Re: Remote Participation Services

Keith, you seem to be asking for something (discussion, wit no 
presentation), that has never happened in the WGs I have attended in the 
last 20 years.  Even the WG sessions that had the best, most useful, 
discussions, generally started with a presentation of the topic and issue.
Such initial presentation is usually strongly helped by clear bullets 
that everyone can follow to keep straight what is being discussed.
yes, many of the briefings (here and elsewhere) are people reading their 
slides.  yes, Powerpoint seems to make this worse in the way the tool is 
designed.  But the issues seems to me not to e slides.
If I had to guess, it is a combination of folks lacking confidence to 
discuss their material, folks doing what they have seen, and the 
patterns the tools encourage.  There almost certainly are other factors.
If you could assume that all 10 people you were talking to were fully up 
to speed on the topic, and had not lost context to the other 10 WG 
sessions they have been preparing for, and if we knew how to hold 
conversations effectively in rooms with 50+ people, and ...
Yes, we should be looking for encouraging, and thanking / rewarding, 
those people who use their slots to briefly present and then engage in 
conversation with the WG.
But lets not invent a fictional past in which this was some how natural, 
or even the norm.
Yours,
Joel

On 2/11/2013 11:34 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 02/11/2013 10:46 PM, Bob Hinden wrote:
> > Keith,
> >
> > On Feb 11, 2013, at 5:17 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> >
> > > On 02/05/2013 11:04 AM, IETF Chair wrote:
> > > > 3.4. Slide Sharing
> > > >
> > > >     Slides are often sent by email in advance of the meeting.
> > > >         WebEx allows the slides and desktop applications to be
> > > > viewed by the
> > > >     remote participants.  These are controlled by the presenter.  The
> > > >     presenter can be shifted from participant to participant as needed.
> > > Can we *please* discourage the habit of treating IETF WG meetings as
> > > one series of PowerPoint presentations after another?   This makes
> > > the meetings much less productive.
> > >
> > > The notion that there are supposed to be slides for each
> > > presentation, is IMO, a huge error.
> > I disagree.  The slides are a great help for non-native english speakers.
> Let me back up a bit, because I don't think I stated my case strongly
> enough.
>
> WG meetings should not, in general, be used for presentations.  They
> should primarily be used for discussions.   Presentations are largely a
> waste of precious WG time.
>
> It is sometimes possible to prepare slides to help facilitate
> discussions.  But more often than not, the exercise of preparing slides
> encourages the speaker to fill up most or all of the available time with
> presentation material, leaving insufficient time for discussion of
> important questions.
>
> I certainly agree that when presentations are made, the slides can be
> helpful to those who aren't so fluent in English.   My point is that
> presentations should be made only rarely.
>
> Keith