Thoughts on Completely Virtual IETF Meetings
draft-manycouches-completely-virtual-meetings-02
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draft-manycouches-completely-virtual-meetings-02
manycouches D. York
Internet-Draft Internet Society
Intended status: Informational October 31, 2016
Expires: May 4, 2017
Thoughts on Completely Virtual IETF Meetings
draft-manycouches-completely-virtual-meetings-02
Abstract
This document captures initial thoughts about having IETF meetings
that are completely virtual. It explores the issues involved with
both a "planned" virtual meeting and an "emergency" virtual meeting.
The intent is to evolve this document to provide answers to the
questions posed throughout the text. This is currently a thought
experiment. There are no current plans to hold a completely virtual
IETF meeting.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 4, 2017.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Why Do IETF Meetings Take Place? . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Why Hold a Completely Virtual IETF Meeting? . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Conventions and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Meeting Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Timezones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Deadlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4. Plenaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.5. Breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6. Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.7. Hackathon / Code Sprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.8. Other Physical Meeting Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.9. Sessions by non-IETF groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.10. Remote Hubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. User Journey / Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1. Registration / sign-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Side meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. Hallway conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4. Unstructured time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.5. Participating in multiple sessions . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.6. Serendipity - discovering other users . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.7. Voting / Hums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.8. Microphone lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.9. Disruptive Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.10. Mentoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.11. Inclusivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.12. T-Shirts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Technical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3. Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.4. Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.5. Network Operation Center (NOC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5. Administrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1. Centralized Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2. Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2.1. Initial Investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2.2. Registration Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2.3. Sponsorships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.2.4. Long-term impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.3. Legal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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6.1. Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2. Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3. Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8. Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8.1. Learning from others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8.2. Trial? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Appendix B. Development Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1. Introduction
What would a "completely virtual" IETF meeting look like? What would
be issues? What would be the advantages? How could it work?
The "manycouches" design team was convened to explore these issues
and understand what might be involved in holding a completely virtual
meeting. On 20 July 2017, members met with the IESG for a joint
discussion at the IETF 96 meeting in Berlin. This document outlines
many of the key issues and questions for discussion that emerged out
of that Berlin meeting as well as mailing list conversations.
Discussions identified two types of potential meetings the IETF could
have that would be completely virtual:
1. PLANNED VIRTUAL MEETING - A "regular" meeting of the IETF that
would be planned to be completely virtual.
2. EMERGENCY VIRTUAL MEETING - There could be a situation where a
planned physical meeting suddenly needs to be virtual due to
physical or political situations. For example, a natural
disaster shortly before a meeting might cause people to not be
able to attend.
Tools and processes may be very similar between the two types of
meetings. A key difference is that for an "emergency" meeting there
may be the desire to replicate the planned schedule of the physical
meeting as closely as possible.
It is unclear if the IETF might ever choose to hold a planned virtual
meeting, but this document is designed to facilitate the discussion
around what that might look like. A desire is that some of this
development may help with improving the current experience for remote
attendees to today's physical IETF meetings. It may also be the case
that some kind of "hybrid" meeting emerges with physical meetings
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taking place in multiple locations with virtual participants joining
in remotely.
It is also worth noting that in discussions to date the sense has
been that even if we held a completely virtual meeting, it would only
happen once out of several meetings. There would still be multiple
physical IETF meetings during the year.
1.1. Why Do IETF Meetings Take Place?
[It may be good to insert some text here about WHY we have IETF
meetings and what the overall goals are. Both as a reminder of the
point of the meetings and potentially to frame thinking about how we
might move toward those goals by trying doing things a bit
differently.]
1.2. Why Hold a Completely Virtual IETF Meeting?
[At some point in the maturity of this document it would be valuable
to discuss the benefits and challenges of a completely virtual
meeting. Before that summary can be developed, though, further
investigation and development needs to happen. At a very high level,
one idea is that a completely virtual meeting might make the meeting
more accessible to more people in terms of schedules, lack of travel
and reduced costs. However, all of that thinking need considerably
more exploration. Several participants in discussions have voiced
the opinion that replacing physical IETF meetings will be close to
impossible. This document is being developed to explore all of these
issues.]
