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Re: Data collection for remote participation

2013-08-12 11:01:18
As someone who has done it both ways (in person and remotely) I have a 
couple of comments.

Having the slides available early is an advantage to BOTH in-person and 
remote participants.

As a remote participant I "need" the slides available about 30 min before 
the session.
As a participant (in-person or remote) it is VERY helpful to have the 
slides available much earlier.
So I do not think "how many remote participants for this session" is a 
useful parameter for "how important is it to get the slides out early"

On the other hand, I DO think  that the number of remote participants for 
a particular session IS a useful parameter for "how important is it to 
have an active jabber scribe" and "how important is it to make sure the 
audio streaming is working well."


As a remote participant the list of "working groups I am interested in" is 
different from the list of "working groups I plan to participate in 
remotely".
There is a SMALL list of working groups I am willing to get up at 2:30 AM 
(my time) to participate in (otherwise I MIGHT look at the slides and read 
the minutes when they come out)
There is a much LARGER list of working groups I  will participate in 
remotely if they are in (my time) "normal working hours".

There is nothing you can do about this a priori, but if the records show 
that, for instance -  whenever IETF is in North America, WG abc 
consistently has a large number of remote participants from Europe, and WG 
xyz consistently has a large number of remote participants from Asia - 
that could be factored into the agenda scheduling process.

In-person participants are not asked to list the WG they are interested 
in.  That is accomplished by the blue sheets.  I wonder if there is a way 
to do something analogous to the blue sheets for remote participants, 
whether  through jabber, email, doodle-poll, wiki, whatever. 

I agree with your points 2 and 3.

Janet


ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org wrote on 08/12/2013 09:09:32 AM:

From: Vinayak Hegde <vinayakh(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
To: IETF Discussion Mailing List <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Date: 08/12/2013 09:19 AM
Subject: Data collection for remote participation
Sent by: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org

Hi,

There has been a lot of discussion on the IETF mailing list regarding
improving remote participation and improving diversity on the mailing
lists and in the working groups. I think the two are related. I think
everyone broadly agrees that remote participation can be better. If
nothing else, it will tell about who the remote participants are. I
had proposed a few steps in this direction by improving the data
collection for remote participation in the IAOC Sunday meeting.
Posting them below again for discussion on the mailing lists.

It can be a simple form that asks the following questions (Can be
refined - this is just a start)
1. Name:
2. Country:
3. Duration of participation in IETF (either in number of years or
number of meetings)
4. Employer ?
5. Working groups interested in.

This can be voluntary and can be done pre-IETF meeting. As of now
there is no structured way to know how many people wre active in the
jabber room or listening on the audio stream.

I can see that this has multiple benefits.
1. If the number of participants in a certain WG is more, it would
push the WG chair to request for the slides/agenda available earlier.

2. If there are consistently more participation from around the world,
the the WG chair can request for a meetecho recording so people can
follow the group even if they cannot attend the meeting live. This
could be useful for people who have clashing schedules as well.

3. Over a longer period of time, it can help IETF plan and encourage
remote participation. Currently there is no hard data on number of
remote participants. There is however a lot of hand waving so this
will get some useful data into the system.

-- Vinayak