Guidelines for the Organization of Fully Online Meetings
draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting-05

[Ballot comment]
Thanks, this was a good summary and an interesting look back.

I see we're using the IESG Form 1024-SHORT shepherd writeup for this one.

In Section 2, paragraph 3, I don't understand the sentence ending "and in some meeting".

I'm not terribly comfortable with use of BCP 14 terms in an Informational document where the intent is to describe a process that should be considered binding.  That's what the "BCP" status is for.  The IESG heard that this was indeed discussed by the working group and the intent is to be emphatic or firm, but not actually binding.  If that's the case, I would prefer that the WG find a way to be emphatic or firm without using those specific terms.  Having said that, I'll get out of your way.

[Ballot discuss]
I'll keep this as brief as possible:

Since this is Informational, I suggest not using BCP 14.  But it sounds like the WG wanted this to be binding, which means it should be going for BCP status.

Let's sort this out.

[Ballot comment]
Thanks, this was a good summary and an interesting look back.

I see we're using the IESG Form 1024-SHORT shepherd writeup for this one.

In Section 2, paragraph 3, I don't understand the sentence ending "and in some meeting".

[Ballot comment]
Thanks, this was a good summary and an interesting look back.

I see we're using the IESG Form 1024-SHORT shepherd writeup for this one.

Since this is Informational, I suggest not using BCP 14.

In Section 2, paragraph 3, I don't understand the sentence ending "and in some meeting".

[Ballot comment]
- s/Daylight Savings Time/Daylight Saving Time/ [https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/daylight-savings-time.html]

- "to maximize the ease of participants to occasionally attend regardless of their location". I don't *guess* you actually want to express that people should only attend occasionally in the sense of infrequently? Which is how it sounds? It seems to me maybe something like "so that no attendee has to be consistently inconvenienced, regardless of their location" might work?

- "past three meetings" --> "prior three meetings"?

- "formal scheduling process" -> "scheduling process"? Although actually ISTM the better edit is "in the formal scheduling process" -> "" (i.e. just drop those words)

[Ballot comment]
- s/Daylight Savings Time/Daylight Saving Time/ [https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/daylight-savings-time.html]

- "to maximize the ease of participants to occasionally attend regardless of their location". I don't *guess* you actually want to express that people should only attend occasionally in the sense of infrequently? Which is how it sounds?
  Seems to me maybe something like "so that no attendee has to be consistently inconvenienced, regardless of their location" might work?

- "past three meetings" --> "prior three meetings"?

- "formal scheduling process" -> "scheduling process"? Although actually ISTM the better edit is "in the formal scheduling process" -> "" (i.e. just drop those words)

[Ballot comment]
(1) "When the WHO declared a world-wide pandemic in March 2020, the IETF canceled its plenary meeting and organized an online replacement in less than two weeks."

The work was started once it was obvious that attendance would not make the meeting productive (we polled the WG chairs).  IOW, the cancellation wasn't a direct effect of anything the WHO said.

(2) "The IESG published a purely advisory recommended schedule [INTERIM-SCHEDULE] to reduce conflicts among those interims."

The link to the mailarchive works, but the link in the message to the schedule itself doesn't. :-(

(3) "...greater impact on their calendar than a single plenary meeting week, and in some meeting."

It sounds as if the part after the comma is a leftover.

(4) "Basically, every full online meeting is for two regions of the three regions described in [RFC8179], with one being roughly after sunrise and the other after dinner."

s/full online/fully online

It sounds as if there's a modifier missing: "every fully online meeting is [??] for two regions...".

(5) "This document RECOMMENDS further experiments with the meeting structure."

"RECOMMENDS" is not an rfc2119 keyword.

[Ballot comment]

# Éric Vyncke, INT AD, comments for draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting-04
CC @evyncke

Thank you for the work put into this document. It is VERY important to keep the history (to be honest, I even forgot about some points).

Please find below some non-blocking COMMENT points.

I hope that this review helps to improve the document,

Regards,

-éric

## COMMENTS

Éric always loves when one author use UTF-8 and non-ASCII characters ;-)

### Section 1

Use past tense in `participant surveys indicate satisfaction` ?

### BCP14

As often, still wondering about the use of BCP14 terms in an informational document.

### Section 2

Please expand "WHO" ;-)

### Section 3.1

Like Rob and others, I wonder about having the same UTC time for European daylight saving (including EU, UK, and probably other countries).

PLEASE add Africa and South America in the mix (even with rough estimate or considering America as a whole).

Isn't there a conflict between:
- abstract: `These guidelines are based on the experience with online meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic.`
- section 3.1: `The following algorithm was not used in 2020 or 2021`

### Section 3.1.1

It took me a while to understand how table 2 was constructed :-O As a SW engineer, I would prefer to have some pseudo code like
```
  If last in-person == A then
      selected <- Night A
  else
      ...
```

### Section 3.4

s/number of possible conflicts/number of possible agenda conflicts/ ?

### Section 4

Suggest to drop 'recommendations' from the section title as I fail to see any recommendation in the section except 4.4 that deserves its own section (and not a subsection).

### Section 4.2

```
The experiment report [_112-EXPERIMENT] found that it led to a
  reduction in scheduling conflicts but also a slight drop attendance
  of the administrative plenary, partly due to insufficient awareness.
```
Should it be less assertive in the cause ? I.e., the lack of awareness is just an educated guess (that I share BTW).

