comments below
On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 3:23 AM, Andrew Sullivan <a...@anvilwalrusden.com>wrote: > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 08:38:26AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > > > It's been pointed out before that in a group with very diverse languages, > > written words are usually better understood than speech. It's a fact of > life > > that you can't have a full-speed cut-and-thrust discussion in a group > > of 100 people, half of whom are speaking a foreign language. Sitting in > > a circle does not fix this. > > While that is true, I think it misses the point of the objections to > the sit-and-watch-PowerPointTV. > > First, I observe that we already _have_ a great deal of written words: > the drafts. I continue to believe that altogether too much time in WG > meetings is spent "introducing", "presenting", or otherwise showing > off ideas in an existing draft to participants in the WG. I > acknowledge that (particularly in early stages of WG life, in topics > with a lot of different work, and in cross-WG presentations) these > "intro" presentations are a fact of life. But I think we are > extremely bad at holding the reigns on them. > The presenter SHOULD focus on taking WG feedback by asking WG Questions like : do you think explaining in a section XXX will be good? then the WG hummms, > > In a WG meeting, I think such "intro" presentations about drafts > really can be kept to three pieces of information: the name of the > draft, a slogan describing the problem it is supposed to solve, and a > pointer to the beginning(s) of discussion thread(s) on the draft. If > the person promoting the draft can't give the elevator pitch, they > don't know their own draft well enough to summarize it and shouldn't > be presenting it. Any additional discussion in the presentation ought > to be exploring, as much as possible, one or more of the following > topics: > > - a particular issue > - is $issue a real problem > - alternatives for solving $issue > - motivation for $issue solution choices > > Each such slide, it seems to me, ought to encourage at most a couple > minutes of exposition and then some discussion. The _reason_ to get > together in a big room with other people is to use the high-bandwidth > opportunity to hash out the extent of a problem. The back and forth > of "you forgot this", "no that won't work because it explodes foo", > and so on, is the value here. > Please note that we SHOULD not only blame the presenter/author for this problem of boring and presentation format, but I also blame the WG participants, why the don't READ, READ, READ, the DRAFTS under AGENDA. If they do READ then they can input please take my questions, 1, 2, 3 and please take my recommendations 1, 2,3, and please take my requests/comments, 1,2,3. > > Notice that none of that includes complicated flow-chart diagrams that > explain in detail a proposal. There _is_ a place for those, however: > an actual presentation that gets made after significant discussion on > the list has made it clear that nobody understands the proposal. At > that point, those 10-15 minute presentations of some proposed > mechanism are important, if only to inspire commenters to go back to > the list and say, "Ok, _now_ I get what you were trying to say, and > your text needs to be improved along the following lines." But these > full explanation presentations happen too often when there has not > been such confusion. > I agree with this above point. > > Of course, all of the above depends on us going back to the list and > working out the details there, and it depends on people having read > the drafts and having a list of questions themselves that have been > deferred from the list for the face to face discussion. > I agree with you, > > I believe presentations in meetings are also sometimed useful if they > are exploring a problem space. In that case, I believe what one needs > is _short_ presentations of the sort, "Here's what I think the > problems are," and then a lot of well-moderated discussion. > I agree as if you ment short as less/equal than 5 minutes. The IETF Chair and WG Chairs SHOULD consider these issues you raised. > > Unfortunately, actually running meetings this way is a lot of work, > requires fairly careful planning, and requires an indifference to > nasty remarks on the part of presenters who would much rather listen > to themselves for 20 minutes than to others. But I think it'd make > for better meetings. (Yes, along with room layouts that were more > suited to getting people to the mic.) > I will add that We need with the author/presenter, to know the reviewers of the draft, and get their short comments, so that will help the WG to decide when asked for their opinion. So the reviewers are as a supervisor to the WG, and the WG Chair is arranging their input in the session to make the meeting valuable. > > > The old days are gone. > > Yes, and we need to figure out how to use meeting time effectively > here in the new days. That effective use does not, I think, involve > expanding to fill all the time in the year with 20 minute low-content > presentations summarizing the draft that you can read in the span of > the time it takes to get through the presentation. (Perhaps I'm > wrong. Perhaps people find that the only time they have now to read > the drafts is during the presentation of the draft. I sure hope not.) > New draft proposals can be done in the last times of the session, and will need to be discussed first on the list before presented. However, even thoes proposals I will think they should be less than 5 minutes, and discussions for them less than 10. For WG drafts the valuable discussions SHOULD be more than 10 minutes, otherwise, we maybe done side/hidden meetings. AB
