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Duke 5 Expires: 25 April 2022 F5 Networks, Inc. 6 22 October 2021 8 Guidelines for the Organization of Fully Online Meetings 9 draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-online-meeting-02 11 Abstract 13 This document provides guidelines for the planning and organization 14 of fully online meetings, regarding the number, length, and 15 composition of sessions on the meeting agenda. These guidelines are 16 based on the experience after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. 18 Discussion Venues 20 This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC. 22 Discussion of this document takes place on the Stay Home Meet Only 23 Online Working Group mailing list (manycouches@ietf.org), which is 24 archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/manycouches/. 26 Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at 27 https://github.com/mirjak/draft-shmoo-online-meeting. 29 Status of This Memo 31 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the 32 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 34 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 35 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute 36 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- 37 Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 39 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 40 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 41 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 42 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 44 This Internet-Draft will expire on 25 April 2022. 46 Copyright Notice 48 Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 49 document authors. All rights reserved. 51 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 52 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ 53 license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. 54 Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights 55 and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components 56 extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text 57 as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are 58 provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. 60 Table of Contents 62 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 63 2. Some History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 64 3. Guidelines for Online Meeting Planning . . . . . . . . . . . 3 65 3.1. Time Zone Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 66 3.1.1. Rules for selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 67 3.2. Number of Days and Total Hours per Day . . . . . . . . . 5 68 3.3. Session/Break Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 69 3.4. Number of Parallel Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 70 4. Additional Considerations and Recommendations . . . . . . . . 7 71 4.1. Full vs. limited agenda (and interim meetings) . . . . . 7 72 4.2. Flexibility of time usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 73 4.3. Chances for inclusivity and Lessons Learnt on 74 socilizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 75 4.4. Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 76 5. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 77 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 78 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 79 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 80 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 82 1. Introduction 84 In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the IETF to move all its 85 plenary meetings to online-only events. This document mainly records 86 the experience gained by holding all three plenary meetings in 2020 87 fully online 88 and noting down the guidelines that have been followed since. The 89 aim of this document is to determine rough consensus of these 90 guidelines in the sense that the most participants are sufficiently 91 satisfied with the current organization of fully online events. 92 These guidelines, however, document only one option of running fully 93 online meetings. But as the IETF has done for in-person meetings, 94 changes to the organization of the meetings and the meeting agenda 95 should be experimented with in the process of establishing future 96 meeting guidelines. 98 2. Some History 100 When the WHO declared a world-wide pandemic in March 2020, the IETF 101 had to quickly cancel its plenary meeting and organize an online 102 replacement instead (within less than two weeks). At that point, for 103 this first online-only meeting, the agenda was reduced to a set of 104 sessions that benefitted most from cross-area participation, like 105 BoFs, first-time meetings of a new working groups, or dispatch 106 sessions, as well as the administrative plenary in order to organize 107 the official hand-over procedures that occur at the March meeting. 109 With such an reduced agenda, it was possible to organize the meeting 110 within roughly 2 sessions (about 4 hours) a day and a maximum of two 111 parallel tracks. This was possible as all working group meetings 112 were instead moved to interims which were then distributed over the 113 coming six weeks. However, this was often perceived as increased 114 load over a longer time. But at that point of time there was not 115 necessarily an expectation that the situation would continue as long 116 as it did. 118 For the following meetings in 2020, the online schedule was retained 119 in a fashion similar to an in-person meeting (1-2 hour slots and 8-9 120 parallel tracks as described below), however, still with a reduced 121 total length of initially 5 hours a day and then 6 hours with longer 122 breaks. 124 All fully online meetings in 2020 have followed the time zone of the 125 planned in-person meeting location, but starting roughly around noon 126 instead. Some flexibility with the start time to be "around" noon 127 has been used to mitigate the worse possible time slots, even though, 128 given the distribution of participants it is not possible to avoid 129 certain hours entirely. The in-person meeting location follows the 130 1-1-1 rule as documented in [RFC8719] to rotate between Asia, Europe, 131 and North America. While the exact time slot used had led to various 132 discussions, following roughly the 1-1-1 rule to share the pain has/ 133 seems to have rough consensus. 