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Arkko 5 Expires: July 18, 2013 Ericsson 6 January 14, 2013 8 Observations on the experience and nature of Large Interim Meetings 9 draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-04 11 Abstract 13 Planning, particpipation and conclusions from the experience of 14 participating in the IETF LIM activity on september 29th 2012. 16 Status of this Memo 18 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the 19 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 21 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 22 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute 23 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- 24 Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 26 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 27 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 28 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 29 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 31 This Internet-Draft will expire on July 18, 2013. 33 Copyright Notice 35 Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 36 document authors. All rights reserved. 38 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 39 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 40 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 41 publication of this document. Please review these documents 42 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 43 to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must 44 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of 45 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as 46 described in the Simplified BSD License. 48 Table of Contents 50 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 51 1.1. date and location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 52 2. Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 53 2.1. Discussion leading up to LIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 54 2.2. Plannning for meeting and announcement . . . . . . . . . . 4 55 2.3. Draft Deadlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 56 3. Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 57 3.1. Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 58 3.2. Remote Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 59 3.3. Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 60 4. Observations and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 61 4.1. Incentives for participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 62 4.2. Organization in conjunction with other events . . . . . . . 6 63 4.3. Implications for working groups/design teams of 64 varying sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 65 4.4. Mobilizing ADs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 66 4.5. Outreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 67 4.6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 68 5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 69 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 70 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 71 8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 72 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 74 1. Introduction 76 The genesis of this draft was the experience of planning and 77 participating in the so called IETF Large Interim Meeting (LIM) held 78 adjacent to the fall RIPE meeting on the 29th of September 2012. 79 Three working groups met, OPSEC, V6OPS and SIDR. It is intended that 80 the draft cover planning, the operation of the meeting, and an 81 attempt at some conclusions based on the experience. 83 The fact that the draft represents the vantage point of a limited 84 number of persons and a singular event at this time necessarily 85 limits the utility and aplicability of the draft and undoubtedly as 86 result, some key elements of the planning and motivation will be 87 missed. The Large Interim Meeting is the product of efforts over a 88 number of years by multiple parties including the ISOC Board, IETF 89 management (Chair, IESG, IAB, IAOC, IAD) working group chairs and 90 probably others. To the extent that this draft can be made better 91 through the input of others, The authors would invite contribution, 92 criticism and future dialog on how we meet outside the scheduled IETF 93 meetings. 95 The Sept 29th LIM was the most recent attempt that we are aware of an 96 interim meeting scheduled by IETF management for the purposes of 97 accumulating interim meetings in a common location. The IETF's 98 traditional model for interim meetings has been that virtual or 99 physical interim meetins are scheduled by working-group participants 100 in conjunction with chairs and coordinating ADs [IESGinterim]. It is 101 not the first attempt at such meeting. It's status therefore an 102 experiment is worth bearing mind in understanding the rest of the 103 text. 105 1.1. date and location 107 The LIM was scheduled to coincide with the end of RIPE 65 and 108 Occurred on Saturday Sept 29th 2012. Ripe 65 was held at the Hotel 109 Okura Amseterdam from September 24th-28th. It is our understanding 110 that coordination with the RIPE program committee occured only After 111 IETF 84 (an IAB member member also happens to serve on the RIPE 112 program committee) 114 2. Planning 116 It is, our understanding that discussion of the possibility of a LIM 117 style meeting within this time window occurred in early 2011 if not 118 before. The v6ops chairs were asked at various times to consider 119 particpation in such a meeting in other potential locations. The 120 discussion related to this interim meeting commenced in June. The 121 stated rational for targeting v6ops involvement in a large interim 122 was the volume of work that we process during and between meetings. 123 For reasons that we will try and explore the expectation of a volume 124 of work to be processed was not borne out by the agenda and meeting 125 itself. 127 A previous proposal for a LIM style meeting to have met in Malta in 128 2009 attracted a sponsor (Google) but was ultimatetly cancled on the 129 basis of expected participation (60 particpants) and remaining time 130 constraints. The Malta LIM was to have included the RAI area plus 131 SOFTWIRE and BEHAVE. 