1.3. Conventions and Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
Additionally, the key words "*MIGHT*", "*COULD*", "*MAY WISH TO*",
"*WOULD PROBABLY*", "*SHOULD CONSIDER*", and "*MUST (BUT WE KNOW YOU
WON'T)*" in this document are to interpreted as described in RFC 6919
[RFC6919].
2. Program
2.1. Meeting Structure
With a completely virtual meeting, the structure of the meeting does
not have to comply with the traditional IETF meeting schedule. It
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could, for instance, stretch out over the entire 24 hours of a day.
Questions for discussion include:
o Is the meeting still structured over a week?
o Do the meetings still exist within certain hours?
o Do multiple meetings exist at the same time as they do now?
Again, in the case of an unplanned "emergency" virtual meeting the
desire may be to stick with the already-planned schedule. But for a
planned virtual meeting the schedule can be open for discussion.
There was some discussion that a meeting could span more than the
traditional week. However, the counterpoint is that keeping it
within a week gives a focused block of time that people could
allocate for participation in the virtual event.
2.2. Timezones
What timezone does a virtual meeting operate in? Or does it operate
in multiple timezones?
One suggestion was that each working group might choose its own
timezone based on the best timezone for the main contributors and
leaders. (Although this might then limit participation from other
areas of the world.)
This timezone issue was identified by multiple participants as the
hardest aspect of planning a virtual meeting.
2.3. Deadlines
What do deadlines look like for a completely virtual meeting? Are
the deadlines for agendas and drafts kept as they are for a regular
meeting?
2.4. Plenaries
What does a plenary look like in a virtual meeting? The same large
session as today?
2.5. Breaks
There are breaks planned throughout the days of a physical IETF
meeting to enable people to move between sessions and to have
refreshments and restroom breaks. Similarly there are longer breaks
for lunch.
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How are breaks structured in a completely virtual meeting?
o Can they be shorter?
o Do you need a longer "lunch break"? Or does that make no sense?
2.6. Tutorials
On the Sunday starting an IETF week we commonly have a series of
tutorials. Are those still part of the program for a virtual
meeting?
2.7. Hackathon / Code Sprint
The Hackathon and Code Sprint have become popular activities before a
physical meeting. Would they still exist for a virtual meeting?
2.8. Other Physical Meeting Elements
In a typical IETF physical meeting, there are other meetings and
activities that occur alongside the meetings of Working Groups and
BOFs. These include:
o Newcomers Meet and Greet
o Welcome Reception
o Bits-N-Bites
o Thursday Lunch Speaker Series
o Social Event
Do any of these additional sessions still make sense in a virtual
meeting?
The Thursday Lunch Speaker Series (by the Host organization) could
continue as webinar-style presentations. But the other elements
involve face-to-face interaction that would be difficult in a virtual
setting.
2.9. Sessions by non-IETF groups
Other organizations sometimes hold meetings during the time of the
IETF physical meeting and often use the same venue. For example, the
Internet Society usually offers an "ISOC@IETF Briefing Panel" during
the Tuesday lunch break. At some IETF meetings groups have shown
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films or scheduled other meetings. These are not IETF meetings, but
make use of the opportunity of having the IETF attendees available.
Do these sessions still make sense? Would we offer the IETF virtual
meeting infrastructure to groups to use when it is not being used for
IETF meetings?
2.10. Remote Hubs
In recent years there has been an effort to establish "remote hubs"
where groups of IETF members get together and participate remotely
from that physical location. Would that continue as an option?
Could the virtual meeting perhaps involve connecting together a
series of remote hubs? (And if so, does this then again create a
better experience for people who can go to a hub than for those who
cannot?)
3. User Journey / Experience
What is the experience of an "IETF attendee" in a virtual meeting?
How does he or she experience the event?
How could attendees be most effective in getting work done in a
virtual setting?
3.1. Registration / sign-up
What is the registration experience like? How do they initially
"sign in" as an attendee?
3.2. Side meetings
It is quite common for groups to decide during an IETF meeting to go
off and have a side meeting.
o How can this capability be reproduced in a virtual environment?
o Could the system allow people to create ad hoc meetings in some
fashion?
