Re: What can IETF do? Re: Further update on COVID-19

[Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another impromptu, no-account-needed utility suitable to on-the-fly co-drafting is Etherpad, also free/libre/open https://etherpad.org/.

To see a drafting video for original work (in 2015) on creation of what became https://www.openchainproject.org/, click the "play" icon here:

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/openchain/timeslider#11010

I've used this in meetings for live collaborative rapporteur annotations, comments, and feedback. The fact that it requires no accounts is an advantage or disadvantage relative to GoogleDocs.

Joseph Potvin
Executive Director, Xalgorithms Foundation
Mobile: 819-593-5983
jpotvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://www.xalgorithms.org

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 5:04 PM Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 4:13 PM Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2/26/20 12:08 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:
> https://secondlife.com/
>
> ISTR the IESG had a meeting there once a few years ago.

Netroots Nation had a couple of conferences gatewayed into
Second Life.  It wasn't terrible, and that was over a decade
ago.  Might be worth experimenting with again.

I could use an avatar at this point. It is somewhat ironic that I am proposing this stuff when I can't do remote either. I can type and I can read and I can think and thats about it. Anyway, this is the system I have had in mind for quite a long time and is the reason I have built (and had others build for me) some of the stuff I have in the past year.

I am a systems guy, this is not just about conferences, its about the system.

First, lets start with Internet Drafts. I have written my own document handler taking Markdown and Word as inputs and generating XML2RFC as an output format.

The second half of that system is the comment forum. So the draft is uploaded to some service. You can read through the draft and click the pilcrow on any paragraph and a comment dialog opens up. This asks for:

1) Lightweight semantic: Agree/Disagree/Clarify/Object

2) Explanation (some text).

For IETF purposes, we don't need end-to-end security. But if we were going to use this to provide group collaboration on bidding on RFPs or the drafts of the quarterly SEC reports, we need that and I have designed the tools to make that possible.

Entering a comment creates an object which has its own lifecycle. Basically a comment is an issue and these should eventually get cleared. So when a new version of the draft is uploaded, the editor checks off which comments have been cleared.

So that is the sort of thing I want to replace mailing lists with. I want the drafts to serve as the reference point for the discussion. 

So now, let us imagine that an issue is raised that is more complex than can be disposed of by a comment. Something like the discussion we are having now. Well that is the point at which I would like to be able to set up an ad-hoc virtual meeting to discuss that particular point. So lets say we have a bunch of issues raised on the splunge topic:

1) Someone proposes a virtual meeting.

2) (optional) WG Chair, Editor approves.

3) Negotiation of date, time, agenda

4) Have meeting 

5) Report back result

Point here is that while we talk about 'consensus', that is rarely the relevant test. Quite often, the relevant test is 'is there a major security hole if we do things this way' or 'what are the interop concerns'.

The type of capabilities that are relevant to a meeting of that type are likely to be:

1) Voice

2) Screen sharing (for slides, demos, etc.)

3) Video

4) Whiteboard input (i.e. iPad + pencil or Microsoft Surface type interaction)

5) Transcription (voice to text).

Oh and yes, we want all this on the record and to save every byte for IETF and for Enterprise. But I can also provide an OTR version of the security protocols.

We need to have some sort of concept of process rules. Not necessarily Roberts Rules. But maybe everyone in the meeting starts with ten minutes to talk and that counts down when they hold the floor.. And maybe if someone is saying something interesting people can pass some of their time to them. And maybe we have thumbnails of everyone apart from the person with the floor who gets full screen treatment. 

So this is not quite hallway discussion but it is close. Some hallway discussions fit into this pattern. When I go to an IETF, I know that I have a list of folk I want to raise very specific issues with. But the other part of it is 'serendipity'. I am not quite sure how to incorporate that into the model yet.

One option would be a sort of Facebook like feed with some sort of curation process that results in proposals to hold meetups or discussions. Or maybe we have a model in which there is a large public concourse and people who are interested go off to private meetings.

PHB