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Duke 5 Expires: 2 September 2022 Google 6 1 March 2022 8 Guidelines for the Organization of Fully Online Meetings 9 draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-online-meeting-04 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 during the COVID-19 pandemic. 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 2 September 2022. 46 Copyright Notice 48 Copyright (c) 2022 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 Revised BSD License text as 57 described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are 58 provided without warranty as described in the Revised 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 socializing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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 records the 86 experience gained by holding plenary meetings fully online and the 87 guidelines that have evolved from this experience. The aim of this 88 document is to determine rough consensus of these guidelines in the 89 sense that the most participants are sufficiently satisfied with the 90 current organization of fully online events. These guidelines, 91 however, document only one option of running fully online meetings. 92 But as the IETF has done for in-person meetings, changes to the 93 organization of the meetings and the meeting agenda should be 94 experimented with in the process of establishing future meeting 95 guidelines. 97 2. Some History 99 When the WHO declared a world-wide pandemic in March 2020, the IETF 100 had to quickly cancel its plenary meeting and organize an online 101 replacement (within less than two weeks). For this first online-only 102 meeting, the agenda was reduced to a set of sessions that benefitted 103 most from cross-area participation, like BoFs, first-time meetings of 104 a new working groups, and dispatch sessions, as well as the 105 administrative plenary in order to organize the official hand-over 106 procedures that occur at the March meeting. 108 With such a reduced agenda, it was possible to organize the meeting 109 within roughly 2 sessions (about 4 hours) a day and a maximum of two 110 parallel tracks. This was possible as all working group meetings 111 were moved to interims which were then distributed over the coming 112 six weeks. However, this was often perceived as increased load over 113 a longer time. But at that point of time there was not necessarily 114 an expectation that the situation would continue as long as it did. 116 For the following meetings in 2020, the online schedule was switched 117 back to be similar to an in-person meeting (1-2 hour slots and 8-9 118 parallel tracks as described below), however, still with a reduced 119 total length of initially 5 hours a day and then 6 hours with longer 120 breaks. 122 All fully online meetings in 2020 have followed the time zone of the 123 planned in-person meeting location, but starting roughly around noon. 124 Some flexibility with the start time to be "around" noon has been 125 used to mitigate the worse possible time slots, even though, given 126 the distribution of participants it is not possible to avoid certain 127 hours entirely. The in-person meeting location follows the 1-1-1 128 rule as documented in [RFC8719] to rotate between Asia, Europe, and 129 North America. While the exact time slot used had led to various 130 discussions, following roughly the 1-1-1 rule to share the pain has/ 131 seems to have rough consensus. 133 3. Guidelines for Online Meeting Planning 134 3.1. Time Zone Selection 136 This time selection enables to have 2 out of 3 fully online IETF 137 plenary meetings during the day from most participants. Basically 138 every full online meeting is for two regions of the three regions 139 described in [RFC8179], roughly speaking, after sunrise or after 140 dinner. This has the tradeoff that it maps the third region in 141 middle of night. However, that also means for most participants only 142 one remote meeting per year might require a significant change to 143 sleep schedules. 145 The times are also seasonally adjusted to leverage differentials in 146 Daylight Savings Time. These time slots are as follows, in UTC: 148 +===============+=========================+=========================+ 149 | Name | Times (Northern Summer) | Times (Northern | 150 | | | Winter) | 151 +===============+=========================+=========================+ 152 | North America | 0500-1100 UTC | 0600-1200 UTC | 153 | Night | | | 154 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 155 | Asia Night | 1300-1900 UTC | 1400-2000 UTC | 156 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 157 | Europe Night | 2200-0400 UTC | 2200-0400 UTC | 158 +---------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+ 160 Table 1 162 The intent of rotating between these three slots is to scatter 163 meetings throughout the course of the global day, to maximize the 164 ease of participants to occasionally attend regardless of their 165 location and what time of day is optimal for their schedule. 167 3.1.1. Rules for selection 169 The IETF will select a start time from these three choices based on 170 the past three meetings. The following table covers all permutations 171 of previous meetings held in-person in Region A, B, or C; or remotely 172 in the nights of one of those regions. 