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Observations on the experience and nature of Large Interim Meetings
draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Joel Jaeggli , Jari Arkko
Last updated 2012-10-20
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draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-02
Internet Engineering Task Force                               J. Jaeggli
Internet-Draft                                                     Zynga
Intended status: Informational                                     Arkko
Expires: April 23, 2013                                         Ericsson
                                                        October 20, 2012

  Observations on the experience and nature of Large Interim Meetings
                 draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-02

Abstract

   Planning, particpipation and conclusions from the experience of
   participating in the IETF LIM activity on september 29th 2012.

Status of this Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 23, 2013.

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   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     1.1.  date and location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Planning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     2.1.  Discussion leading up to LIM  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     2.2.  Plannning for meeting and announcement  . . . . . . . . . . 4
     2.3.  Draft Deadlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   3.  Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.1.  Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.2.  Remote Participation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.3.  Participants  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   4.  Observations and Conclusions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     4.1.  Incentives for participation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     4.2.  Organization in conjunction with other events . . . . . . . 6
     4.3.  Implications for working groups/design teams of
           varying sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     4.4.  Mobilizing ADs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     4.5.  Outreach  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     4.6.  Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   8.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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1.  Introduction

   The genesis of this draft was the experience of planning and
   participating in the so called IETF LIM (Large Interim Meeting) held
   adjacent to the fall RIPE meeting on the 29th of September 2012.
   Three working groups met, OPSEC, V6OPS and SIDR.  It is intended that
   the draft cover planning, the operation of the meeting, and an
   attempt at some conclusions based on the experience.

   The fact that the draft represents the vantage point of a limited
   number of persons at this time necessarily limits the utility of the
   draft and undoubtedly as result, some key elements of the planning
   and motivation will be missed.  The Large Interim Meeting is the
   product of efforts over a number of years by multiple parties
   including the ISOC Board, IETF management (Chair, IESG, IAB, IAOC,
   IAD) working group chairs and probably others.  To the extent that
   this draft can be made better through the input of others, The
   authors would invite contributions and criticism.

   The Sept 29th LIM was the most recent attempt that we are aware of an
   interim meeting scheduled by IETF management for the purposes of
   accumulating interim meetings in a common location.  The IETF's
   traditional model for interim meetings has been that virtual or
   physical interim meetins are scheduled by working-group participants
   in conjunction with chairs and coordinating ADs [IESGinterim].  It is
   not the first attempt at such meeting.  It's status therefore an
   experiment is worth bearing mind in understanding the rest of the
   text.

1.1.  date and location

   The LIM was scheduled to coencide with the end of RIPE 65 and Occured
   on Saturday Sept 29th 2012.  Ripe 65 was at the Hotel Okura
   Amseterdam from September 24th-28th.  It is our understanding that
   coordination with the RIPE program committee occured only After IETF
   84 (an IAB member meber also happens toserve on the RIPE program
   committee)

2.  Planning

   It is, my understanding that discussion of the possibility of a LIM
   style meeting occurred in early 2011 if not before.  The v6ops chairs
   were asked at various times to consider particpation in such a
   meeting in other potential locations.  The discussion related to this
   interim meeting commenced in June.  The stated rational for targeting
   v6ops involvement in a large interim was the volume of work that we
   process during and between meetings.  For reasons that we will try

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   and explore the expectation of a volume of work was not borne out by
   the Agenda and meeting itself.

2.1.  Discussion leading up to LIM

   Some questions existed in the planning phase as to the nature of the
   logisitical support provided by the secretatit for the meeting as
   well as, remote participation, and the actual timinng of the meeting.
   Unlike a traditional interim the responsibility for satisfying these
   details was for better or worse in the hands of the secretariat,
   which meant a reduced workload for the chairs but it also left some
   details undecided until they could be announced, a hotel contract for
   the meeting rooms wasn't completed until after the 4 week window for
   announcing and interim meeting had passed

2.2.  Plannning for meeting and announcement

   A show of hands and subsequent mailing list followup were done to
   gauge v6ops interest in participation in an interim meeting.  Roughly
   50 participants, mostly active ones indicated significant interest in
   an interim collocated with RIPE 65 which we deemed sufficient to
   proceed.  Superficially, only a fraction of the v6ops attendees are
   represented by the segment of the group indicating interest.  When
   the numbers are mapped against active participants and draft authors,
   interested participants in the interim likely represent a bigger
   proportion of that group.