135 3. Guidelines for Online Meeting Planning 136 3.1. Time Zone Selection 138 This time selection enables to have 2 out of 3 fully online IETF 139 plenary meetings during the day from most participants. Basically 140 every full online meeting is for two regions of the three regions 141 described in [RFC8179], roughly speaking, after sunrise or after 142 dinner. This has the tradeoff that it maps the third region in 143 middle of night. However, that also means for most participants only 144 one remote meeting per year might require a significant change to 145 sleep schedules. 147 The times are also seasonally adjusted to leverage differentials in 148 Daylight Savings Time. These time slots are as follows, in UTC: 150 +===============+=========================+=========================+ 151 | Name | Times (Northern Summer) | Times (Northern | 152 | | | Winter) | 153 +===============+=========================+=========================+ 154 | North America | 0500-1100 UTC | 0600-1200 UTC | 155 | Night | | | 156 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 157 | Asia Night | 1400-2000 UTC | 1500-2100 UTC | 158 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 159 | Europe Night | 2200-0400 UTC | 2200-0400 UTC | 160 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 162 Table 1 164 The intent of rotating between these three slots is to scatter 165 meetings throughout the course of the global day, to maximize the 166 ease of participants to occasionally attend regardless of their 167 location and what time of day is optimal for their schedule. 169 3.1.1. Rules for selection 171 The IETF will select a start time from these three choices based on 172 the past three meetings. The following table covers all permutations 173 of previous meetings held in-person in Region A, B, or C; or remotely 174 in the nights of one of those regions. 176 +================+================+==============+==================+ 177 | 3 meetings ago | 2 meetings ago | Last Meeting | Online | 178 | | | | Selection | 179 +================+================+==============+==================+ 180 | Any | Any | In-Person A | A Night | 181 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 182 | Any | Online A Night | Online B | C Night | 183 | | | Night | | 184 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 185 | Online A Night | In-Person B | Online B | C Night | 186 | | | Night | | 187 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 188 | In-Person A | In-Person B | Online B | A Night | 189 | | | Night | | 190 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 191 | In-Person A | In-Person A | Online A | see below | 192 | | | Night | | 193 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 194 | Online A Night | Online B Night | Online C | A Night | 195 | | | Night | | 196 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 198 Table 2 200 Basically this table follows two rules: 1) When ever a fully online 201 meeting follows and in-person meeting, the online meeting time is 202 used that disadvantages most the participants of the time zone where 203 the in-person meeting was held. 2) If multiple fully online meetings 204 follow each other, the time zone selection should be rotated based on 205 the most recent time zones that the in-person meetings were held in. 207 The final case occurs in the rare event that back-to-back in-person 208 plenaries occur in the same region. In this case, find the most 209 recent meeting that was neither in 'A' (if in person) nor in 'A' 210 night (if remote). If this meeting was in-person in region 'B', then 211 the next meeting will be in 'B' Night. If it was remote in 'B' 212 Night, the next meeting will be in 'C' Night. 214 To initialize this algorithm, IETF 112 is considered as an 'Asia 215 Night' remote meeting, and IETF 111 is a 'Europe Night' remote 216 meeting. 218 3.2. Number of Days and Total Hours per Day 220 Online meetings have converged to run over 5 days with 6-hour meeting 221 days, roughly. Only, the administrative plenary, which concludes 222 with multiple open mic sessions, is not necessarily time-bounded. 224 Based on the experience so far, 6 hours of online meetings, with two 225 30 minutes breaks, appear to be potentially a natural limited of what 226 is handleable for most participants. Respectively, the meeting 227 survey after IETF 109 has indicated a high satisfaction with the 228 distribution of sessions over 5 days but only a medium satisfaction 229 with the overall length of each day [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ 230 ietf108-survey-results-informed-planning/]. 232 While there is a possible trade-off between shorter but more days, a 233 compact and potentially intense meeting was slightly prefer from the 234 beginning by the community. And, different than for in-person 235 meetings, also utilize time during the weekend was never considered 236 as a possible option. So far, it was possible for all meetings to 237 fit the requested number of sessions within 5 days, with the 238 respective number of parallel tracks, see Section Section 3.4. 240 3.3. Session/Break Length 242 For fully online meetings there are typically less sessions per day, 243 than for in-person meetings, in order to keep the overall meeting day 244 to at roughly 6 hours. The reduction of the number of sessions per 245 day let to the practice of offering chairs only two options for 246 session length (instead of three), in order to make session 247 scheduling more practical. 249 At IETF-108, based on an indicated preference of the community, 50 250 and 100 minute slot were used, with only 10 minutes breaks, in order 251 to keep the overall day length at 5 hours. This resulted in many 252 sessions going over time and thereby clearly indicated that only 10 253 minutes for breaks are not practical. 255 The survey after IETF-109 showed a high satisfaction with 60/120 256 minute session lengths and 30 minute breaks, and a significant 257 improvement in satisfaction over IETF-108. 258 [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-109-post-meeting-survey/] 260 While the option to shorten the breaks was discussed during the later 261 meetings, a saving of in total 10-20 minutes per day might not 262 balance the need to use the breaks for recreation or at least some 263 socialising. 265 3.4. Number of Parallel Tracks 267 Fully online meetings are not limited in the number of parallel 268 tracks by the physical restriction of a meeting venue aka the number 269 of meeting rooms. In order to reduce the number of possible 270 conflicts, it is still desirable to minimise the number of parallel 271 tracks by balancing the requested sessions mostly equally over the 272 available slots. 