away on
Jabber and the rest of the room responding via voice.

When I attend IETF it is rare that I ever get to experience the world
outside the conference hotel.  My days are filled from breakfast
meetings to late night work sessions.  There is so much that needs to
be done that I could care less about where in the world I am or what
the weather is like outside.  What is important is that when I am not
in a session that there be lounges in the hotel for to use for meetings
that have working network access.  For me Paris and Montreal were the
two worst meetings I have experienced in ten years because of the
separation of the IETF hotel from the meeting locations and the in
ability to provide network access in the hotel public spaces.  My
productivity dropped significantly because of those failures.

The best IETF meetings from my perspective are those held in
Minneapolis.  The hotel understands what we need.  The lounge and bar
areas are smoke free and plentiful.  There is accessible food via the
habitrails.  Things just work.

To summarize, before the IETF should visit new countries folks from
those countries need to participate on the mailing lists and begin to
actively involve themselves reviewing documents and editing documents.
That is the work we do.  Traveling to Casablanca is not going to help
get the work done.

The one piece of evidence that might change my opinion would be this.
Show me evidence that first time attendees at a local meeting results
in those attendees editing a document and becoming repeat attendees
in the future.

Jeffrey Altman

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:35:03 -0400

On 7/17/06 10:11 AM, "Jeffrey Altman" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> committed to achieve.

Sure, but you don't want to risk insularity, which I think
clearly has been at least partly responsible for some less-than-
stellar work.  There's a need to look a little beyond the
next deliverable and think about what's needed to avoid turning
working groups into echo chambers.  Clearly this is more important
in the early stages of a working group, but there are always
working groups in their early stages.

And while there's an idealized picture of how work gets done in
the IETF, the truth is that as the organization has grown and
has gotten broader participation, culture from other standards
bodies has been gradually been incorporated to the point where
you cannot honestly say that the main work of the IETF is done
on mailing lists.  The role of meetings has changed.  It seems
to me that either we should make a better effort to stick to
the ideal or try to be more explicit about the changing role
of meetings.

That said, and given the difficulties of balancing competing
priorities in site location, it seems reasonable to me to make
a decent, good-faith effort without getting overly bogged down
in "where should we meet?" discussions, and really try to get
the remote participation thing nailed down a little better.  The
ratio of good to bad remote meeting input has improved a lot
over the past year or so but there are still too many working
groups without a Jabber scribe in the room (which prevents remote
listeners from providing inputs), etc.

Melinda

---

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:42:25 -0400

At 10:11 AM -0400 7/17/06, Jeffrey Altman wrote:

>whenever possible.

Visual material is something that is helpful but it need not be a 
presentation.  E.g., if we still had blackboards it would often times 
be easier to express ideas in multiple dimensions.

After Dallas I commented on the lack of visual material as being 
detrimental to the process.  One of the persons in the WG I used as 
an example took exception to that (not in a personal way, in an 
approach way) but this time did indeed have one slide to accompany 
his words.  The slide was precisely what I thought was needed - one 
thing to focus on not a tutorial presentation.  I noted during the 
meeting that non-English native (assuming I can judge this by looks) 
were taking photos of the screen for later reference.

I did listen to some of the sessions "on the radio" when I was caught 
in my hotel room and unable to make it to the venue in time.  While 
doing so, I found myself wistfully thinking of remote participation 
of ICANN meetings, where video is supplied. ;)  In-time video has 
also been available for other meetings as well.  (BTW, while the 
sessions were on in the venue, bandwidth was great in the hotel!)

>Jabber and the rest of the room responding via voice.

That's an example of visual material.

>outside the conference hotel.

That is a red herring.  The purpose of travelling the IETF is not to 
enable sightseeing or even cultural awareness.  There are many side 
meetings, not on the public agenda, that are made possible via the 
travel.  Some of these are private business meetings - those that 
really make the Internet go.  Some are quasi-public meetings of 
policy folks who spend time tracking the IETF and then mixing with 
regulatory agencies and other organizations to provide a better 
(perhaps non-tech) environment for the technical work.

