Observations on the experience and nature of Large Interim Meetings
draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-01
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Joel Jaeggli | ||
| Last updated | 2012-10-15 | ||
| Stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | plain text xml htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
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| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-01
Internet Engineering Task Force J. Jaeggli
Internet-Draft Zynga
Intended status: Informational October 16, 2012
Expires: April 19, 2013
Observations on the experience and nature of Large Interim Meetings
draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-01
Abstract
Planning, particpipation and conclusions from the experience of
participating in the IETF LIM activity on september 29th 2012.
Status of this Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. date and location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Discussion leading up to LIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Plannning for meeting and announcement . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Draft Deadlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Remote Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Observations and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Incentives for participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. Organization in conjunction with other events . . . . . . . 5
4.3. Implications for working groups/design teams of
varying sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4. Mobilizing ADs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.5. Outreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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1. Introduction
The genesis of this draft was the experience of planning and
participating in the so called IETF LIM (Large Interim Meeting) held
adjacent to the fall RIPE meeting on the 29th of September 2012.
Three working groups met, OPSEC, V6OPS and SIDR. It is intended that
the draft cover plannning, at the meeting, and an attempt at some
conclusions based on the experience.
The fact that the draft represents the vantage point of a single
person at this time necessarily limits the scope of the draft and
undoubtedly as result some key elements of the planning and
motivation will be missed. The Large Interim Meeting is the product
of efforts over a number of years by multiple parties including the
ISOC Board, IETF management (Chair, IESG, IAB, IAOC, IAD) working
group chairs and probably others. To the extent that this draft can
be made better through the input of others I would invite
contributions and criticism.
The LIM was the attempt that I am aware of an interim meeting
scheduled by IETF management for the purposes of accumulating interim
meetings in a common location rather that scheduled by working-group
participants, chairs nad coordinating ADs. It is not the first
attempt at such a meeting. It's status therefore an experiment is
worth bearing mind in understanding the rest of the text.
1.1. date and location
The LIM was scheduled to coencide with the end of RIPE 65 and Occured
on Saturday Sept 29th 2012. Ripe 65 was at the Hotel Okura
Amseterdam from September 24th-28th. It is my understanding that
coordination with the RIPE program committee occured only After IETF
84 (an IAB member meber also happens toserve on the RIPE program
committee)
2. Planning
It is, my understanding that discussion of the possbility of a LIM
style meeting occured early2011 if not before. The v6ops chairs were
asked at various times to consider particpation in such a meeting in
other potential locations. The discsussion related to this interim
meeting commenced in June. The stated rational for targeting v6ops
involvement in a large interim was the volume of work that we process
during and between meetings.
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2.1. Discussion leading up to LIM
Some questions existed in the planning phase as to the nature of the
logisitical support provided by the secretatit for the meeting as
well as, remote participation, and the actual timinng of the meeting.
Unlike a traditional interim the responsibility for satisfying these
details was for better or worse in the hands of the secretariat,
which meant a reduced workload for the chairs but it also left some
details undecided until they could be announced, a hotel contract for
the meeting rooms wasn't completed until after the 4 week window for
announcing and interim meeting had passed
2.2. Plannning for meeting and announcement
A show of hands and subsequent mailing list followup were done to
gauge v6ops interest in participation in an interim meeting. Roughly
50 participants, mostly active ones indicated significant interest in
an interim collocated with RIPE 65 which we deemed sufficient to
proceed. Superficially only a fraction of the v6ops attendees are
represented by the interested segment however when the numbers are
mapped against active participants and draft authors, interested
participants in the interim represent a bigger purportion of that
group
Two of the three scheduled meetings were given 4 hour windows, the
third SIDR (which routinely has interim meetings) had effectivetly
the entire day.
2.3. Draft Deadlines
Immediately after IETF 84 the working group chairs of v6ops proposed
an interim draft deadline 2 weeks out from the interim meeting
(Saturday the 15th). This was to be the basis for the acceptance of
revised or new drafts onto the agenda.
3. Meeting
Two OPS area working groups met, OPSEC and V6OPS, Effectively one
after the other albiet seperated by lunch.
