As someone who has done it both ways (in person and remotely) I have a couple of comments.
Having the slides available early is an advantage to BOTH in-person and remote participants. As a remote participant I "need" the slides available about 30 min before the session. As a participant (in-person or remote) it is VERY helpful to have the slides available much earlier. So I do not think "how many remote participants for this session" is a useful parameter for "how important is it to get the slides out early" On the other hand, I DO think that the number of remote participants for a particular session IS a useful parameter for "how important is it to have an active jabber scribe" and "how important is it to make sure the audio streaming is working well." As a remote participant the list of "working groups I am interested in" is different from the list of "working groups I plan to participate in remotely". There is a SMALL list of working groups I am willing to get up at 2:30 AM (my time) to participate in (otherwise I MIGHT look at the slides and read the minutes when they come out) There is a much LARGER list of working groups I will participate in remotely if they are in (my time) "normal working hours". There is nothing you can do about this a priori, but if the records show that, for instance - whenever IETF is in North America, WG abc consistently has a large number of remote participants from Europe, and WG xyz consistently has a large number of remote participants from Asia - that could be factored into the agenda scheduling process. In-person participants are not asked to list the WG they are interested in. That is accomplished by the blue sheets. I wonder if there is a way to do something analogous to the blue sheets for remote participants, whether through jabber, email, doodle-poll, wiki, whatever. I agree with your points 2 and 3. Janet ietf-boun...@ietf.org wrote on 08/12/2013 09:09:32 AM: > From: Vinayak Hegde <vinay...@gmail.com> > To: IETF Discussion Mailing List <ietf@ietf.org> > Date: 08/12/2013 09:19 AM > Subject: Data collection for remote participation > Sent by: ietf-boun...@ietf.org > > Hi, > > There has been a lot of discussion on the IETF mailing list regarding > improving remote participation and improving diversity on the mailing > lists and in the working groups. I think the two are related. I think > everyone broadly agrees that remote participation can be better. If > nothing else, it will tell about who the remote participants are. I > had proposed a few steps in this direction by improving the data > collection for remote participation in the IAOC Sunday meeting. > Posting them below again for discussion on the mailing lists. > > It can be a simple form that asks the following questions (Can be > refined - this is just a start) > 1. Name: > 2. Country: > 3. Duration of participation in IETF (either in number of years or > number of meetings) > 4. Employer ? > 5. Working groups interested in. > > This can be voluntary and can be done pre-IETF meeting. As of now > there is no structured way to know how many people wre active in the > jabber room or listening on the audio stream. > > I can see that this has multiple benefits. > 1. If the number of participants in a certain WG is more, it would > push the WG chair to request for the slides/agenda available earlier. > > 2. If there are consistently more participation from around the world, > the the WG chair can request for a meetecho recording so people can > follow the group even if they cannot attend the meeting live. This > could be useful for people who have clashing schedules as well. > > 3. Over a longer period of time, it can help IETF plan and encourage > remote participation. Currently there is no hard data on number of > remote participants. There is however a lot of hand waving so this > will get some useful data into the system. > > -- Vinayak
