Network Working Group P. Saint-Andre
Internet-Draft &yet
Intended status: Informational D. York
Expires: April 30, 2015 Internet Society
October 27, 2014
The Chatroom Relay Role at IETF Meetings
draft-saintandre-chatroom-relay-02
Abstract
During IETF meetings, individual volunteers often help sessions run
more smoothly by relaying information back and forth between the
physical meeting room and an associated textual chatroom (where
remote participants can send questions or feedback to the physical
room).
This document provides suggestions for fulfilling the role of a
chatroom relay.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on April 30, 2015.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Know Your Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Primary Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Additional Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
During IETF meetings, individual volunteers often help sessions run
more smoothly by relaying information back and forth between the
physical meeting room and an associated textual chatroom. This role
is critical as it is currently the only "real-time" way for a remote
attendee to provide feedback or comments back into most IETF meeting
sessions (whether for an IETF working group, IRTF research group, or
IETF "birds of a feather" or "BoF" session). Although there are
multiple ways that a remote attendee can listen and follow along, the
chatroom provides a method of returning feedback to the physical
meeting.
This document provides suggestions for fulfilling the role of a
chatroom relay.
2. Terminology
A chatroom relay is often referred to as a "Jabber scribe". This
term is misleading because nothing prevents the IETF from using a
technology other than Jabber/XMPP [RFC6120] [XEP-0045] for chatrooms
(say, IRC or an integrated collaboration environment), and more
importantly because volunteers are not expected to scribe the
complete contents of the meeting into the chatroom (which would be a
much more onerous task than relaying selected information back and
forth between the physical room and the chatroom). Use of the term
"scribe" might discourage people from volunteering to serve in the
role.
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3. Know Your Users
The participants in a chatroom typically fall into three categories:
o Remote attendees who are listening to the audio stream or in some
cases following the proceedings using a real-collaboration system
(currently exemplified by the MeetEcho service). These
participants might wish to send questions or feedback to the
physical room.
o IETF meeting attendees who are in another simultaneous session in
a different physical room. These participants are often
monitoring the chatroom session to find out when a particular
topic is being discussed or to observe what is being discussed in
the chatroom. Typically they are not able to listen to the audio
stream and sometimes they ask for a higher level of commentary so
that they can know when they might need to change locations to
participate in the session's physical room.
o IETF meeting attendees who are in the same session. These
participants like to follow the discussions in the physical room
and the chatroom at the same time. They can also provide some
assistance to chatroom relays.
Because all chatroom sessions are logged during IETF meetings and the
logs are publicly available, the logs can be a very useful history of
what occurs during a meeting. For that reason any additional
information that can be supplied to remote participants can be very
helpful.
4. Primary Tasks
Individuals who volunteer for the role of chatroom relay usually
complete the following tasks:
o Relay questions and comments from the chatroom to the physical
room. This typically involves going to the microphone to relay
the comment from the remote participant.
o Count the number of chatroom participants who virtually "hum",
raise their hands, volunteer to provide feedback on documents,
etc., and feed that information back to the physical room.
o Relay information about hums and similar interactions from the
physical room to the chatroom (preferably after receiving a
"reading" from the session chairs).
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It is the convention in most sessions that the chatroom relay has the
privilege to go to the front of the microphone line to relay the
question(s) from remote participants. Some chatroom relays choose to
exercise that privilege while others choose to wait in line along
with the participants in the physical meeting rooom.
5. Additional Tasks
Additionally some chatroom relays often complete the following tasks:
o Relay the names of people speaking in the physical room to the
chatroom.
o Relay the slide numbers or slide names to help chatroom
participants follow along.
o Query remote participants about audio streaming quality, and relay
such information to the session chairs.
o Relay to the chatroom participants any logistical or procedural
issues related to the meeting (for instance, known technical
glitches at the physical meeting or delays in starting the
session).
o Provide links to the current set of slides and the document being
discussed so that chatroom participants can easily follow along.
Although chatroom relays are not generally expected to scribe the
complete contents of conversations that happen the physical room to
the chatroom, they sometimes relay the gist of such conversations,
especially during ad-hoc discussions for which slides are not
available. (By prior arrangement between the session chairs and the
chatroom relay, more detailed scribing might be expected for
particular sessions.)