   Two of the three scheduled meetings were given 4 hour windows, the
   third SIDR (which routinely has interim meetings) had effectivetly
   the entire day.

2.3.  Draft Deadlines

   Immediately after IETF 84, the working group chairs of v6ops proposed
   an interim draft deadline 2 weeks out from the interim meeting
   (Saturday the 15th).  This was to be the basis for the acceptance of
   revised or new drafts onto the agenda.  The goal of the deadline was
   to be able to identify drafts which had changed and which had issues
   to be addressed prior to any additional action.

3.  Meeting

   Two OPS area working groups met, OPSEC and V6OPS, Effectively one
   after the other albiet seperated by lunch.  The SIDR working group
   met in parallel.

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3.1.  Running

   Both ops-area meetings came in substantially below their alloted
   time.  V6OPS was allocated 4 hours and completed in two.  SIDR broke
   for lunch, returned, and finished early, however it used a
   substantially higher percentage of the allocated time.  Possibly
   because it was a Saturday remote participation was effectively non-
   existant

   The observation of one participant in v6ops (Jari Arkko) was that
   they came prepared to discuss topics, for which the document authors
   were not present.  Looking at what we were able to schedule for the
   agenda, appart from the discussion of the state of drafts in various
   states of processing and the attention that they required, the
   presentations (3) were associated with drafts for which the authors
   were requesting feedback.

3.2.  Remote Participation

   Remote participation was supported by volunteers from meetecho using
   their own application.  Hotel okura wireless infrastrucuture was used
   to support the meeting.  An outage of the hotel network was observed
   during the opsec meeting with the result that remote participation
   would have been interupted for about 10 minutes had there been any to
   speak of.

3.3.  Participants

   Interim Meeting registration ended up being about 40 participants, 2
   days prior to the meeting that number was 23, provisions had been
   made for around 100 attendees.

4.  Observations and Conclusions

   Despite misgivings with V6OPS as patient zero for the large interim
   meeting concept, once committed we endeavored to make the meeting
   work for the participants that took the time out of their weekend to
   attend, or as was my case, traveled specifically for the Interim
   meeting.  As an experiment I think a lot of things are worth doing
   once and I hope that some lessons can be derived from the experience
   that have value for future interims.

4.1.  Incentives for participation

   An observation that we would make about the V6OPS interim submission
   deadline (and what we believe to be relative failure) is that it
   appears that authors who are not planning to attend a meeting, are

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   less inclined to revise a document in support of a meeting they are
   not attending.  The corollary, is that authors planning on a
   attending a meeting will rev their documents, or possibly that a
   revised document is justification to attend (This applies to IETF
   meetings in general).

   While this may be a tautology, Interim meetings probably are more
   successful when they appear necessary.  SIDR clearly is a close knit
   group of people (even when they disagree) working hard on a design
   problem.  The required time is due to the necessity of going over
   every issue to be addressed within a constrained temporal space.
   While the SIDR interim(s) may not be valid as the measurement of
   consensus they promote a common understanding of the problems and
   solution space among the key participants that ultimately will be the
   basis of consensus.

4.2.  Organization in conjunction with other events

   The particular conjunction of the LIM and RIPE was proposed several
   months prior to coordination with the RIPE program committee.  Given
   that the RIPE meeting traditionally ends on Friday with Lunch it is
   possible that tighter coordination with the RIPE organization could
   have coupled the event more directly.  There is an implicit
   assumption on our part that tighter coordination with an operator
   meeting means ceding control over the program to a certain extent to
   fit within that framework.

   The RIPE meeting is a week long like an IETF meeting, and if the goal
   of a conjoint interim is evangelism, cross pollination or outreach,
   (is it?) then fitting more directly into the program would probably
   have better results for both groups.  As it is, the bulk of the
   attendees in OPSEC and V6OPS were present to attend RIPE as well, or
   attended RIPE and stayed for the interim.

