Stay Home Meet Online
charter-ietf-shmo-00-01

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the IETF's typical schedule of three
in-person meetings per year. It has caused the IETF to have to convert
previously scheduled in-person meetings into fully online meetings. Although
it is the first time the IETF's meeting schedule has been disrupted, it is
possible that other crises could cause similar disruptions in the future.
Even in the absence of the pandemic, discussions about the possibility of
fully online meetings had been occurring in the IETF community for years as a
result of general increases in remote attendance, improvements in web
conferencing services, concerns about the environmental impact of travel, and
other reasons.

The meeting planning activities that the IESG and the IETF LLC engage in
would benefit from IETF community consensus guidance concerning novel aspects
raised by these developments. The SHMO working group is therefore chartered
to provide high-level guidance to the IESG and the IETF LLC concerning the
following:

• Criteria for determining when a previously scheduled in-person meeting
  should be canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting. Similar to how
  RFC 8718 establishes community guidance for the selection of meeting venues,
  the IESG and the LLC would benefit from community consensus guidelines about
  which factors to consider when deciding to cancel or replace an in-person
  meeting and the relative importance of those factors. This work item is
  expected to be fulfilled with the publication of a BCP.

• Meeting planning in the event that a previously scheduled in-person meeting
  needs to be canceled and replaced with a fully online meeting. Similar to how
  RFC 8719 establishes guidance for the regional rotation of in-person
  meetings, the IESG and the LLC would benefit from having community consensus
  guidelines about the time zone selection, meeting length in days, and other
  high-level scheduling aspects when an in-person meeting must be canceled.
  This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the publication of one or
  more BCPs.

• Functional requirements for the technologies the IETF uses to
  support fully online meetings. This work item is expected to be fulfilled
  with one or more informational RFCs.

• What principles need to be considered when determining the meeting fee for
  fully online meetings. Since remote participation in in-person meetings has
  historically been at zero cost to participants, LLC and IESG decisions about
  meeting fees for fully online meetings need to be informed by community
  consensus guidelines about whether and how to set a registration fee for
  fully online meetings. This work item is expected to be fulfilled with the
  publication of one or more informational RFCs. Suggestions for changing the
  IETF's overall funding model are out of scope.

• The cadence of meeting scheduling and the mix of in-person versus fully
  online meetings going forward once the disruptions caused by the pandemic
  have subsided. The working group is expected to document the expected future
  meeting cadence as a BCP if consensus emerges to depart from the existing
  cadence of three in-person meetings per year. Notably, any such guidance will
  not become actionable until 3-4 years after it achieves consensus, given the
  length of the IETF meeting planning cycle. The working group will not
  progress this work item until it has requested publication for all of its
  meeting cancellation-related work items.

The work of SHMO is expected to produce high-level principles, not detailed
operational plans. Specifications of details concerning cancellation
criteria, meeting technologies, and online meeting agenda formats and content
are out of scope. Aside from the fourth work item above, discussion of
financial aspects of IETF meetings and changes to RFC 8713 are both out of scope.
The goal is to produce guidelines for the IESG and the IETF LLC to operationalize
while ensuring they have substantial flexibility to continue to deliver and evolve
the IETF meeting experience to best serve IETF participants and the Internet
community at large.

The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have been mitigated by
the time this group completes its work, but the experience of handling
meeting planning during the pandemic has proven that having community
consensus guidance at hand when dealing with novel conditions in the future
would be beneficial.