3.1. Running
Both meetings that I participated in came in substantially below
their alloted time. V6OPS was allocated 4 hours and completed in
two. SIDR broke for lunch, returned, and finished early however it
used a substantially higher percentage of the allocated time.
Possibly because it was a Saturday remote participation was
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effectively non-existant
3.2. Remote Participation
Remote participation was supported by volunteers from meetecho using
their own application. Hotel okura wireless infrastrucuture was used
to support the meeting. An outage of the hotel network was observed
during the opsec meeting with the result that remote participation
would have been interupted for about 10 minutes had there been any to
speak of.
3.3. Participants
Interim Meeting registration ended up being about 40 participants, 2
days prior to the meeting that number was 23, provisions had been
made for around 100 attendees.
4. Observations and Conclusions
Despite my personal misgivings with V6OPS as patient zero for the
large interim meeting concept, Once committed we endeavored to make
the meeting work for the participants that took the time out of their
weekend to attend, or as was my case, traveled specifically for the
Interim meeting. As an experiment I think a lot of things are worth
doing once and I hope that some lessons can be derived from the
experience that have value for future interims.
4.1. Incentives for participation
One osbervation that I would make about the interim submission
deadline (and it's relative failure) is that it appears that authors
who are not planning to attend a meeting are less inclined to revise
a document in support a meeting they are not attending. The
corollary is a that authors planning on a attending a meeting will
rev their documents, or possibly that a revised document is
justification to attend.
4.2. Organization in conjunction with other events
This particular conjunction was proposed several months prior to
coordination with the RIPE program committee, given that the RIPE
meeting traditionally ends on Friday with Lunch it is possible that
tighter coordination with the RIPE organization could have coupled
the event more directly. RIPE is long like an IETF meeting and if
the goal of a conjoint interim is evangelism cross pollination or
outreach (is it?) then fitting more directly into the program would
probably have better results. As it is the bulk of the attendees in
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OPSEC and v6ops were there to attend RIPE as well or attended RIPE
and stayed for the interim.
4.3. Implications for working groups/design teams of varying sizes
V6ops attendance at an IETF meeting is typically in excess of 200
attendees. An interim meeting that attracts 25 of those and
minuscule remote participation is necessarily exclusionary by default
if not deliberately. If useful work that advances drafts, gets done,
is that exclusivity a bad thing? It's not useful for measuring
meaningful consensus.
The history of interim meetings has illustrative examples of working
groups or design teams, with numerus interim meetings (IP storage/
NFSv4, Lemonade, 6lowpan, Behave SIDR etc) that demonstrate the
utility of frequent physical or virtual interims. It is possible
that there are properties that make some working groups more
effective at utilizing interims than others.
4.4. Mobilizing ADs
Area director's were rather well represent at the LIM, While the
attendance of both of our Directors was appreciated I'm not sure that
it's a good use of their time. In particular if the frequency of
these events were fixed as some rate in the future, this represents
an additional workload for which huge benfits due not appear liekly
to ensue
4.5. Outreach
Some entities related to the IETF clearly have outreach and advocacy
as part of the mission, Internet Society, IETF chair, Liaisons edu
team and so forth. It is not clear to me that beyond the scope of
chartered working group doucments that end up as part of the RFC
series that working group activities including meetings are well
suited for use as an outreach mechanism. The IETF meeting as a
whole, which certainly an opportunity for advancing the work of the
respective working groups is also an opportunity for cross
pollination, for the collegial building of consensus that advances
joint efforts, and to the extent that mini-IETF's do not support
those activities relative to the three annual meetings their utility
as outreach tools lacks some degree of legitimacy.
4.6. Conclusions
TBD
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5. Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Ron Bonica, Fred Baker and Jari Arko
for offering input prior to work on the draft commencing.
6. IANA Considerations
This memo Makes no request of IANA.
7. Security Considerations
No security consequences are envisioned as a proeduct of this draft.
Author's Address
Joel Jaeggli
Zynga
924 mouton circle
East Palo Alto, CA 94303
US
Phone: +15415134095
Email: jjaeggli@zynga.com
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