In the development of DNSSEC, we have had technical workshops 
connected to the IETF and other meetings.  Local attendance at these 
were enabled by travelling the main meeting around.

The advancement of the Internet isn't just engineering anymore.  It's 
about the use of a tool in civilization.  There's still engineering 
work needed but it is not the (only) "long pole" in the tent.

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

Soccer/Futbol. IPv6.  Both have lots of 1's and 0's and have a hard time
catching on in North America.

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:51:46 +0200

On 17-jul-2006, at 16:35, Melinda Shore wrote:

> it seems reasonable to me to make

Why do you need a jabber _scribe_ for input? I think the idea of  
projecting the jabber discussion on a screen is interesting, although  
in theory it should be unnecessary as everyone can log in to jabber  
on their laptop.

But the problem is that we don't know what jabber is to us: is it a  
low-bandwidth copy of the audio and/or a live version of the notes,  
or is it an extra out of band channel?

Although I did jabber scribing for a couple of sessions the past week  
I don't see all that much value in doing that: the audio feeds are  
much more useful for following what's going on. I really like using  
jabber to insert comments without the need to go up to the mike and  
interrupt what's going on there (or stand in line until the  
discussion is on a very different subject).

One thing that could help here is reduce the audio lag. It's quite  
common to see something appear in jabber before you hear it on the  
audio feed. A long delay makes reacting to the audio over jabber  
problematic.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:56:08 -0400

On 7/17/06 10:51 AM, "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Why do you need a jabber _scribe_ for input?

To allow remote participants to provide input.

> much more useful for following what's going on.

As the number of meeting groups grow and the meetings become more
densely packed, the jabber transcripts are useful for following
what's going on in a meeting you're not in, as well as providing
feedback.

> audio feed. A long delay makes reacting to the audio over jabber

To be honest that's not something I noticed, and I was participating
from home last week.

But anyway, if we're going to continue to allow the meetings
to grow in significance (as a matter of process) it seems to me
that the remote participation tools become more important, not
less important.

Melinda

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:10:49 +0200

> To allow remote participants to provide input.

You can't type and run upto the microphone to relay comments at the  
same time...

> what's going on in a meeting you're not in, as well as providing

Yes, I've heard that before.

By the way, was it just me or was the schedule a bit strange last  
week? On wednesday and thursday we had sessions until 16.10 and then  
the plenary at 17.00. That's a 50 minute break, a bit on the long  
side, especially as the sesson ending at 16.10 had only a 10 minute  
break before it which doesn't accommodate for sessions running late  
and/or a quick discussion afterward and then walking all the way to  
the other side of the palais. Ending at 19.30 / 20.00 is much better  
for remote participants from the east, though.

> To be honest that's not something I noticed, and I was participating

Maybe it was better last week than other meetings since we have  
audio. I didn't use the audio last week.

> that the remote participation tools become more important, not

Did I say it should become less important? I don't see how the  
meetings are growing in significance, though.

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:17:48 +0100

> Yes, I've heard that before.
Also, you can't always get the audio, and if often cuts, and is 
generally quite noisy, and people tend to forget to come to 
microphones in the heat of the moment.

> meetings are growing in significance, though.

I think Melinda's intention was to suggest that they ought to be.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:18:19 -0500

> listeners from providing inputs), etc.

OK, this is only a thought, and I'm out of the process improvement business 
anyway, but I've been seeing a consistent improvement in the quality of 
jabber logs for at least two years, and I'm wondering if there are working 
groups who would be willing to try "minutes = chair summary plus jabber 
logs" for a few IETFs (without what we usually think of as "detailed 
minutes"), and see if this is actually workable.

I'm a many-time repeat offender as WG note-taker, and am watching my notes 
look more and more like a jabber log with only one jabberer; the advantages 
of jabber (in my experience) are

- it's nice for the note-taker to be able to participate in the meeting - as 
an extreme case, in the SIPPING Ad Hoc on Friday, Gonzalo and Mary handed me 
the mike about twenty times, but very litte of what I said appeared in the 
notes, and it's worse when someone is already talking when I stop talking. 
That's typical in my experience. With Jabber, people can type until I get 
back to my seat.