174 +================+================+==============+==================+ 175 | 3 meetings ago | 2 meetings ago | Last Meeting | Online | 176 | | | | Selection | 177 +================+================+==============+==================+ 178 | Any | Any | In-Person A | A Night | 179 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 180 | Any | Online A Night | Online B | C Night | 181 | | | Night | | 182 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 183 | Online A Night | In-Person B | Online B | C Night | 184 | | | Night | | 185 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 186 | In-Person A | In-Person B | Online B | A Night | 187 | | | Night | | 188 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 189 | In-Person A | In-Person A | Online A | see below | 190 | | | Night | | 191 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 192 | Online A Night | Online B Night | Online C | A Night | 193 | | | Night | | 194 +----------------+----------------+--------------+------------------+ 196 Table 2 198 Basically this table follows two rules: 1) When ever a fully online 199 meeting follows an in-person meeting, the online meeting time is used 200 that disadvantages most the participants of the time zone where the 201 in-person meeting was held. 2) If multiple fully online meetings 202 follow each other, the time zone selection should be rotated based on 203 the most recent time zones that the in-person meetings were held in. 205 The final case occurs in the rare event that back-to-back in-person 206 plenaries occur in the same region. In this case, find the most 207 recent meeting that was neither in 'A' (if in person) nor in 'A' 208 night (if remote). If this meeting was in-person in region 'B', then 209 the next meeting will be in 'B' Night. If it was remote in 'B' 210 Night, the next meeting will be in 'C' Night. 212 To initialize this algorithm, IETF 112 is considered as an 'Asia 213 Night' remote meeting, and IETF 111 is a 'Europe Night' remote 214 meeting. 216 3.2. Number of Days and Total Hours per Day 218 Online meetings have converged to run over 5 days with 6-hour meeting 219 days, roughly. Only the administrative plenary, which concludes with 220 multiple open mic sessions, is not necessarily time-bounded. 222 Based on the experience so far, 6 hours of online meetings, with two 223 30 minutes breaks, appears to be potentially a natural limit of what 224 is handleable for most participants. Respectively, the meeting 225 survey after IETF 109 has indicated a high satisfaction with the 226 distribution of sessions over 5 days but only a medium satisfaction 227 with the overall length of each day [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ 228 ietf108-survey-results-informed-planning/]. 230 While there is a possible trade-off between shorter but more days, a 231 compact and potentially intense meeting was slightly preferred from 232 the beginning by the community. And, different than for in-person 233 meetings, also utilize time during the weekend was never considered 234 as a possible option. So far, it was possible for all meetings to 235 fit the requested number of sessions within 5 days, with the 236 respective number of parallel tracks, see Section Section 3.4. 238 3.3. Session/Break Length 240 For fully online meetings there are typically less sessions per day, 241 than for in-person meetings, in order to keep the overall meeting day 242 to at roughly 6 hours. The reduction of the number of sessions per 243 day led to the practice of offering chairs only two options for 244 session length (instead of three), in order to make session 245 scheduling more practical. 247 At IETF-108, based on an indicated preference of the community, 50 248 and 100 minute slot were used, with only 10 minutes breaks, in order 249 to keep the overall day length at 5 hours. This resulted in many 250 sessions going over time and thereby clearly indicated that only 10 251 minutes for breaks are not practical. 253 The survey after IETF-109 showed a high satisfaction with 60/120 254 minute session lengths and 30 minute breaks, and a significant 255 improvement in satisfaction over IETF-108. 256 [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-109-post-meeting-survey/] 258 While the option to shorten the breaks was discussed during the later 259 meetings, a saving of in total 10-20 minutes per day might not 260 balance the need to use the breaks for recreation or at least some 261 socialising. 263 3.4. Number of Parallel Tracks 265 Fully online meetings are not limited in the number of parallel 266 tracks by the physical restriction of a meeting venue aka the number 267 of meeting rooms. In order to reduce the number of possible 268 conflicts, it is still desirable to minimise the number of parallel 269 tracks by balancing the requested sessions mostly equally over the 270 available slots. 272 But if the total number of requested sessions exceeds the capacity of 273 the usual 8 parallel tracks, it is possible for a fully online 274 meeting to simply use more tracks. This also means, if the number of 275 meeting days is seen as fixed, this decision is implicitly made by 276 the working group chairs requesting a certain number of sessions and 277 length. 279 As more parallel sessions usually also mean more conflicts, chairs 280 are encouraged to request plenary meeting time carefully but also 281 based on realistic planning to avoid running over time. Use of 282 interim meetings should be consider instead where possible and 283 sensible, as discussed in Section Section 4.1. 285 4. Additional Considerations and Recommendations 287 4.1. Full vs. limited agenda (and interim meetings) 289 The IETF-108 meeting survey asked about the structure of that meeting 290 (full meeting) compared to that of IETF 107, which hosted only a 291 limited set of session followed by interims in the weeks after. The 292 structure of IETF 108 was preferred by 82% 293 [https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-108-meeting-survey/]. While the 294 limited agenda of IETF-107 could have been a good one-time 295 replacement, the value of cross-participation and high active 296 meetings weeks has been recognised as important for continuous 297 progress (and not only for newly initiated work). 