Re: WG Review: Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo)

[Alissa Cooper <alissa@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi SM,

On Jun 27, 2020, at 8:30 AM, S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Internet Engineering Steering Group,
At 09:20 AM 26-06-2020, The IESG wrote:

A new IETF WG has been proposed in the General Area. The IESG has not made
any determination yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is
provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the

I would like to thank Mr Kaduk for taking the time to respond to my comment [1] about the proposed charter.

I read an extract of a book about "shmoo" after seeing a comment [2] about it.  The cultural reference to class issues is quite interesting for an organization which advertizes itself as a "large open international community".  The proposed charter was discussed on a mailing list which is described as: "a design team list to identify issues that would arise should an IETF meeting ever be held with O(1000) 'remote' participants".     Was there any public report from the design team?

See https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-manycouches-completely-virtual-meetings-04

It is unfortunate that the "design team" has decided not to consider the potential impact of maintaining two classes of "participants".  The disregard for the topic is a good indicator of whether words such as "inclusiveness" can be taken seriously.

One of reasons for not to tackling a topic is if there isn't any expertise in the IETF to work on that.  It is the responsibility of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) to provide advice on that and it is up to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) to give its approval for the work to proceed.  The latest IAB minutes, which are dated May 27, does not show any review of the proposed charter.  Will the IAB review the proposed charter before it is approved by the IESG?

The proposed charter has "TBD" under "milestones".  That is not compliant with the contract which the proposed working group is seeking.

Will the "high-level principles" be about hopes or ambitions to achieve something?

I don’t understand this question.

The "experience of handling meeting planning" is something internal to the IESG.  Is that documented anywhere?  

The IESG has shared emails on the IETF list at various points during the meeting planning process for IETF 108.

Is that even relevant given that the proposed group was not involved in meeting planning?

I don’t see how a group that didn’t exist could have been involved in anything when it didn’t exist.

Why is the proposed group proposing to work on "functional requirements"?  Isn't that the work of the IETF Administration LLC?

The LLC is seeking guidance from the community.

Some parts of the proposed charter such as "cadence of meeting scheduling ..." sounds like MTGVENUE-bis as that (concluded) group previously worked on that.  The group was closed in March.  Does that mean that the previous work caused some issues which was only noticed three months after the MTGVENUE working group was closed?

No, the closure of MTGVENUE was done knowing that a new group with a different remit might need to be formed.

Does the cadence of meeting scheduling affect NomCom eligibility?  

Yes.

Did meeting planning have an impact on NomCom eligibility?

Yes, see https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8788.html.

Alissa

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/manycouches/-KT9e9MkDgDpHS57La9f5IxMSNI/
2. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/manycouches/uQdAjhubeYVoIOP_CWd4O_xSYkQ/