133 2.1. Discussion leading up to LIM 135 Some questions existed in the planning phase as to the nature of the 136 logisitical support provided by the secretatit for the meeting as 137 well as, remote participation, and the actual timinng of the meeting. 138 Unlike a traditional interim the responsibility for satisfying these 139 details was for better or worse in the hands of the secretariat, 140 which meant a reduced workload for the chairs but it also left some 141 details undecided until they could be announced, a hotel contract for 142 the meeting rooms wasn't completed until after the 4 week window 143 required for announcing and interim meeting had passed 145 2.2. Plannning for meeting and announcement 147 A show of hands, as well as subsequent mailing list followup were 148 done to gauge v6ops interest in participation in an interim meeting. 149 Roughly 50 participants, mostly active ones indicated significant 150 interest in an interim collocated with RIPE 65 which we deemed 151 sufficient to proceed. Superficially, only a fraction of the v6ops 152 attendees are represented by the segment of the group indicating 153 interest. When the numbers are mapped against active participants 154 and draft authors, interested participants in the interim likely 155 represent a bigger proportion of that group. 157 Two of the three scheduled meetings were given 4 hour windows, the 158 third SIDR (which routinely has interim meetings) had effectivetly 159 the entire day. 161 2.3. Draft Deadlines 163 Immediately after IETF 84, the working group chairs of v6ops proposed 164 an interim draft deadline 2 weeks out from the interim meeting ( 165 Saturday the 15th of Sept). This was to be the basis for the 166 acceptance of revised or new drafts onto the agenda. The goal of the 167 deadline was to be able to identify drafts which had changed and 168 which had issues to be addressed prior to any additional action. 170 3. Meeting 172 Two OPS area working groups met, OPSEC and V6OPS, Effectively one 173 after the other albiet seperated by lunch. The SIDR working group 174 met in parallel. 176 3.1. Running 178 Both OPS-area meetings came in substantially below their allotted 179 time. V6OPS was allocated four hours and completed in two. SIDR 180 broke for lunch, returned, and finished early, however it used a 181 substantially higher percentage of the allocated time. Possibly 182 because it was a Saturday remote participation was limited but not 183 non-existant 185 The observation of one participant in v6ops (Jari Arkko) was that 186 they came prepared to discuss topics, for which the document authors 187 were not present. Looking at what we were able to schedule for the 188 agenda, appart from the discussion of the state of drafts in various 189 states of processing and the attention that they required, the 190 scheduled presentations (3) were associated with drafts for which the 191 authors were requesting feedback. 193 3.2. Remote Participation 195 >Remote participation was supported by volunteers from meetecho using 196 their own application. Hotel okura wired network was provided for 197 the slide-sharing computer and wireless infrastrucuture was used to 198 support the meeting and in-room participation in the meetecho chat. 199 An outage of the hotel wireless network was observed during the OPSEC 200 meeting with the result that local participation in the meetecho 201 session would have been interupted for about 10 minutes, had there 202 been any to speak of. Philip Mathews reports having attended the 203 v6ops meeting remotely. 205 3.3. Participants 207 Interim Meeting registration ended up being about 40 participants, 2 208 days prior to the meeting that number was 23, provisions had been 209 made for around 100 attendees. 211 4. Observations and Conclusions 213 Despite misgivings with V6OPS as patient zero for the large interim 214 meeting concept, once committed we endeavored to make the meeting 215 work for the participants that took the time out of their weekend to 216 attend, or as was my case, traveled specifically for the Interim 217 meeting. As an experiment we think a lot of things are worth doing 218 once and hope that some lessons can be derived from the experience 219 that have value for future interims. 221 4.1. Incentives for participation 223 An observation that we would make about the V6OPS interim submission 224 deadline (and what we believe to be relative failure) is that it 225 appears that authors who are not planning to attend a meeting, are 226 less inclined to revise a document in support of a meeting they are 227 not attending. The corollary, is that authors planning on a 228 attending a meeting will rev their documents, or possibly that a 229 revised document is justification to attend (This applies to IETF 230 meetings in general). 232 While this may be a tautology, Interim meetings probably are more 233 successful when they appear necessary. SIDR clearly is a close knit 234 group of people (even when they disagree) working hard on a design 235 problem. The required time is due to the necessity of going over 236 every issue to be addressed within a constrained temporal space. 237 While the SIDR interim(s) may not be valid as the measurement of 238 consensus they promote a common understanding of the problems and 239 solution space among the key participants that ultimately will be the 240 basis of any broader consensus. 242 4.2. Organization in conjunction with other events 244 The particular conjunction of the LIM and RIPE was proposed several 245 months prior to coordination with the RIPE program committee. Given 246 that the RIPE meeting traditionally ends on Friday with Lunch it is 247 possible that tighter coordination with the RIPE organization could 248 have coupled the event more directly (e.g. to friday afternoon). 249 There is an implicit assumption on the part of the authors that 250 tighter coordination with an operator meeting means ceding control 251 over the program to a certain extent to fit within that framework. 253 The RIPE meeting is a week long like an IETF meeting, and if the goal 254 of a conjoint interim is evangelism, cross pollination or outreach, 255 (is it?) then fitting more directly into the program would probably 256 be salubrious for both groups. As it stands, the bulk of the 257 attendees in OPSEC and V6OPS were present to attend RIPE as well, or 258 attended RIPE and stayed for the interim. 