299 A highly concentrated meeting, in structure similar to the in-person 300 plenary meeting, provides value for cross-participants. Further a 301 well defined meeting time, rather than spreading many interims over 302 the whole year can make deconflicting with other non-IETF meetings 303 easier. 305 While the time during an in-person meeting can be used very 306 intensively, even a compact and full online schedule does often not 307 prevent day-job duties to occur in parallel. Therefore, allocating 308 more time can also make it more difficult for people to join and as 309 such needs to be balanced with the option to distribute load better 310 over the entirely year by a more regular use of interim meetings. 312 Use of (more) online interim meetings can also help to reduce 313 scheduling conflicts during an IETF week and allow for a more optimal 314 schedule for the key participants. Of course these interim meetings 315 are less likely to attract people with casual interest but provide a 316 good opportunity for the most active participants of a group to have 317 detailed technical discussions and solve recorded issues efficiently. 319 4.2. Flexibility of time usage 321 This document recommends that new opportunities in the use and 322 scheduling of online meeting time should be explored that can help to 323 reduce conflicts during the plenary meeting. 325 Online meetings provide an opportunity to use more time more 326 flexibly. While for an in-person meeting all sessions have to be 327 fitted into the available time people are willing to travel at once 328 (usually roughly a week), online meetings do not have that 329 constraint. Therefore for the planning of online meetings, there is 330 a trade-off between the number of parallel tracks, where more 331 parallel tracks mean more potential conflicts (as least of high- 332 active participants), and the overall time in terms of hours per day 333 or total days used. 335 As one example, it would be possible to keep most regular working 336 group sessions within the usually five main meeting days but have 337 some of the more conflicted sessions in other dedicated time slots. 338 As the Hackathon for online only meetings is usually held in the week 339 before the online plenary meeting [I-D.ietf-shmoo-hackathon], that 340 week is already a highly active week for many IETF participants and 341 might provide an opportunity to schedule a few selected sessions. If 342 only one session at a time needs to be scheduled, it is easier to use 343 a time slot that is well assessable for most people in the community 344 in various time zones. This might work especially well for sessions 345 that are of high interest for a large part of community, such as BoFs 346 and dispatch meetings, and therefore hard to schedule during the main 347 IETF week. 349 4.3. Chances for inclusivity and Lessons Learnt on socializing 351 Participation at the most recent online only meetings was rather high 352 and had a quite stable per-country distribution, even though time 353 zones were rotated. This indicates that online meetings support a 354 more easy and therefore potentially broader participation than in- 355 person meetings where participation is often fluctuating based on the 356 location. 358 However, it has also been recognised that the online meeting does not 359 provide an equivalent opportunity to socialize. The observed slight 360 decrease in submission of new (-00) drafts, while the overall number 361 of draft submissions and productivity seem to stay stable, might also 362 be an indication of the loss of these interactions. The increase in 363 interim meetings potentially compensates for these missing 364 interactions for continuous work (or may even increase productivity 365 there), but seems to be less adequate to spark new ideas. 367 None of the data observed so far can, however, be interpreted as 368 showing a significant trend. However, these factors should be 369 considered for the organization of future online-only meetings in 370 replacement or addition to in-person meetings. 372 4.4. Experiments 374 Similar as for in-person meetings, it is desirable to experiment with 375 the meeting structure. Often only practical experience can answer 376 open questions. It is recommended to not experiment with a larger 377 number of different aspects at the same time, in order to be able to 378 assess the outcome correctly. It is further recommended to announce 379 any such experiment in advance, so people adjust to changes and 380 potentially provide feedback. 382 5. Acknowledgments 384 6. References 386 6.1. Normative References 388 [RFC8179] Bradner, S. and J. Contreras, "Intellectual Property 389 Rights in IETF Technology", BCP 79, RFC 8179, 390 DOI 10.17487/RFC8179, May 2017, 391 . 393 [RFC8719] Krishnan, S., "High-Level Guidance for the Meeting Policy 394 of the IETF", BCP 226, RFC 8719, DOI 10.17487/RFC8719, 395 February 2020, . 397 6.2. Informative References 399 [I-D.ietf-shmoo-hackathon] 400 Eckel, C., "Running an IETF Hackathon", Work in Progress, 401 Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-shmoo-hackathon-04, 19 January 402 2022, . 405 Authors' Addresses 407 Mirja Kuehlewind 408 Ericsson 409 Email: mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com 411 Martin Duke 412 Google 413 Email: martin.h.duke@gmail.com