Re: Interim meetings - changing the way we work

On Feb 26, 2015:5:12 PM, at 5:12 PM, Lou Berger <lberger(_at_)labn(_dot_)net> 
wrote:

Tom,
On 2/26/2015 4:48 PM, Thomas D. Nadeau wrote:

On Feb 26, 2015:4:30 PM, at 4:30 PM, Joel M. Halpern 
<jmh(_at_)joelhalpern(_dot_)com> wrote:

Thomas, if participants who can not make the conference calls are obliged 
to listen to the full recordings to get the key points of what has 
happened, why, what are the questions, and similar issues that need to be 
visible to the WG, then we are not running an inclusive process that allows 
for participation by the range of individuals we need.

     That is the problem. We're really only geared to have full-on, in 
person meetings all the time. That does not lend itself to being 
flexible/agile.  That is not to say that I want to exclude anyone, but to be 
fair, if a subset of people want to move a pile of work forward, we 
shouldn't ENCOURAGE that behavior not stifle.


It sounds to that you are describing design team meetings (or, in some
cases, an authors meetings).  I'm not sure what makes folks think that
the only way folks can collaborate is via the mail list or full on
interim meetings.


        Yes.

There is a reason that the IETF distinguishes between design teams 
meetings, where the design team has to explain their work carefully to the 
WG, and working group meetings.  There has always been a problem of not 
getting as much context as we would like from the WG minutes.  But since we 
explicitly take all resolutions to the list, this is ameliorated by folks 
being able to ask for explanations, by those issues being taken to the list 
promptly, and by the fact that we only met 3 times a year.  If you have 
bi-weekly calls and the WG can not tell what is going on with those calls, 
then what you have is a design team.  And then the folks involved need to 
own up to it as a design team, understand that they need to explain to the 
list what they have analyzed, their reasoning, and their conclusions.

     Design teams should be able to work asynchronously, but with fixed 
schedules and not have to have everything explicitly documented at every 
step.

100% agree.

I've been involved in many of such meetings (conf calls, webex, etc.)
and the key is that DT/authors' meetings need to be explained and
discussed on the list *at a time of their choosing*, which in my
experience is usually when a draft is published/updated.

If someone else is curious, they can get involved but not in order to slow 
things down or throw a monkey wrench into the works. If people want to keep 
leaning back on 10 year old process RFCs and arguing "well thats just the 
way we've always done things around here" then this organization is going to 
continue to slow its progress even more - and its descent into irrelevancy.  
There are a lot of people here (myself included) that want to evolve things 
because they think the IETF still has a lot to offer the industry. But if 
the organization won't evolve, people will take the path of least resistance 
and go elsewhere as they have been doing if you haven't noticed.


This statement just confuses me as you note below we've always had ways
for folks to make progress fast -- when there's interest in doing so. 
It just seems to me that many are enamored with interims and think it's
the sole/best way of demonstrating progress between full meetings. 
Perhaps you're just saying that they're mistaken...


        Its not being enamored as much as it being one of the only 
obvious/acceptable vehicles to progress WG-level 
work forward - at least if the management is involved. In NETMOD for example, 
we've broken the interims into two "themes": Yang 1.1 work and modeling.  The 
former is like its own design team, and the latter is like many design teams 
coming to one place every other week.  The former not only meets every other 
week, but discusses issues on the list. But to the latter - that is more like a 
touch point for those subteams. Those subteams go off on their own for weeks at 
a time and iterate as needed. And they work without all of the overhead of a 
formal meeting. They may or may not discuss progress on the list until issues 
come up.

        --Tom

Lou

     If you want a real example of how this can actually work, watch Anees 
explain how Open Config has done this with just weekly phone calls and a 
bunch of people typing on keyboards. They've done this in less than a year, 
and have rough consensus and (production) running code.  This is how the 
IETF used to operate: people got together, hacked code and got things 
working.  The goal was not having meetings, but producing code with rough 
consensus.

     https://code.facebook.com/posts/1421954598097990/networking-scale-recap

     --Tom

Yours,
Joel

On 2/26/15 4:21 PM, Thomas D. Nadeau wrote:

On Feb 26, 2015:4:16 PM, at 4:16 PM, Brian E Carpenter 
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:

On 27/02/2015 09:08, Thomas D. Nadeau wrote:

On Feb 26, 2015:2:42 PM, at 2:42 PM, Benson Schliesser 
<bensons(_at_)queuefull(_dot_)net> wrote:

Nico Williams wrote:

Yes, but a record that a concall or other interim meeting took place,
and who attended, even if there are incomplete or missing minutes, is
important for IPR reasons.  Ensuring that such meetings are NOTE WELL
meetings is (should be) a priority, and that includes ensuring that a
record of that much exists.

Ideally the concalls and other interims would be recorded.

I agree completely. My point was that meeting records (including 
minutes) will inevitably be incomplete, or possibly inaccurate, and 
that relying on the mailing list as an authoritative record is more 
effective.

Of course it is disappointing that we can't meaningfully translate 
voice discussions into text, in the minutes or in mailing list threads. 
If there were some magic tool e.g. that took better minutes then I'd be 
happy to use it. But otherwise, I think we just have to trust chairs to 
manage WG collaboration in whatever way is most effective for their 
WG's collaborators.

 The first step is to agree that an A/V recording is record enough.

It absolutely is not enough. Please see my previous message,
and the relevant rules in RFC 2418.

 Brian

   You are missing my point. RFC or not, the IETF needs to evolve.

   --Tom

Perhaps having meetbot/txt notes that at a min include actions/decisions 
like we do in the issue tracker we've used for NETMOD's Yang 1.1's 
issues.

 --Tom

This will inevitably be suboptimal for some part of the population. 
(For instance, I've never been able to find an interim meeting time 
that fits the schedules of all attendees.) But if they (we) always 
revert to the mailing list for decision making then I suspect our work 
can remain open and transparent.

Cheers,
-Benson