260 A specific suggestion provided by several RIPE participants was to 261 leverage the post-RIPE friday afternoon as opposed to the following 262 day in order to reduce the commitment required by RIPE participants 263 who would otherwise have to remain an extra day and therefore travel 264 on saturday. A common experience with many *NOG meetings and indeed 265 with the IETF is ancillary meetings packing in either before or after 266 a core meeting thereby increasing the overall cost 267 (time,money,commitment) associated with the overall activity. 269 4.3. Implications for working groups/design teams of varying sizes 271 V6ops attendance at an IETF meeting is typically in excess of 200 272 attendees. An interim meeting that attracts 25 of those and limited 273 remote participation is necessarily exclusionary by default if not 274 deliberately. If useful work that advances drafts, gets done, is 275 that exclusion a bad thing? The resulting meeting input would not be 276 useful for measuring meaningful consensus. V6OPS got a new draft out 277 of discussion that occurred during the interim meeting. 279 The history of interim meetings has illustrative examples of working 280 groups or design teams, with numerus interim meetings (IP storage/ 281 NFSv4, Lemonade, 6lowpan, Behave SIDR etc) that demonstrate the 282 utility of frequent physical or virtual interims. It is possible 283 that there are properties (demands on immediacy, collaboration with 284 other SDOs etc) that make some working groups or design teams more 285 effective at utilizing interims than others. 287 4.4. Mobilizing ADs 289 Area Director's and IAB members were rather well represented at the 290 LIM, While the attendance of both of the Ops and Mangement Directors 291 was appreciated we are not sure that it's a good use of their time. 292 In particular if the frequency of these events were fixed as some 293 rate in the future, this represents an additional workload for which 294 huge benefits do not appear likely to ensue. In the case of of 295 colocation with a RIPE meeting, some of these participants were 296 attending already. Jari Arkko observed, "I would probably not have 297 made the trip just for RIPE this time (although I usually do travel 298 to them), nor would I have attended just for the LIM itself." 300 4.5. Outreach 302 Some entities related to the IETF clearly have outreach and advocacy 303 as part of the mission, Internet Society, IETF chair, Liaisons, edu- 304 team and so forth. It is not clear to us, that beyond the scope of 305 chartered working group documents that end up as part of the RFC 306 series, that working group activities including meetings are well 307 suited for use as an outreach mechanism. The IETF meeting as a 308 whole, which is certainly an opportunity for advancing the work of 309 the respective working groups is also an opportunity for cross 310 pollination, for the collegial building of consensus that advances 311 joint efforts, and to the extent that mini-IETF's do not appear to 312 support those opportunities relative to the three times annually 313 meeting, the utility of LIMs as outreach tools lacks some degree of 314 legitimacy. 316 4.6. Conclusions 318 It's not easy to draw strong conclusions from a single experiment. 319 Perhaps we have and extensive control group in the form of working 320 groups that did not avail themselves of the virtual interim. Some 321 thoughts follow. 323 Mobilizing IETF secretariat and meeting support resources in support 324 of interim meetings that ultimately are lightly attended does not, on 325 the face of it seem like it works on a cost recovery basis. Smaller 326 single working-group interims have experienced substantial 327 difficulties arranging technology support and remote participation 328 for interim meetings in some locations so in that respect some 329 central planning and coordination does pay off. 331 The requirements for an interim meeting are typically modest, 332 aggregating them makes them less so. 334 Expectations for the level of availability that an IETF network 335 provides are expensive to deliver in the case of a smaller more 336 ephemeral meeting. 338 In cases where interim meetings leverage resources that have higher 339 availability/performance expectations such as the corporate offices 340 of some of the participants, the results may be substantially better 341 than what we can expect to be delivered by a hotel network 342 contractor. 344 Interim meetings are typically organized around short term goals, the 345 longer term planning needs associated with participants budgeting for 346 travel and making time commitments are incompatible with the short 347 term nature of current interim planning. Immediacy appears to trump 348 other considerations for working groups and desgin teams that meet in 349 signular interims. 351 The experience of OPSEC and V6OPS was not I think a huge success, it 352 is likely that some of the rational discussed in the "incentives for 353 participation" section plays a role in the ability of OPS working 354 groups to invite work to be revised on the basis of interim 355 deadlines. By all accounts the SIDR working group had a successful 356 productive meeting. It is also likely in our understanding that SIDR 357 would have met in the absence of the LIM with similar results. 359 5. Acknowledgements 361 The authors would like to thank Ron Bonica, Fred Baker, Randy Bush, 362 Spencer Dawkins Philip Matthews and Simon Pietro Romano for offering 363 constructive input or feedback on this draft. 365 6. IANA Considerations 367 This memo Makes no request of IANA. 369 7. Security Considerations 371 No security consequences are envisioned as a proeduct of this draft. 373 8. Informative References 375 [IESGinterim] 376 IESG, "IESG Guidance on Interim Meetings, Conference Calls 377 and Jabber Sessions", 2008, 378 . 381 [RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and 382 Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. 384 Authors' Addresses 386 Joel Jaeggli 387 Zynga 388 675 east Middlefield rd 389 Mountain View, CA 94043 390 US 392 Phone: +15415134095 393 Email: jjaeggli@zynga.com 395 Jari Arkko 396 Ericsson 397 Jorvas 02420 398 Finland 400 Email: jari.arkko@piuha.net