Subject: RE: presenting vs discussion in WG meetings (was re:Remote Participation Services)

From: "George, Wes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:46:41 -0500

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Dave Crocker
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 12:06 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Remote Participation Services
>

[WEG] changed subject line to reflect actual topic
>
>
> If a meeting has good structure, management and content, the presence or
> absence of slides doesn't matter.
>

[WEG] Perhaps it would be helpful to make an informal recommendation to WG chairs (via the wiki, for example) that generally they should carve each request for agenda time roughly in half, with a hard limit of $speaker_time/2 devoted to "presenting" or otherwise framing the discussion and the remaining time devoted to open mic discussion. Likely this will result in presenters asking for 2x their previous time, but at least it will be a more realistic method to plan out time during a meeting and reduce the instances where the WG will be running short of time for meaningful discussion if the presenter (or WG chair) isn't good at managing the available time and spends the whole allocation reading slides to the people in attendance.

Wes George

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:57:01 -0500

> [WEG] Perhaps it would be helpful to make an informal recommendation to WG chairs (via the wiki, for example) that generally they should carve each request for agenda time roughly in half, with a h…
I actually don't think a hard limit is a good idea.  WGs need more 
presentation time in their early phases.

But this makes me realize that there's a related issue.   An expectation 
that WG meetings are for presentations, leads to an expectation that 
there's lots of opportunity to present suggestions for new work to do.   
WG time scheduled for considering new work can actually take away time 
for discussion of ongoing work.   And once the time is scheduled and 
people have made commitments to travel to meetings for the purpose of 
presenting new work, chairs are understandably reluctant to deny them 
their allotted presentation time.

(It seems like every time I attend an IETF there are numerous WG 
meetings with schedules full of presentations for new work that are 
hardly even listened to, and that those presentations crowd out 
discussion of ongoing work.   When the alloted time for such discussion 
has elapsed, the chair will sigh and say "ok, let's take that to the 
mailing list".)

I suggest that ongoing work should nearly always take precedence over 
consideration of new work, particularly for new work that's not fairly 
close to the current scope of the WG's charter.

It follows that chairs probably shouldn't schedule all of their allotted 
meeting time by filling otherwise unused time with presentations of 
proposals for new work.   The amount of time required for discussion is 
difficult to predict, and often runs over that anticipated.  A better 
strategy might be this:  List the major issues that need to be sorted 
out in face-to-face discussion, probably in order of importance (how 
much is this particular issue blocking WG progress on its chartered 
goals?) combined with some sense of how likely the group is to make 
progress.   Allot maybe 5 minutes for each topic for presentation time 
(introduction of the discussion), to be followed by the actual 
discussion.   Each discussion gets cut off after some pre-determined 
amount of time, or when the chair determines that it's unlikely to 
produce any useful progress.

If there's time left over after everything has been discussed, and the 
WG is close to finishing its chartered goals, the chair can invite 
speakers to briefly present proposals for new work.  But in general a WG 
shouldn't preallocate time for such presentations in WG meetings - they 
should rather be discussed in separate BOF sessions.

Keith

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:42:15 -0800

On 2/15/2013 9:46 AM, George, Wes wrote:
> [WEG] Perhaps it would be helpful to make an informal recommendation
> to WG chairs (via the wiki, for example) that generally they should
> carve each request for agenda time roughly in half, with a hard limit
> of $speaker_time/2

You are looking for an objective mechanism to handle a subjective issue. 
  It's a natural desire, but it's doomed to fail.

The requirement is to use meeting time well.  Yes, part of 'well' is to 
severely limit the occurrence of tutorials.  But a "presentation" might 
be highly appropriate or highly inappropriate, depending on its actual 
content.

For example, one type of presentation is to perform a careful expose', 
delineating design choices.  In form, it can look quite a bit like a 
tutorial. One time I helped resolve a seriously deadlocked and essential 
wg debate by just such an exercise.  I did a point-by-point comparison 
of the features (functions, benefits, costs, limitations, etc.) between 
two choices.  The powerpoint slides showed a 3-column table with each 
row listing a salient aspect.  By the end, the group developed 
reasonably good rough consensus towards one choice. My effort was a 
'presentation' but every minute of it was useful and, I believe, 
appropriate.

We need chairs and everyone else to be clear about what is useful and 
what is not and to then allocate (and enforce) time accordingly.  This 
is a matter of specific wg context and presentation content.

That doesn't happen algorithmically.

d/
-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 08:04:37 +0000

On 15/02/2013 20:57, Keith Moore wrote:
...
> their allotted presentation time.

This is closely related to a well-known problem at academic conferences.
Many people can only get funded to travel if they are presenting a paper.
It's common practice, therefore, to have either a poster session (which
allows massively parallel presentations) or hot-topics sessions (with a
strict and very short time-limit). We tend to throw the hot-topics sessions
into WG meetings, which is not ideal.

Why not have a poster session as part of Bits-n-Bites? It would give
new ideas a chance to be seen without wasting WG time. Make it official
enough that people can use it in their travel requests.

    Brian

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 08:23:06 -0500

> enough that people can use it in their travel requests.
That sounds like a great idea to me.

Keith

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From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 20:03:42 -0800

>> their allotted presentation time.
In v6ops we require that scheduled material to be discussed in the 
meeting have been aired out on the mailing list first. That is a rather 
good filter for which discussions about new work should be accepted. The 
time between meetings is ultimately a lot more scalable and less 
precious than the time during meetings. while there is certainly the 
opportunity for WG discussion to go where it needs to, one does not plan 
a trip to the IETF on the basis of impromptu MIC time.
> into WG meetings, which is not ideal.
There is literally no editorial barrier to the submission of an internet 
draft. Moreover the typical basis for the dicussion of an idea on a 
mailing list or in a WG meeting is that it exists as an internet draft.

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From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:38:51 +0000

> enough that people can use it in their travel requests.

Great idea!

(Or do it during the welcome reception - bigger room.)

Lars