274 But if the total number of requested sessions exceeds the capacity of 275 the usual 8 parallel tracks, it is possible for a fully online 276 meeting to simply use more tracks. This also means, if the number of 277 meeting days is seen as fixed, this decision is implicitly made by 278 the working group chairs requesting a certain number of sessions and 279 length. 281 As more parallel sessions usually also mean more conflicts, chairs 282 are encouraged to request plenary meeting time carefully but also 283 based on realistic planning to avoid running over time. Use of 284 interim meetings should be consider instead where possible and 285 sensible, as discussed in Section Section 4.1. 287 4. Additional Considerations and Recommendations 289 4.1. Full vs. limited agenda (and interim meetings) 291 The IETF-108 meeting survey asked about the structure of that meeting 292 (full meeting) compared to that of IETF 107, which hosted only a 293 limited set of session followed by interims in the weeks after. The 294 structure of IETF 108 was preferred by 82% 295 [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-108-meeting-survey/]. While the 296 limited agenda of IETF-107 could have been a good one-time 297 replacement, the value of cross-participation and high active 298 meetings weeks has been recognised as important for continuous 299 progress (and not only for newly initiated work). 301 A highly concentrated meeting, in structure similar to the in-person 302 plenary meeting, provides value for cross-participants. Further a 303 well defined meeting time, rather than spreading many interims over 304 the whole year can make deconflicting with other non-IETF meetings 305 easier. 307 While the time during an in-person meeting can be used very 308 intensively, even a compact and full online schedule does often not 309 prevent day-job duties to occur in parallel. Therefore, allocating 310 more time can also make it more difficult for people to join and as 311 such needs to be balanced with the option to distribute load better 312 over the entirely year by a more regular use of interim meetings. 314 Use of (more) online interim meetings can also help to reduce 315 scheduling conflicts during an IETF week and allows for a more are 316 optimal scheduled for the key participants. Of course these interim 317 meetings are less likely to attract people with casual interest but 318 provide a good opportunity for the most active participants of a 319 group to have detailed technical discussions and solve recorded 320 issues efficiently. 322 4.2. Flexibility of time usage 324 This document recommends that new opportunities in the use and 325 scheduling of online meeting time should be explored that can help to 326 reduce conflicts during the plenary meeting. 328 Online meetings provide an opportunity to use more time more 329 flexibly. While for an in-person meeting all sessions have to be 330 fitted into the available time people are willing to travel at once 331 (usually roughly a week), online meetings do not have that 332 constraint. Therefore for the planning of online meetings, there is 333 a trade-off between the number of parallel tracks, where more 334 parallel tracks mean more potential conflicts (as least of high- 335 active participants), and the overall time in terms of hours per day 336 or total days used. 338 As one example, it would be possible to keep most regular working 339 group sessions within the usually five main meeting days but have 340 some of the more conflicted sessions in other dedicated time slots. 341 As the Hackathon for online only meetings is usually held in the week 342 before the online plenary meeting [I-D.ietf-shmoo-hackathon], that 343 week is already a high active week for many IETF participants and 344 might provide an opportunity to schedule a few selected sessions. If 345 only one session at a time needs to be scheduled, it easier to use a 346 time slot that is well assessable for most people in the community in 347 various time zones. This might make especially sense for session 348 that are of high interest for a large part of community, such as BoFs 349 or dispatch meetings, and therefore hard to schedule during the main 350 IETF week. 352 4.3. Chances for inclusivity and Lessons Learnt on socilizing 354 Participation at the most recent online only meetings was rather high 355 and had a quite stable per-country distribution, even though time 356 zones were rotated. This indicates that online meetings support a 357 more easy and therefore potentially broader participation than in- 358 person meetings where participation is often fluctuating based on the 359 location. 361 However, it has also been recognised that the online meeting does not 362 provide an equivalent opportunity to socialize. The observed slight 363 decrease in submission of new (-00) drafts, while the overall number 364 of draft submission and productivity seem to stay stable, might also 365 be an indication of the dismiss of these interactions. The increase 366 in interim meetings potentially compensates for these missing 367 interactions for continuous work (or may even increase productivity 368 there), but seems to be less adequate to spark new ideas. 370 None of the data observed so far can, however, be interpreted as 371 showing a significant trend. However, these factors should be 372 consider for the organization of future online-only meetings in 373 replacement or addition to in-person meetings. 375 4.4. Experiments 377 Similar as for in-person meetings, it is desirable to experiment with 378 the meeting structure. Often only practical experience can answer 379 open questions. It is recommended to not experiment with a larger 380 number of different aspects at the same time, in order to be able to 381 assess the outcome correctly. It is further recommended to announce 382 any such experiment in advance, so people adjust to changes and 383 potentially provide feedback. 385 5. Acknowledgments 387 6. References 389 6.1. Normative References 391 [RFC8179] Bradner, S. and J. Contreras, "Intellectual Property 392 Rights in IETF Technology", BCP 79, RFC 8179, 393 DOI 10.17487/RFC8179, May 2017, 394 . 396 [RFC8719] Krishnan, S., "High-Level Guidance for the Meeting Policy 397 of the IETF", BCP 226, RFC 8719, DOI 10.17487/RFC8719, 398 February 2020, . 400 6.2. Informative References 402 [I-D.ietf-shmoo-hackathon] 403 Eckel, C., "Running an IETF Hackathon", Work in Progress, 404 Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-shmoo-hackathon-01, 9 July 405 2021, . 408 Authors' Addresses 410 Mirja Kuehlewind 411 Ericsson 413 Email: mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com 415 Martin Duke 416 F5 Networks, Inc. 418 Email: martin.h.duke@gmail.com