6. Suggestions
Experience has shown that the following behaviors make it easier to
act as a chatroom relay.
If you have volunteered before the session:
o Coordinate with the chairs to ensure that remote participants have
received information about where to find the meeting materials,
agenda, audio stream, etc. (e.g., this information can be sent to
a working group discussion list so that remote participants do not
need to ask about it on entering the chatroom).
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o Coordinate with the chairs to see if they have any special
expectations for the chatroom relay (e.g., some chairs might want
you to actually "scribe" more detailed information about the
session proceedings into the chatroom).
o Ask the session chairs whether it is acceptable for you to advance
to the front of the mic line with time-sensitive comments from
remote participants.
As you are getting settled and ready for the meeting to start:
o Seat yourself near the microphone most likely to be used for
discussions in the physical room, so that you can more easily
capture the names of people who come to the mic. Typically this
will be a seat near the end of a row or in some location where you
can easily get up out of your seat to go to the microphone.
o It can be helpful to open several browser windows or tabs for:
* the agenda page for the session
* the materials page so that you can relay links to slides if
necessary
* the documents page for the working group or research group (or
BoF wiki page) in case you want easy access to documents
mentioned but not in the agenda page
* the meeting registration system page (see below)
o Determine if the session will be streamed via a real-collaboration
system such as MeetEcho. If so, that system might automatically
post the slide names into the chatroom and this is one less task
you need to be concerned about.
o If the session is large or is expected to be especially active
(e.g., a controversial BoF), find an assistant who can help you by
sitting at another mic, taking turns relaying information, etc.
Identifying one or more assistants is very useful particularly if you
want to go up to the microphone to speak as an individual or if you
need to take a break or step out of the physical room at some point.
During the session:
o Identify yourself in both the physical room and the chatroom so
that participants in both venues know that you are a relay.
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o Ask chatroom participants what level of information they need
relayed into the chatroom. For example if all chatroom
participants are listening via audio or a system like MeetEcho
they might need very little information relayed from the room.
o Ask chatroom participants to prepend statements they would like
you to relay with "RELAY" or "MIC" (the former term is less
ambiguous).
o When relaying a question or comment from the chatroom to the
physical room, say "this is X relaying for Y from the chatroom" so
that people know you are not speaking for yourself.
o It's not expected that you will know the names of everyone who
comes to the mic. If you don't know the name of a person at the
microphone, you have several options:
* look at their name badge if you are seated nearby
* query them directly (calling out "state your name, please" is
acceptable)
* ask in the chatroom or type something like "?? at the mic",
since it is likely that someone who is present in both the
physical room and the chatroom will be able to identify the
person for you
* look up the name of the attendee in the meeting registration
system (this is typically found at a URL of the form "https://
www.ietf.org/registration/<meeting>/attendance.py", such as
"https://www.ietf.org/registration/ietf90/attendance.py"); you
can quickly look up a name using this system if you are in
doubt.
o Be aware that lag happens between the time when something is said
in the physical room and the time when someone provides a response
in the chatroom, and take this into account when the interaction
is time-sensitive (e.g., during a hum or a show of hands).
7. IANA Considerations
This document requests no actions from the IANA.
8. Security Considerations
Although XMPP multi-user chat rooms [XEP-0045] can be configured to
lock down nicknames and require registration with the chatroom in
order to join, at the time of this writing IETF chatrooms are not so
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configured. This introduces the possibility of social engineering
attacks on discussions held in IETF chatrooms. It can be helpful for
chatroom relays to be aware of this possibility.
Denial of service (DoS) attacks of various kinds are possible, e.g.,
flooding a chatroom with unwanted or automated traffic.
9. References
[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, March 2011.
[XEP-0045]
Saint-Andre, P., "Multi-User Chat", XSF XEP 0045, February
2012.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dan Burnett, Jelte Jansen, Warren Kumari, Hugo Salgado,
Yaakov Stein, and Greg Wood for their input. Thoughts and ideas sent
by Wes George and Janet Gunn to an IETF 87 mailing list were
incorporated into this document.
Authors' Addresses
Peter Saint-Andre
&yet
Email: peter@andyet.com
URI: https://andyet.com/
Dan York
Internet Society
Email: york@isoc.org
URI: https://www.internetsociety.org/
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