   A specific suggestion provided by several RIPE participants was to
   leverage the post-RIPE friday afternoon as opposed to the following
   day in order to reduce the commitment required by RIPE participants
   who would otherwise have to remain an extra day and therefore travel
   on saturday.  A common experience I have had with many *NOG meetings
   and indeed with the IETF is ancillary meetings packing in either
   before or after a core meeting thereby increasing the overall cost
   (time,money,commitment) associated with the overall activity.

4.3.  Implications for working groups/design teams of varying sizes

   V6ops attendance at an IETF meeting is typically in excess of 200
   attendees.  An interim meeting that attracts 25 of those and
   minuscule remote participation is necessarily exclusionary by default

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   if not deliberately.  If useful work that advances drafts, gets done,
   is that exclusivity a bad thing?  It's not useful for measuring
   meaningful consensus.

   The history of interim meetings has illustrative examples of working
   groups or design teams, with numerus interim meetings (IP storage/
   NFSv4, Lemonade, 6lowpan, Behave SIDR etc) that demonstrate the
   utility of frequent physical or virtual interims.  It is possible
   that there are properties that make some working groups more
   effective at utilizing interims than others.

4.4.  Mobilizing ADs

   Area Director's and IAB members were rather well represented at the
   LIM, While the attendance of both of our Directors was appreciated
   I'm not sure that it's a good use of their time.  In particular if
   the frequency of these events were fixed as some rate in the future,
   this represents an additional workload for which huge benefits due
   not appear likely to ensue.  In the case of of colocation with a RIPE
   meeting some of these participants were attending already.  Jari
   Arkko observed, "I would probably not have made the trip just for
   RIPE this time (although I usually do travel to them), nor would I
   have attended just for the LIM itself."

4.5.  Outreach

   Some entities related to the IETF clearly have outreach and advocacy
   as part of the mission, Internet Society, IETF chair, Liaisons edu
   team and so forth.  It is not clear to me that beyond the scope of
   chartered working group documents that end up as part of the RFC
   series that working group activities including meetings are well
   suited for use as an outreach mechanism.  The IETF meeting as a
   whole, which certainly an opportunity for advancing the work of the
   respective working groups is also an opportunity for cross
   pollination, for the collegial building of consensus that advances
   joint efforts, and to the extent that mini-IETF's do not support
   those activities relative to the thrice annual meeting, the utility
   as outreach tools lacks some degree of legitimacy.

4.6.  Conclusions

   It's not easy to draw strong conclusions from a single experiment
   Perhaps we have and extensive control group in the form of working
   groups that did not avail themselves of the virtual interim.

   Mobilizing IETF secretariat and meeting support resources in support
   of interim meetings that ultimately are lightly attended does not, on
   the face of it seem like it works on a cost recovery basis.  The

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   requirements for an interim meeting are typically modest, aggregating
   them makes them less so.  Expectations for the level of availability
   that an IETF network provides are expensive to deliver in the case of
   a smaller more ephemeral meeting.  In cases where interim meetings
   leverage resources that have higher availability/performance
   expectations such as the corporate offices of some of the
   participants, the results may be substantially better than what we
   can expect to be delivered by a hotel network contractor.

   The experience of OPSEC and V6OPS was not I think a huge success, it
   is likely that some of the rational discussed in the "incentives for
   participation" section plays a role in the ability of OPS working
   groups to invite work to be revised on the basis of interim
   deadlines.  By all accounts the SIDR working group had a successful
   productive meeting.  It is also likely in our understanding that SIDR
   would have met in the absence of the LIM with similar results.

5.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Ron Bonica, Fred Baker and Randy Bush
   for offering constructive input on this draft.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This memo Makes no request of IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   No security consequences are envisioned as a proeduct of this draft.

8.  Informative References

   [IESGinterim]
              IESG, "IESG Guidance on Interim Meetings, Conference Calls
              and Jabber Sessions", 2008,
              <http://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/
              interim-meetings.html>.

   [RFC2418]  Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
              Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998.

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Authors' Addresses

   Joel Jaeggli
   Zynga
   924 mouton circle
   East Palo Alto, CA  94303
   US

   Phone: +15415134095
   Email: jjaeggli@zynga.com

   Jari Arkko
   Ericsson
   Jorvas  02420
   Finland

   Email: jari.arkko@piuha.net

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