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
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 23, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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.
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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.
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title October 2012
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
Jaeggli & Arkko Expires April 23, 2013 [Page 9]