| Internet-Draft | MASA Considerations | October 2020 |
| Richardson | Expires 15 April 2021 | [Page] |
This document recommends a model for IETF virtual meetings that emphasizes new work, community building and cross-area concerns.¶
This document recommends virtual meetings be planned a reduced amount of overlap among sessions, with short sessions with generous gaps.¶
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IETF107 was the first pandemic IETF virtual meeting held in March 2020. IETF108 was the second pandemic IETF virtual meeting held in July 2020.¶
IETF107 consisted of a light week with no more than about 4-hours of sessions over Monday to Thursday. There were multiple tracks simultaneously, but not more three sessions at any one time. Priority was given to newly formed WGs that had not yet met, to Birds of a Feather session, and to cross-community sessions including specifically "dispatch" sessions.¶
These sessions were done with XXXX (webex? right?)¶
The timezone was approximately "Vancouver"-ish. Most sessions started in late morning, which turned into mid-evening in Europe (going into midnight), and middle of the night in Asia.¶
All other WGs were assigned a day in the weeks following IETF107 from March 30 to April 30. The WGs were asked to pick a time (and time zone) convenient to them, and they scheduled webex meetings on "ietf.webex.com", although a few WG chairs decided to use "Zoom". Many meetings occured in the North-America/Europe optimal time slot of 1500UTC ("10am EDT").¶
Despite the "pick a time", a small number of WGs managed to pick times when other WGs were meeting, and there were in fact collisions.¶
IETF 107 would be best described as a marathon rather than a sprint.¶
IETF108 consisted of a very heavy week.¶
Eight simultaneous tracks were scheduled, although with slightly shorter meeting times of 50 minutes and 100 minutes. The plenary occured at the normal Wednesday afternoon time, and other constants like "saag" being on Thurdsay afternoon were also maintained.¶
The day started in late-morning "Madrid" (Central Enropean) time and ended before dinner time. The longest break was a 30 minute break after the first session. Other breaks were in the 10 minute range.¶
This accomodated East-coast North-Americans, but Pacific coast participants had to get up for 4am. The schedule accomodated those in Asia slightly better, but it was still middle of the night in New-Zealand for all but the first sessions.¶
All WG sessions used meetecho with additional features having been added to support things like humming, and some slightly better queue management.¶
Many participants experienced a typical number of conflicts. See, for instance https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/suit/OcyNDcssHW8NUrCxGMzCJMX73_M/¶
Some WGs declined to schedule meetings at IETF108. This was due to a combination of scheduling, timezones and the fee to attend. WGs that did this usually had a healthy and regular set of virtual interim meetings that were ongoing.¶
IETF 108 would be best described as a sprint.¶
There is great utility in having all of the IETF members present and available together. Doing this in-person has many great benefits (and many costs internal and external), not enumerated here.¶
An unconstrained meeting with few conflicts and a few empty slots in each individual schedule maximizes the benefit of the togetherness. Some call it Working-Group "tourism", others call it "impromptu cross-area review", but there are significant benefits to having "bored" participants with time on their hands wander into a WG to which they have little knowledge.¶
To be fair, there is some significant negative experience with mic comments like, "I haven't read the document, but..."¶
Yet, often these comments do lead to significant issues.¶
Sometimes, though, they lead to an understanding that two WGs are facing the same issues, and that they should work together. And getting this understanding is really quite valuable.¶
This is PARTICULARLY the case for new work (BOFs), and for the first few meetings of a newly formed WG.¶
This is also why heavily conflicted (physical) meeting schedules have been a growing issue.¶
This document therefore recommends that the IETF encourage a healthy growth of virtual interim meetings which are:¶
While the IETF mission statement is very outcome focused, that doesn't mean that every activity needs to be only outcome focused. I think that the IETF "plenary" meeting times should be arranged to not just permit, but encourage cross-working-group participation.¶
This document suggests that the IETF virtual meeting week be focused on:¶
Rather than attempt to compress the schedule down so that the time between the beginning of the day and the end of the day is as short as possible, we should instead arrange the schedule with generous break intervals to accomodate adhoc 1:1 or rather-small-group meetings.¶
In particular, having some gaps where a person can reasonably expect to track down someone else to chat about a specific thing, or just to catch up.¶
This is to simulate the "hallway" discussion over cookies. Often this is the best way to talk though DISCUSSes among ADs and document authors. The gather.town was exceptionally useful for this.¶
This document recommends that we have fewer tracks. Somewhere between two and four.¶
That is, like IETF108 and more like IETF107. A few more tracks, and slightly longer days.¶
This document does not recommend that the schedule be adjusted to accomodate all the time zones. Because of where the Pacific Ocean is, that pretty much always puts noon somewhere near Greenwich.¶
The 1-1-1-* process should mean that the locale chosen for the cancelled physical meeting defines the time zone. Participants should be expected to "travel" to that time zone: many trips take 24 to 36 hours of airplane time, and asking participants to take a similiar amount of time to adjust their body clocks is not unreasonable. Once a year, the participants will find they have to do almost no adjustment, when the meeting is "near" them.¶
Meetings should be restricted to between a 4 and 7 day period though, which gives them some time to adjust before "returning" to work the next week.¶
Historical meetings have accomodated in excess of 200 hours of session time. (Eight hours/day X 4.5 days X eight tracks = 288 hours).¶
The virtual meeting should restrict itself to approximately 100 hours of session time. 6 sessions of 50 minutes, with ~30 minute breaks between, over 4 tracks, and over 4 days gives 90 hours of session time. This calculation does not count time for a plenary where there is only one track. This formula is intended to be a guideline only.¶
Rather than compete for available plenary-week WGs slots, WGs should compete to demonstrate that they don't need a slot. Having a plenary-week slot should mean that additional "supervision" is required :-) Either because the WG is very new, or because the WG is old and has lost it's way.¶
The excessive use of caffeine and sugar to adjust jet lag may have health effects on the participants. In addition, there is some possibility that decisions made under such influence might negatively affect the security of the Internet. Multiple reviews are always better.¶
This document makes no requests to IANA.¶
Hello.¶