- It's really nice when I misquote, or mis-attribute, something that was 
said and another jabberer corrects it right away. This is SO much better 
than the WG chair having to listen to the audio stream to check my notes 
after some number of days has elapsed (and sometimes all the chair can tell 
from the audio is that I got it wrong, without knowing what "right" would 
have been).

- and, obviously, this works better for remote participants (what's the 
alternative - send e-mail to the list?)

Now that all this stuff is on the IETF website, it should be more enduring 
than if the jabber rooms and logs were hosted somewhere else.

Of course, Jabber has to work; our wireless network has been pretty solid 
the last couple of meetings, but even so, if you offer a Jabber scribe an 
Ethernet connection and guaranteed power at the front of the room, that 
would be pretty compelling for me, most IETFs.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:21:49 -0400

> I think Melinda's intention was to suggest that they ought to be.

I'd rather they didn't, actually.

Melinda

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:26:05 +0100

> I'd rather they didn't, actually.

Hmmm.... Yes, that was rather vague, wasn't it?

I think Melinda's intention was to suggest that the meetings ought to 
be growing in significance.

Is that better?

Dave.

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:27:03 -0400

In one session, I provided jabber note taking.
Participants indicated that my real-time efforts to create concise 
statements of what was being discussed where helpful even with the 
audio feed.  (I asked because I was not sure I was adding value.)

Yours,
Joel

At 10:51 AM 7/17/2006, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
>...
...

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:31:17 -0400

> be growing in significance.

The wording is better, but it's still the case that I'd rather that
we made a better effort to conduct the bulk of the IETF's business on
mailing lists rather than in meetings.  What I'm saying is that it's
hard to get the toothpaste back in the tube, and that if the growing
role of meetings is inevitable let's acknowledge that and try to make
it work well.

I like Spencer's suggestion.  In the past I've prepared final meeting
minutes by editing together the minute-taker's notes and the jabber
log and I thought it worked very well.

Melinda

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:53:53 -0400

Hi,

I would not like to see raw jabber logs included as part of the
minutes. The signal-to-noise ratio is way too low in many meetings.

Jabber logs written by a scribe do not do a good job representing the
body language and the nuances of speech that may be important to
really understand what a person said. I would also be concerned that
there are side-discussions in jabber that are not relayed to the whole
room; including those side conversations as a reflection of what was
said in the meeting is simply misleading. 

It is the chair's job to provide a summary of the meeting for the
mailing list to see what was discussed and "decided". I do not think
the chair should be allowed to evade this responsibility by simply
posting a quick summary and the raw jabber logs to the mailing list as
the official minutes.

David Harrington
[email-masked] 
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

> From: Spencer Dawkins [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 11:18 AM
> To: [email-masked]

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:49:54 +0200

On 17-jul-2006, at 17:53, David Harrington wrote:

> really understand what a person said.

People should know better than to use body language and nuances of  
speech that don't translate into text to convey content in a multi- 
cultural environment such as the IETF.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:34:13 -0700

> Why do you need a jabber _scribe_ for input?

The primary value of a jabber scribe is that someone knows that  
*they* should type into the chat room. Absent that, yes, anyone  
*could* type, but who reliably *would*?

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:39:46 -0700

Edward Lewis wrote:

> I did listen to some of the sessions "on the radio" when I was caught in
> my hotel room and unable to make it to the venue in time.  While doing
> so, I found myself wistfully thinking of remote participation of ICANN
> meetings, where video is supplied. ;)  In-time video has also been
> available for other meetings as well.  (BTW, while the sessions were on
> in the venue, bandwidth was great in the hotel!)

Cool That's one more application for the audio streams.

I would note, that in the context of providing video streaming there is
a direct bearing on the costs involved in providing the service, which
has to be underwritten or passed to somewhere...

joelja

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 12:45:08 -0500

> The primary value of a jabber scribe is that someone knows that  *they* 
> should type into the chat room. Absent that, yes, anyone  *could* type, 
> but who reliably *would*?

