We met early Thursday morning. Our discussion centered around things related to Covid19 that affected the IETF working model that were likely in the purview of the IAB's possibly chance to change things. Other areas that were outside the IAB's potential scope of influence, especially those topics within scope of the IESG were discussed a bit less.
Jari pointed out that the IETF as a whole is likely still in grieving stage of loss. We need to eventually transition to more hopeful and productive moods. It's unclear if newer members are grieving or just want to get back to work.
The largest change that directly affects the IAB is how we will hold workshops in the future. Because our workshops are short, often a day or two, it makes it hard to do a 2-day time-shifted workshop and have it be attended and effective. And shifting to a 2-hour workshop slot is not likely to be productive. Current interim working starting times end up balancing a narrow window in early morning silicon valley.
Action item: brain storm on ways to hold virtual meetings effectively
A lot of IETF infrastructure is based on volunteer work; how will this be affected? Networking, newcomers, edu, chair-run meetings, etc are all volunteer positions. Will we lose that energy? Should we shift some tasks to professionally run conference services?
Note: many tasks are already run by highly competent professional services. We're only considering the other areas of IETF leadership.
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding tools used by the IETF. There has been pressure to move to more modern tools like github/slack/etc. There are pros and cons to switching to other forms of communication, but it is likely this push to change will be stronger in a virtual environment (for good reason). Some discussion occurred noting that other forms of communication, such as slack and github issues, have very different feels for how much you expect the reader to have understood everything above. Github issues are rapid fire discussions and conclusions a lot of the time, and though that isolates the number of participants to something low that should be seen as a feature some/much of the time rather than a con.
Should we assume that we won't have stable communication tools and it's likely that we need to keep up with the times and rotate tools as frequently as much of the general public does. If so, what staffing would that require? Which tools best for async communication?
We wondered what the longer term changes might be, and what might never return to normal. Would we ever return to a 3-conference a year model? Would the population of the remote attendees go up (stealing this question from another session)?
If we don't go back to regular model, how are we going to build a broader community relationship that is effective in getting people to work together and continue the culture of the IETF that generally allows for strong disagreements in sessions followed by pleasant un-work related conversations around the cookie table and at bars? Respect comes from a shared understanding of areas where you do agree, and not from the arguments where you don't.
In a similar vein, how do we bring in newcomers and get them involved in an effective way when they'll feel disconnected upon entry to a culture with many strong bonds already in place. How will this affect the critical mass of new work and participants?
What new efforts to running conferences will be needed to succeed with virtual meetings? Manycouches and similar need to thing hard to come up with new asynchronous working models. What old/new mechanisms can be used to replace productive in-person conversations. EG, mail, github issues, slack, etc.
Real Work (TM) tends to ignore the fact you're not supposed to be away and schedules you for regular work and meetings in addition to, say, the IAB retreat you'd normally be at.
long term changes from this
impact on workshops
employer/jobs don't respect conference weeks
cost
asynchronous meetings are needed
mood: we're in the grieving stage
benefits of remote work?
impact on volunteer-ism
ietf vs open source
tools
Rolling teleconferences always disadvantage someone, due to time zones. How to encourage effective asynchronous work?
Impact on the funding an organisational model as meetings become less important.
The content of this page was last updated on 2020-06-05. It was migrated from the old IAB wiki on 2023-12-04.