3.3. Hallway conversations
The casual hallway conversations are a key component of IETF physical
meetings. How can some version of this capacity be made available?
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3.4. Unstructured time
How do you incorporate some concept of "unstructured" time where
people can meet and connect?
3.5. Participating in multiple sessions
It is currently possible for remote participants to join into
multiple working group sessions at the same time. Users simply
connect using multiple browser windows, multiple chat rooms or
multiple computers. How does this impact users' experience?
3.6. Serendipity - discovering other users
Part of a physical meeting involves discovering other people with
common interests or backgrounds. How do you help people find others?
3.7. Voting / Hums
What is the best way to have votes or hums in a virtual meeting?
Most current audio conference systems would not make an actual audio
hum possible. Votes in a chat could be possible but the lag time
associated with remote connections would need to be taken into
account.
Some kind of system where votes take place over a period of time may
need to be developed or used. This, though, does then introduce a
delay into the meeting while there is a wait for the vote.
3.8. Microphone lines
How do "mic lines" work in a completely virtual meeting? Would this
in fact be a benefit as all attendees would be in the same queue?
3.9. Disruptive Behavior
How do we deal with disruptive behavior in a virtual meeting? It can
and does happen in meetings - and could potentially happen more
easily in a virtual evironment where people cannot be physically
stopped from going to a mic or could be removed from a room.
What is the process to exclude someone who is being disruptive? Do
we need moderators to be able to step in and mute or disable
someone's connection? Who makes the decision that someone's behavior
is disruptive?
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3.10. Mentoring
How would the "mentor" program work in a virtual meeting? The same
as with a physical meeting?
3.11. Inclusivity
How do you bring new people into sessions? How do people learn about
side meetings? About hallway conversations?
3.12. T-Shirts
Many attendees value the T-shirts that are usually provided for each
IETF. Without a physical meeting it could be challenging and costly
to distribute T-shirts to attendees.
T-shirts are currently funded by the Host of the physical IETF
meeting. If there is no Host, or if the Host chooses not to fund a
T-shirt, there may be no T-shirt.
With a virtual meeting it may be that if there is a Host (see
"Sponsorships" below), the Host would have the same option as the
physical meeting - to provide a T-shirt or not. The Host could then
decide how they would distribute the T-shirt.
4. Technical Considerations
Many technical questions need to be discussed.
4.1. Infrastructure
What is the infrastructure used to host a completely virtual meeting?
Are current systems (ex. Meetecho, Jabber chat rooms, audio streams)
sufficient? Would new infrastructure need to be established?
What kind of bandwidth would need to be available for the servers
hosting the system?
How would we handle connecting large numbers of people at the same
time?
4.2. Capabilities
Do virtual attendees have video connections? voice? chat? What kind
of bandwidth would need to be available on the client end?
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4.3. Authentication
Today anyone can connect to the remote participation aspects of an
IETF meeting. No authentication is required to join a jabber chat
room, listen to an audio stream or connect to a Meetecho session.
Would that need to change? Would "registration" give you a login to
whatever system was used for the meeting? Would you not be able to
participate without those login credentials?
4.4. Audio
How do we address issues of lag, stutter, echo and other artifacts of
current audio conferencing systems?
Is there a "minimum voice quality" level that is acceptable? (George
Michaelson has suggested the telco QDU concept is something to
consider.)
4.5. Network Operation Center (NOC)
Where does the NOC "exist" for a completly virtual meeting? What is
its role?
5. Administrative
5.1. Centralized Resources
What is the impact of a virtual meeting on centralized resources such
as support staff? What is the full role of the Secretariat during
the meeting?
5.2. Finances
The financial model of a completely virtual meeting needs to be
understood. What would be the financial costs associated with a
meeting?
5.2.1. Initial Investment
Would there need to be an initial investment in infrastructure for
the first completely virtual meeting? Would there then be lower
costs for the next virtual meeting?
5.2.2. Registration Fees
Would we charge the same amount to attendees as a regular meeting?
