Re: build personal contacts outside of meetings [was IETF 100, Singapore -- proposed path forward and request for input]

[kathleen.moriarty.ietf@xxxxxxxxx]

Sent from my iPhone

On May 23, 2016, at 10:10 PM, Alia Atlas <akatlas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've wondered about whether it would help/add to have pictures of IETFers associated

with their IETF datatracker account.   We do have a gallery of photos for WG chairs,

but I have no sense of how much those are used.

I sometimes wonder how much smoother conversations on email would go if

folks remembered whom was on the email, with that human touch.

I've wondered if a recording could carry nuance better than plain text email does.

I would love to figure out how to recreate the types of serendipitous interactions and

'hallway' conversations that happen - but in an on-line setting. 

How can we get the same level of focus and intensity that we have at physical meetings?

Is it necessary or are there advantages to being able to have more time or longer focused

discussions?  When one returns from a physical meeting, what makes it feel productive?

Being remote for a couple of meetings, it helped me a lot to have good voice recognition.  While jabber scribes do a good job listing names, the voice recognition helped me to hear and understand the speaker better.  For me, having been to many prior meeting helped as did our redundant options for remote participation.  Meet echo was great to also see the speaker...  But I did miss out on hallway conversations.  

Direct IM, our chat rooms, and email helped a bit.  I think most who needed to reach me did, but you of course miss random encounters that can be even more useful.

Best regards,

Kathleen 

Regards,

Alia

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 7:26 PM, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Christian,

On 24/05/2016 09:32, Christian Huitema wrote:
> On Monday, May 23, 2016 9:23 AM, Paul Wouters wrote:
>> ...
>> According to https://www.ietf.org/blog/2016/04/ietf-95-summary/ we had
>> 14% participation from the region at IETF-96. Those are people that were
> new
>> or possibly rarely attend. I can tell you that I would have never become
> an
>> active participant in IETF if during my first meeting I hadn't had so many
> great
>> face to face talks with people who took the time to help me with my ideas
> and
>> my (lack of) knowledge and procedures. That is quite unlike the mailing
> lists,
>> where things tend to get heated, buried and somewhat unpleasant.
>
> Paul is onto something there. Most of the time, when I read messages on an
> IETF mailing list, I can picture in my head the face of the writers and even
> imagine the sense of their voice. I can often remember their priorities,
> their personal point of view, and maybe discount some oratory effects. (Not
> always, man is fallible :-). This helps a lot with assessing trust, getting
> the subtext in the messages, etc. But I cannot do that with messages from
> most newcomers, and the newcomers probably cannot do that with most
> participants.

Yes, when I read messages from Christian I definitely hear his very
characteristic voice ;-)

> Our "remote meeting" efforts address the participation in discussions, but
> they are still a bit dry. We do have mentoring efforts, but they seem to
> only happen during meetings. If we do believe that personal communications
> are important, maybe we should take that as an explicit target. Maybe some
> form of electronic mentoring. Maybe some simple steps like making the
> pictures of participants available somewhere. Maybe have people record video
> greeting messages. Yes, you get some of the effect in meetings. But
> technology has progressed somewhat since the 80's, and we ought to be able
> to build personal contacts outside of meetings as well.

A great idea. Maybe somebody can set up a quick way to test this sort of
idea - those of us who've been around for a while could surely each create
a one-minute video. If you're worried about public access, require an IETF
tools login to view the videos.

    Brian