Re: Remote participants, newcomers, and tutorials

On 30/07/2013 06:18, John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Monday, July 29, 2013 01:37 -0400 Brian Haberman
> <brian(_at_)innovationslab(_dot_)net> wrote:
>
> > ...
> > One of the things that I ask the Internet Area chairs to do is
> > send in a summary of their WG after each IETF meeting.  Those
> > summaries generally give folks a good idea of the current
> > state of each WG.  I post those summaries on the Internet Area
> > wiki.  An alternative that would work as well is to have each
> > WG post summaries to their own wikis.  Each WG has a wiki
> > available via their Tools page (e.g.,
> > http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/6man/trac/wiki).
> >
> > I like seeing the summaries from my chairs and I have gotten
> > feedback from participants that they find them quite useful
> > for keeping up with WGs that are tangential to their primary
> > focus.  I would encourage every WG chair to periodically
> > summarize the state of their WG/drafts.
> Dave and a few other ancients will recall that there was a time
> when there was a requirement for ADs to put together per-meeting
> "Area Reports", which went into the minutes.  
These were put together from WG Chair's session reports, which
were (and are) mandatory under RFC 2418 (BCP 25):

      Immediately after a session, the WG Chair MUST provide the Area
      Director with a very short report (approximately one paragraph,
      via email) on the session.

That's not quite the same as a WG status report, but makes a good start.

   Brian


Unless ADs were
> masochists who wanted to do all the work themselves, that pretty
> much required that sort of status reports that he and Brian are
> talking about.  It also ensured that ADs were aware of what was
> going on in all of the WGs for which they were responsible and
> that, if there were two ADs in an area, they were talking with
> each other.  If those expectations were not met, someone
> observing that would presumably have something very concrete to
> tell the Nomcom.
>
> In the context of the current discussion, a set of well-written
> and frequently-updated area reports could also be a big help to
> a newcomer trying to navigate WG names and acronyms.   I agree
> that it would probably help to be more descriptive about WG
> names rather than looking for things that will make cute
> acronyms.  Whether we move in that direction or not, most
> newcomers and isolated/remote participants are going to find it
> easier to identify an Area of interest than a specific WG.  A
> well-written Area Report that includes brief descriptions of the
> main focus of each WG along with current status information
> would be, IMO, a huge help in matching people and specific
> interests.
>
> I think a Wiki or equivalent would be a fine way to maintain
> such pages but, given how well we do about keeping benchmarks
> and similar information up to date and the advantages deadlines
> seem to bring, I'd like to see at least snapshots or the
> equivalent in meeting minutes.
>
>     john