### Section 4.3

Unsure how `preference for the amusements of home` reads for English speaker, but it sounds a little dismissive/arrogant to my French eyes....

I would not qualify "slight" the decrease in -00 submission though... But, I appreciate the use of the less assertive "might".

### Section 5

s/Toreless/Toerless/

Use plural form for 'review' and 'input' ?


## Notes

This review is in the ["IETF Comments" Markdown format][ICMF], You can use the
[`ietf-comments` tool][ICT] to automatically convert this review into
individual GitHub issues.

[ICMF]: https://github.com/mnot/ietf-comments/blob/main/format.md
[ICT]: https://github.com/mnot/ietf-comments

[Ballot comment]
# Internet AD comments for draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting-04
CC @ekline

## Nits

### S2

* s/in mailing discussion/in mailing list discussion/ I think?

### S3.1.1

* s/When ever/Whenever/

* s/most the participants/most of the participants/

### S3.2

* "fully online meetings were consistently over 5 days"

  Not sure what this trying to say.  "consistently spread across 5 days"?

### S4.1

* s/limited set of session/limited set of sessions/

### S4.2

* s/slight drop attendance/slight drop in attendance/

[Ballot comment]
        When the WHO declared a world-wide pandemic in March 2020, the IETF
        canceled its plenary meeting and organized an online replacement in less
        than two weeks.

The term "plenary meeting" is confusing and only becomes clear after continued
reading and finding out our regular "plenary" is now called "administrative plenary".
Clarify this at the start of the document?


When ever  -> Whenever

        By 2021, fully online meetings were consistently over 5 days
        with roughly 6-hour meeting days. The administrative plenary,
        which concludes with multiple open mic sessions, sometimes
        exceeded this limit.¶

Are you saying the "administrative plenary" lasted more than 6 hours (with breaks) ?

(Via drafts-lastcall@iana.org): IESG/Authors/WG Chairs:

The IANA Functions Operator has reviewed draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting-04, which is currently in Last Call, and has the following comments:

The IANA Functions Operator notes that this document does not contain a standard IANA Considerations section. After examining the draft, we understand that, upon approval of this document, there are no IANA Actions that need completion.

If this assessment is not accurate, please respond as soon as possible.

For definitions of IANA review states, please see:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/help/state/draft/iana-review

Thank you,

David Dong
IANA Services Specialist

[Ballot comment]
Hi,

I'm hoping that we won't need to make use of this draft for another pandemic or global issue any time soon.  There was previously some thought/discussion about having one meeting online per year anyway to reduce the IETFs carbon footprint - although I still think that online meetings seem to be distinctly less effective than when the significant majority of participants are meeting in person.

As for the actual document, just some minor comments:

I note that Europe Night times for Summer and Winter are the same, is this due to the EU's plans to abolish summer time?  If so, should there be a comment about summer time more generally.  E.g., if other countries followed suit and abolished summer time then would that change the timezones for other regions?

As a minor nit, section 3.1, referencing meetings happening after dinner, but at least in the UK, dinner is often referred to as the main meal of the day, so can happen at lunch time or in the evening, hence this is slightly ambiguous.

Does section 4.4 on experiments include experiments in the choice of online meeting timezone, as per section 3.1 and 3.1.1, or are those sections regarded as having community consensus and the IESG should follow until an update to this RFC is made?

Regards,
Rob

Request for Last Call review by ARTART Completed: Ready with Issues. Reviewer: Mark Nottingham. Sent review to list. Submission of review completed at an earlier date.

The following Last Call announcement was sent out (ends 2022-12-13):

From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
CC: draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting@ietf.org, lars@eggert.org, manycouches@ietf.org, mknodel@cdt.org, shmoo-chairs@ietf.org
Reply-To: last-call@ietf.org
Sender:
Subject: Last Call:  (Guidelines for the Organization of Fully Online Meetings) to Informational RFC


The IESG has received a request from the Stay Home Meet Occasionally Online
WG (shmoo) to consider the following document: - 'Guidelines for the
Organization of Fully Online Meetings'
  as Informational RFC

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final
comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
last-call@ietf.org mailing lists by 2022-12-13. Exceptionally, comments may
be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the beginning
of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

Abstract


  This document provides guidelines for the planning and organization
  of fully online meetings, regarding the number, length, and
  composition of sessions on the meeting agenda.  These guidelines are
  based on the experience with online meetings during the COVID-19
  pandemic.




The file can be obtained via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-shmoo-online-meeting/



No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.

The working group (WG) consensus on this document represents the broad agreement of the group. There was discussion about scope: hybrid versus online and the scope was kept narrow to only online meetings. It also does not make promises or normative statements. The only major persistent discussion was about time zone selection for the meetings and all came to consensus on the text that is in the final version. As the document shepherd, I have reviewed the latest version of this document and it is my opinion that this document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready to be handed off for publication. There should be virtually zero flags on this document for future reviewers.

The working group (WG) consensus on this document represents the broad agreement of the group. There was discussion about scope: hybrid versus online and the scope was kept narrow to only online meetings. It also does not make promises or normative statements. The only major persistent discussion was about time zone selection for the meetings and all came to consensus on the text that is in the final version. As the document shepherd, I have reviewed the latest version of this document and it is my opinion that this document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready to be handed off for publication. There should be virtually zero flags on this document for future reviewers.