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Minutes and jabber logs

2006-07-17 08:55:24
Hi,

I would not like to see raw jabber logs included as part of the
minutes. The signal-to-noise ratio is way too low in many meetings.

Jabber logs written by a scribe do not do a good job representing the
body language and the nuances of speech that may be important to
really understand what a person said. I would also be concerned that
there are side-discussions in jabber that are not relayed to the whole
room; including those side conversations as a reflection of what was
said in the meeting is simply misleading. 

It is the chair's job to provide a summary of the meeting for the
mailing list to see what was discussed and "decided". I do not think
the chair should be allowed to evade this responsibility by simply
posting a quick summary and the raw jabber logs to the mailing list as
the official minutes.

David Harrington
dharrington(_at_)huawei(_dot_)com 
dbharrington(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net
ietfdbh(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net


-----Original Message-----
From: Spencer Dawkins [mailto:spencer(_at_)mcsr-labs(_dot_)org] 
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 11:18 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions

That said, and given the difficulties of balancing competing
priorities in site location, it seems reasonable to me to make
a decent, good-faith effort without getting overly bogged down
in "where should we meet?" discussions, and really try to get
the remote participation thing nailed down a little better.  The
ratio of good to bad remote meeting input has improved a lot
over the past year or so but there are still too many working
groups without a Jabber scribe in the room (which prevents remote
listeners from providing inputs), etc.

OK, this is only a thought, and I'm out of the process 
improvement business 
anyway, but I've been seeing a consistent improvement in the 
quality of 
jabber logs for at least two years, and I'm wondering if 
there are working 
groups who would be willing to try "minutes = chair summary 
plus jabber 
logs" for a few IETFs (without what we usually think of as "detailed

minutes"), and see if this is actually workable.

I'm a many-time repeat offender as WG note-taker, and am 
watching my notes 
look more and more like a jabber log with only one jabberer; 
the advantages 
of jabber (in my experience) are

- it's nice for the note-taker to be able to participate in 
the meeting - as 
an extreme case, in the SIPPING Ad Hoc on Friday, Gonzalo and 
Mary handed me 
the mike about twenty times, but very litte of what I said 
appeared in the 
notes, and it's worse when someone is already talking when I 
stop talking. 
That's typical in my experience. With Jabber, people can type 
until I get 
back to my seat.

- It's really nice when I misquote, or mis-attribute, 
something that was 
said and another jabberer corrects it right away. This is SO 
much better 
than the WG chair having to listen to the audio stream to 
check my notes 
after some number of days has elapsed (and sometimes all the 
chair can tell 
from the audio is that I got it wrong, without knowing what 
"right" would 
have been).

- and, obviously, this works better for remote participants 
(what's the 
alternative - send e-mail to the list?)

Now that all this stuff is on the IETF website, it should be 
more enduring 
than if the jabber rooms and logs were hosted somewhere else.

Of course, Jabber has to work; our wireless network has been 
pretty solid 
the last couple of meetings, but even so, if you offer a 
Jabber scribe an 
Ethernet connection and guaranteed power at the front of the 
room, that 
would be pretty compelling for me, most IETFs.

Thanks,

Spencer 



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