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Lou Berger sent the following suggestions to the list related to
registration fees:
1. Remote audio feed and jabber participation should continue to be
unpaid and unregistered as now
2. Access to session audio and video recordings should continue to
be published as now, without fee or registration
3. Remote video/audio - registration should be per individual
participant (i.e., anyone that speaks/presents) perhaps having
hubs include some number of participants.
4. Non-registered/anonymous video (meetecho) listeners should be
allowed, but their mic/text input should be disabled.
5.2.3. Sponsorships
How do sponsorships work with a completely virtual meeting? Would
sponsorships be required at the same level as the physical meetings?
If a virtual meeting is sponsored, how is the sponsor given the
visibility that is currently given with a physical meeting? For
instance, with the signage, T-shirts, plenary slides, etc.
In particular, is there a sponsor designated as the "Host" of the
IETF meeting? The Host for physical meetings receives benefits
including:
o Prominent mention in materials and promotion of the IETF meeting.
o The "host presentation" speaking slot during the plenary.
o The "Thursday Lunch Speaker Series" time for whatever they wish to
present.
o Mention on the T-shirt for the event (if the Host chooses to fund
the creation of a T-shirt).
Would we have a "Host" for a virtual meeting?
5.2.4. Long-term impact
If we were successful in holding a completely virtual meeting, would
companies no longer be willing to send attendees to physical
meetings? In other words, would the first one start us on a path
toward having all meetings in this fashion? (And are we okay with
that?)
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5.3. Legal
How do we ensure all attendees, coming in at all times, see and agree
to the Note Well statement?
6. Security Considerations
There are many considerations related to security and privacy that
need to be factored in to a virtual meeting.
6.1. Availability
How do we ensure that an attack such as a distributed denial of
service (DDoS) doesn't take out the entire virtual meeting? What
about an attack against a particular region?
Similarly, how do we protect against disruption caused by groups on
the Internet who may simply want to disrupt the meeting for the fun
of it? (See the section on "Authentication" earlier.)
6.2. Integrity
How do you know that the person who is logged into whatver system is
used is in fact who they say they are? In a physical meeting:
o We can see the person and physically identify them.
o Users wear name badges that were issued at registration time.
o There are typically other people who may know many individuals.
How are these physical considerations replicated in a virtual
meeting?
6.3. Privacy
What level of privacy protection would be needed for conversations?
for user information? Much of the IETF's work is all done on public
email lists and archived remote sessions. What level of privacy is
needed?
7. IANA Considerations
Are there any IANA considerations associated with a virtual meeting?
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8. Next Steps
With this initial document published, the intent now is to go back
and start to fill in the sections with possible ideas about how the
questions might be answered.
8.1. Learning from others
Suggestions were made to investigate what lessons can be learned from
work by other organizations on virtual meetings. Initial suggestions
included:
o The Internet Society has now hosted two (2015 and 2016) global
"InterCommunity" events bringing together ISOC members from around
the world. The 2016 event, in particular, was designed to be a
virtual event.
o The conference industry has been exploring virtual and/or "hybrid"
meetings. There may be value here.
o Universities and specifically Internet2 may have some experience.
o George Michaelson stated: "Van Jacobsen did a lot of work on
meeting behaviour online in the MBONE days, working on the
whiteboard and vat. He has made observations about weighted-sum
voting, speaking controls, inheritence of the state of the
meeting."
8.2. Trial?
How would it be possible to do a "trial run" of a virtual meeting?
9. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC6919] Barnes, R., Kent, S., and E. Rescorla, "Further Key Words
for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 6919,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6919, April 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6919>.
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Appendix A. Acknowledgements
This document reflects the input of many people who participated in
both the manycouches design team as well as the discussion with the
IESG on 20 July 2016 at IETF 96 in Berlin. Other discussions on the
manycouches mailing list also informed this document. The author
would specifically like to thank Lou Berger, Benoit Claise, Stephen
Farrell, George Michaelson and Greg Wood for their input.
Appendix B. Development Note
This document is being developed using a repository on Github at:
o <https://github.com/danyork/draft-york-manycouches-completely-
virtual-meetings>
Comments, issues and pull requests are welcome.
Author's Address
Dan York
Internet Society
Keene, NH
USA
Email: york@isoc.org
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