Having been here a few times, collisions are ugly (when you are typing, more 
slowly than usual, and someone tries to help, and the result looks like two 
different conversations, because one of you got the name wrong or missed 
some key point)... I'm guessing that not appointing a jabber scribe would 
give more collisions.

But this is still fairly new territory for me.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:01:37 -0700

> To be honest that's not something I noticed, and I was participating

Audio playout is heavily dependant on the client. Given the delay built
into the encoder the relay and the servers it doesn't get much better
than 1 or 2 seconds, but the clients will happily pad that out 10-30
seconds.

The encoder has improved a bit since the previous meeting.

joelja

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:18:35 -0700

> but who reliably *would*?

To underscore your point:

1. There is a clear benefit in having a reasonably something along the lines of
a meeting trascript.  The jabber log is a remarkably good means of obtaining
that and having it be available in real time.

2. The mere existence of a jabber session is not enough to produce the
transcript. Without having a person assigned the task, the group would be
relying on the happenstance of that different individuals would decide to
perform this task. There is quite a bit of research on group behavior that
assures us that this will not happen. (*)

(*) The body of formal, sociology and psychology research underscores what is
perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese>.

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:22:31 +0100

> what's going on in a meeting you're not in, as well as providing

Improving WLAN (802.11a seems popular :) helps jabber scribing.

-- 
Tim/::1

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 02:44:08 -0400

On Monday, July 17, 2006 10:11:07 AM -0400 Jeffrey Altman 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> For me Paris and Montreal were the

While I agree with most of what Jeff said, I have to comment on this.

I agree that having the hotel separated from the meeting locations is a 
significant issue, both because of the extra time required to travel 
between locations, and because of the lack of network connectivity.  I 
actually found Vienna worse for this than either Paris or Montreal, because 
people were scattered across many hotels, often several blocks away from 
the meeting site.

However, the conference centers in both Paris and Montreal had excellent 
meeting facilities.  The network last week was fabulous, and as Jeff 
pointed out in a message to the WG chairs list, Paris was where we first 
discovered the utility of having a few extra wireless mics for supporting 
round-table discussion.

> habitrails.  Things just work.

I strongly agree.  We've been away from Minneapolis for too long.

-- Jeff

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:59:50 +0200

As someone who has both done a lot of jabber scribing and is also a WG
chair and has also remotely participated, I agree with Dave Harrington
on each of his points.  Putting these two threads back together,
however, let me suggest the following:

    * No minute taker is perfect.  This includes the jabber scribe
      (especially this one).
    * It is useful for the chairs to be able to "grep" the official
      jabber takers' capture of what went on in the room, both when
      developing minutes, and when controversies arise as they sometimes
      do.  They tend to be far more succinct than a full audio replay.
    * Properly jabbered minutes can suffice as the basis from which a
      summary can be made.  However,
    * All of this depends on a fully functional network, something that
      we cannot yet take for granted.  Although it generally performed
      well, there were a few hiccups.  While we can aspire for more
      reliability, I don't think we should predicate our minutes on it.
    * While the audio was generally VERY good this last conference (I
      relied on it for the few meetings I took part in), there were a
      few bad patches.  I view jabbering and audio as quite complimentary.
    * The side conversations in the jabber log to me are often as
      relevant as what's being said by individuals.  In the case of WAE,
      there were several very lively discussions, including one that
      contained facts that caught an AD by surprise.
    * Regarding input to the microphone, a better solution than having
      the jabber scribe voice a remote participant's comment would be to
      find a way for the remote participant to actually voice it.  I
      wonder if this isn't an area we could ask the IAD and interested
      volunteers to explore, and perhaps experiment with.

Eliot

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:14:00 +0200

Just a reminder of what our process rules (RFC 2418) say:

    All working group sessions (including those held outside of the IETF
    meetings) shall be reported by making minutes available.  These
    minutes should include the agenda for the session, an account of the
    discussion including any decisions made, and a list of attendees. The
    Working Group Chair is responsible for insuring that session minutes
    are written and distributed, though the actual task may be performed
    by someone designated by the Working Group Chair. The minutes shall
    be submitted in printable ASCII text ...

