Minutes IETF104: edu: Tue 12:35
minutes-104-edu-201903261235-00

IETF 104 WG Chairs Lunch Session
Tuesday, 26 March 2019
Agenda:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/materials/slides-104-edu-sessc-wg-chairs-forum-chair-slides-00

Karen O’Donoghue opens the meeting and introduces the co-chair: Mirjam
Kühne. Karen publicly thanks Mirjam for the work she put into the Edu
Team for over 15 years. Round of applause.

1. WG Chair Training Design Team initial report (Francesca Palombini,
Tal Mizrahi)
slides:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/materials/slides-104-edu-sessc-wg-chairs-training-design-team-00

Questions:
    
Pete Resnick suggested to also includes the Routing WG chairs training
sessions in the list of existing materials. They are all recorded. He
wondered if we have  enough resources to do in-person training courses
at each IETF?

Francesca said that was not necessarily the idea. The plan is to provide
online training material.

Karen suggested to add the issue about resources for in-person training
to the gap analysis.

Alissa thanked the design team for all this work. The IESG also welcomes
the idea to do more WG chair training - and at least once a year in person.

Ben Kaduk asked if the training is meant only for first time chairs?

Alissa said she didn’t think we should limit it.

2. Agenda time experimentation (Barry Leiba)

Barry asked for feedback about the unstructured time? Is it useful? Is
it needed? This has been run as an experiment with various time slots:
first Friday afternoon, now Wednesday afternoon. The IESG heard that
there is a need for this.

Rich Salz asked where the IESG heard about this?

Alissa responded that this was a question in IETF 103 survey:Two thirds
filled it in and many of them said unstructured time would be useful.

Tommy Pauly said that the Wednesday time slot is more accessible than
the Friday time slot.  Both as a WG chair and as an IETF participant, he
finds this unstructured time valuable.

Robert Sparks added that requests for unstructured time was also aired
in these WG Chairs lunch sessions and also during the open plenary
sessions. It would be easier to evaluate the value of the experiment and
also easier for people to make use of it if it would be announced earlier.

Another participant agreed that the Wednesday time slot is better than
the Friday time slot (even though half is now been filled with a
(useful) tutorial). But he is more concerned with number of clashes and
overlaps. Maybe not having unstructured time would have helped to
prevent that? Could we not do a better analysis of the overlaps apart
from just guessing?

Barry asked if it is demonstrably worse this time because of the Wed.
unstructured time?

The person answers that he has not quantified it, but he also added that
there are also lunches and evenings and other gaps in the agenda that
can be used as unstructured time.

Dave Waltermire suggested to get a hum or otherwise some better feedback
than just by talking amongst the WG chairs.

Alissa clarified  that with respect to the interaction between
unstructured time and overlaps, we have the same number of slots this
time (and last time). As far as humming at the plenary, she would prefer
to gather this feedback during the IETF 104 survey and she encouraged
everyone to fill in the survey. But there will be a slide about this
during the plenary.

Patrick McManus suggested to possibly arrange more and shorter slots
throughout the week.

Bron Gondwana said that it is had to get good feedback on this topic.
Everyone will want to have unstructured time. And everyone will not want
to have conflicts.

Andrew Malis commented that people like to prepare for their week. More
advanced announcement would be good. Next time in Madrid the schedule
might change again to accommodate local customs. He suggested to
broadcast to the IETF discussion list.

Alissa said that for IETF 103 it was announced in May (for the November
meeting).

Brian Rosen made a comment regarding side meetings: one cannot have
remote support for side meetings.

Barry: Noted. Thanks. It might be a resource issue.

Barry asked if people find the wiki an effective way to set up sessions
during the unstructured time slot? Are there other needs or desired tools?

Pete Resnick suggested to make smaller corners in bigger rooms
available/bookable.


3. General behaviour and demeanour at the IETF (Barry Leiba)

Barry referred to things like name calling and rude language. Things we
might call unprofessional behaviour and bullying. All these are things
we don’t want to do at the IETF. We want to encourage people to stick
with technical arguments and not attack people based on their
affiliation or other more personal characteristics. Urges the WG chairs
to be a good example and role model for this.

Barbara Stark thought this is a good idea. She added that operators have
been underrepresented for some time. This might also be caused by rude
comments on mailing lists that called operators “stupid” for instance.
She mentioned that she tends to comment on that straight away - either
privately or on the list.

Mary Barnes admitted that she is sarcastic sometimes and she got called
out for it straight away by the chair. She felt that was good and said
that we all need to do this immediately when it happens.

Rich Salz asked why are we giving affiliations when we are staying at
the mic?

Barry said that indeed many people do that, but we’re not pushing to do
that.

Rich added that it seems to be a common practice. Maybe we need to
discourage this?

Kent Watsen suggested to refer to the code of conduct and desired
behaviour more explicitly at the beginning of the WG, maybe on a slide.
That would also give the chairs cover if they have to step in.

Adam Roach responded that the Note Well has pointers to at least two
documents that refer to that (the Anti-Harassment Policy and the Code of
Conduct).

Ben Campbell suggested that we need to use different/new channels if we
really want to convey this message.

Bron: Possible have a starting session for everyone at the beginning of
the week. Otherwise it gets very repetitive (if shown before each WG
session).

Pete noted that often people get to the mic and argue about something
that upsets them. As a chair you can lead that anger by asking concrete
questions: what do you want the group to do? What should change in the
draft document? Etc.

Karen showed the slides about meeting etiquette that is pat of the
newcomers slides:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/materials/slides-104-edu-sesse-newcomers-overview-for-ietf-104-00

4. AOB:

Some discussion about how to improve remote presentations. Did anyone
have issues to remote presenters? Meetecho tries hard to accommodate
this even if you get a remote speaker at the last moment. But it
certainly help to have some lead time and to be able to prepare ad test.

Karen said that with Mirjam stepping down and other ongoing changes, she
would like to gather feedback about the Edu Team activities and
especially the WG Chairs session.