On 4/18/20 5:55 AM, Christian Hopps wrote:
> I'd like to disagree here (regarding presentations at F2F meetings). Presenting work can be an important part of WG mechanics. LSR (IS-IS/OSPF) will have a smallish group of experts reading the drafts and their revisions. A much larger group of experts including ones with cross-wg/cross-area expertise will sit through a short presentation at a F2F meeting and sometimes provide valuable feedback. I appreciate those extra sets of eyes.
Yes, I've seen this happen. But did the presentation really have to take up F2F meeting time?
If you want those presentations to be effective, the answer is yes. Feedback from an audience is important, even if it's entirely nonverbal. Knowing when you're going too fast or too slow, when the audience is bored or confused, often can make the difference between a useful presentation and a useless one. This point has been driven home quite forcefuly by the recent shift to fully remote meetings Speaking as someone who has attended meetings remotely more often than not for many years, the difference between the same presenter having an audience and not can be striking. (As an aside, we need to get a lot more adept at using virtualization tools in general and active use of two-way video in particular.)
It seems like there are other ways of getting such feedback, including old-fashioned email.
Not even close. Now, if you're singing a song to a kindergarten class, or if you're teaching a upper-division physics seminar (for the Nth time), things are different: You already know what works so the feedback isn't as important. We're presenting complex material, usually for the first time. Feedback matters.
Though I will admit that the f2f meeting format in which people can fill up holes in their schedules between WG meetings that they need to attend, with WG meetings that they have less need to attend, does attract more eyeballs with broader perspectives. With virtual meetings (especially when each WG schedules its own virtual meetings) we have the challenge of attracting those eyeballs for cross-wg/cross-area review, and IMO that challenge should be addressed sooner rather than later.
One of the advantages of virtual meetings is that you can reclaim time much more easily. Although IME this is usually because the topic turns out not to be of sufficient interesting, not because of bad prezos.
> Also, human nature being what it is, sometimes you have work that a WG > doesn't like (or won't like), but the emails just don't seem to be getting that > across. Having a mic line of actual human beings, having been seen to listen to > the speaker, and then telling them directly, in person, why the proposal is not > a good idea with the allowance of immediate interaction, can be the difference > between ending a debate cleanly and protracted never ending email threads, > upset authors, appeals, etc. This won't work near as well if you just have > people walk up (no presentation) and tell the author they are wrong, as you > miss out on the "these people listened to me" part then.
I've seen this happen too, but it's often been quite disappointing to see many people's very expensive f2f meeting time used to educate a very few people (sometimes only one person).
Often? Not in my experience, it hasn't. This bogeyman really needs to be retired. Ned