We don't insist on the list of attendees when that is in the blue sheets,
but it's clear that the minutes have to be readable ("an account of the
discussion including any decisions made") and that is not usually
the state of a raw jabber log. It's important, since the decisions taken
in a meeting have to be confirmed on the list - if the minutes are
properly written, it's enough to ask for agreement on the minutes.

A carefully edited jabber log can of course be just fine.

(All of this applies equally to meetings at IETF sites, interim meetings,
WG conference calls, and WG jabber conferences - readable minutes must be
agreed on the list.)

     Brian

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 07:06:23 -0400

On Tuesday, July 18, 2006 12:14:00 PM +0200 Brian E Carpenter 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> if the minutes are

Yes, but you have to be careful.  Many organizations follow a practice in 
which the members approve the minutes of each meeting sometime after the 
meeting (often, at the next meeting).  But this "approval" is merely 
agreement that the minutes are an accurate representation of what happened 
at the meeting.

In the IETF, it's not good enough for the mailing list to agree that the 
minutes are _accurate_.  They also need to agree with the decisions 
recorded therein.

Still, your point is well taken.  Raw jabber logs certainly do not 
constitute minutes.

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <[email-masked]>
   Sr. Research Systems Programmer
   School of Computer Science - Research Computing Facility
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 07:02:07 -0500

Sorry, I should have responded to the first notes on-list...

> A carefully edited jabber log can of course be just fine.

You know, there was a day when "he said/she said" minutes were actually 
discouraged at the IETF... not that I've found a pointer to that written 
down anywhere, but people often pointed this out when I started volunteering 
to take notes (somewhere around the Yokohama timeframe).

Since this was my suggestion, I should point out that my "carefully edited" 
NON-jabber minutes look a heckuva lot like what working group chairs often 
post as their minutes, without summary, in the proceedings.

My opinion, which is not the only one available on earth, is that

if one working group chair (and preferably all of the working group's 
chairs) reviews careful jabber logs, which I was suggesting could be checked 
for accuracy by anyone else participating in the meeting, either onsite or 
remotely, while the jabbering scribe was still typing, and

reviews the audio for anything that is still unclear and violates either 
memory or sanity, and

then summarizes the accummulated notes in a clear fashion saying

- these were the topics,

- these were the issues that were discussed,

- these were the major points that were raised,

- these were the sense-of-the-room calls that will be verified on the 
mailing list,

and then sends the summary, pointers to the presentations, pointers to the 
jabber log, and pointers to the audio to the working group mailing list for 
review, which is a lot more likely to happen with a summary,

and then posts all of this to the proceedings,

that would be a great leap forward from what is produced today.

For reference, my (non-jabber) notes from Montreal were

BEHAVE - 19KB
SIP - 31 KB
SIPPING -52 KB
SIPSEC - 14 KB

and, since I'm rereading them today for my own trip report, it's not that 
easy to go through the non-jabber notes, either.

*I* wish that I'd had help from other people in producing them, and the only 
way I know how to collaboratively produce this kind of semi-transcript is 
using jabber. Other opinions may be present on this mailing list...

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: "Richard Shockey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:32:44 -0400

> While I agree with most of what Jeff said, I have to comment on this.

The network access in the Delta was a problem. But the Montreal Venue was
excellent. Well worth the minor walk. The city was marvelous. I'd easily
vote to go back again. This potential pattern of one meeting in Canada one
in the US and the other in Euro/Asia-Pac is working out very well.

> I strongly agree.  We've been away from Minneapolis for too long.

Gag .. Yes the Hilton in MN is nearly the perfect physical venue but frankly
enough is enough.  There are many other US cities with comparable
facilities. It makes a lot of sense to move the meetings around the vast
majority of us do like the opportunity to experience a different city from
time to time.

---

From: "Richard Shockey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:45:32 -0400

> From: Melinda Shore [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 11:31 AM
> To: Dave Cridland
> Cc: IETF-Discussion

I've found that to be a very useful technique a well. The other thing that
continually amazes me is that more WG's have not adopted the practice of
appointing a WG Secretary to assist the chairs in various administrative
functions like document tracking, NIT reviews and more importantly being the
defacto permanent scribe. 

