On Mar 14, 2013, at 7:03 AM, Ted Lemon <Ted.Lemon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I think it might also be worth encouraging working group chairs to have working group breakfast or lunch meetings (RSVP required) where newcomers are invited to come meet the chairs and chairs can strategically invite a few return attendees (but fewer than newcomers so they don't get crowded out) to establish a connection with the newcomers. If this became common it would probably require tool work, but what do folks think of the idea in principle? I'm not opposed to the idea. I do think it could be difficult if there are very many chairs trying to do it at once. In my case, I have work in far too many working groups anyway, and use meals for 1:1 or 1:group meetings, either with friends or with document authors, other chairs, etc. Joel and I in the past, and John and I at IETF 86, set aside "Working Group Chair Office Hours", which we said was targeting authors or design teams that wanted to talk with us. We could update that to also include newcomers. I also find myself mentoring ISOC Fellows, which are a special case of "newbies". For them, I routinely offer to meet on Sunday morning, as for various reasons (IETF 86 it was where I was coming from, and in Berlin it will be because of where I am going to) I often arrive on Saturday instead of Sunday. As it turned out, I sat in on a briefing ISOC (Steve Conte) did for the ISOC Fellows, and I think the Q&A from a WG Chair perspective was useful for them. It came down to walking them through certain aspects of the data tracker, and it specifically responded to questions they asked. We already have Scott's tutorial, which is a good one. It might be worthwhile to spruce it up with a review of the data tracker or a Q&A session.