I'm constantly amazed at WG meetings where 5 or 10 minutes being wasted
trying to console some poor soul into acting as a scribe. 

I cant imagine co-chairing the ENUM WG anymore without a WG Secretary. I
wholeheartedly recommend enough the practice.

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:23:33 +0100

>really understand what a person said.
That is certainly true, but I am not sure if jabber logs are any 
different in this respect from regular minutes.

>I would also be concerned that
I've mostly had an opposite experience: several active WG participants 
of the WG I was chairing couldn't attend in person and their side 
conversations were as valuable as comments made during face-to-face 
meetings.

>posting a quick summary and the raw jabber logs to the mailing list as
I agree that using raw minutes as the minutes is a bad idea. I've always 
edited jabber logs before producing meeting notes.

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:37:35 -0400

Folks interested in the topic of minutes may want to go find a copy of
(the expired) draft-meyer-agendas-and-minutes-00.txt

And if they think this is a good direction to go, encourage the
authors to update the document and push it forward through the system.

Thomas

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:19:11 -0700

> is convenient and effective for our current active contributors.

Outreach is important to grow the top line revenue, but its more important
value is in broadening and balancing the perspective. Convenience is
important to sustaining participation, but that needs to be balanced by
reality outside the fiber connected large hotel world. As Fred suggested in
the Afghanistan note, there are places in the world that don't have zero
latency/loss fiber paths to the participant's home networks. I can still
hear the screams from the developers 20 years ago when I 'broke' the network
by making them live like all their customers behind a 1/2 second delay. 

A dose of reality would impact many of the assumptions people bring to the
standards process. If nothing else it would drive home a reason to be
explicitly clear in text rather than assume everyone knows something because
they all have the same network experiences. We continue facing a routing
crisis, which is a self-inflicted wound, primarily because the
vocal-majority of those deploying the technology have a parochial view
rather than a realistic global view. We continue to fail with a viable QoS
toolset due to a lack of a system-wide architecture which accounts for the
real physical plant issues on a global basis. We continue to see chatty
protocol efforts that fail under the stress of real-world latency and loss. 

IMHO at least one meeting every couple of years should be significantly
inconvenient as a way to keep the group grounded.

Tony

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:04:16 -0700

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
To: "'Brian E Carpenter'" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 10:19 AM
Subject: RE: Meetings in other regions

> > is convenient and effective for our current active contributors.

Uh No... there are two issues here and they need to be addressed
separately - the first is in conducting the IETF's business and in holding
the meetings so that from a statistical point of view - the most business is
accomplished per meeting as possible.

The second issue is in getting new members to join and participate but its a
separate issue from the process of operating the Standards Machine.

> value is in broadening and balancing the perspective.

Initially I would say "Depends on what it is you are trying to do" but after
giving it more thought I would respond "No - since the IETF's processes do
not accept just anyone who wants to play and there are no play-nice together
rules this simply isnt what's true at all IMHO... what is true is that the
potential pool of vetters is enlargened but beyond that - anything else
claimed is inaccurate IMHO.

> Convenience is
> reality outside the fiber connected large hotel world.

Uh - then this also says that there MUST be Internet connectivity for those
that cannot make it and that restricts the number of places further that
meet the needs.

> As Fred suggested in
> latency/loss fiber paths to the participant's home networks.

Is this a problem for the IETF or its participants?

> I can still
> standards process.

Agreed but for different reasons.

> If nothing else it would drive home a reason to be
> they all have the same network experiences.

Tony - This may be a style issue with documents that are filed and accepted
as process-seeds for a WG's standards process portfolio.  If so then its
about whether the WG Chair and the WG are willing to take sloppy
submissions... and as such  has nothing really to do with the process of the
Standards Machine unless I missed something.

> We continue facing a routing
> rather than a realistic global view.

This Parochial view is what is wrong with today's IETF...

> We continue to fail with a viable QoS
> real physical plant issues on a global basis.

AMEN

> We continue to see chatty

How about Mars?

Todd

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