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Marshall Eubanks | 3 Aug 18:25

Proposals to improve the scribe situation

In many of the working groups that I participate in, I have noticed
that it is increasingly difficult to find scribes (whether old-style  
or jabber).
I know that some WG simply give up and have one of the Co-chairs  
scribe. I would regard this as extremely suboptimal in the WG where I  
am a Co-chair, as my co-chairs and I bring different strengths and  
abilities to
the table, and regard this as a bad sign and a clear implications of  
the need for some improvements.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions about this situation :

1.) Is it really necessary to have a jabber scribe and a regular  
scribe as a separate
position ? We had 117 sessions in Dublin, finding 234 scribes is  
clearly harder than finding 117.

I find that scribing on jabber has a number of advantages

- you frequently get corrections if you didn't get a speakers name,  
missed
the spelling of an acronym, etc.

- you can frequently get an instant backup if you need a brief bio- 
break.

- people in the audience can expand on topics, provide background, etc.

- the notes are archived instantly and cannot be lost if the scribe's  
computer crashes (as has happened to me).
(Continue reading)

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Spencer Dawkins | 4 Aug 06:00

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Hi, Marshall,

Speaking as a scribe...

My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still (used to 
be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin) experience 
networking problems on the wireless LAN. The typical Monday morning problems 
of long ago kept me from trying it for about two years ("once burned, twice 
shy").

If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd have 
more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes worked as an 
inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably other places as well).

Beyond that ... so how many working groups have formal secretaries?

Spencer

> In many of the working groups that I participate in, I have noticed
> that it is increasingly difficult to find scribes (whether old-style  or 
> jabber).
> I know that some WG simply give up and have one of the Co-chairs  scribe. 
> I would regard this as extremely suboptimal in the WG where I  am a 
> Co-chair, as my co-chairs and I bring different strengths and  abilities 
> to
> the table, and regard this as a bad sign and a clear implications of  the 
> need for some improvements.
>
> Here are some thoughts and suggestions about this situation :
>
(Continue reading)

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Henning Schulzrinne | 4 Aug 14:27

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My  
ssh and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room would  
periodically kick out a large fraction of the participants.

Having formal secretaries seems like a better long-term approach; it  
also provides recognition to the individuals and, in some cases, a  
training ground for future WG chairs. Professional organizations, such  
as IEEE and ACM, often use such "junior" leadership positions in such  
a fashion.

Henning

On Aug 4, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> Hi, Marshall,
>
> Speaking as a scribe...
>
> My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still  
> (used to be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin)  
> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN. The typical  
> Monday morning problems of long ago kept me from trying it for about  
> two years ("once burned, twice shy").
>
> If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd  
> have more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes  
> worked as an inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably  
> other places as well).
>
> Beyond that ... so how many working groups have formal secretaries?
(Continue reading)

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John Leslie | 4 Aug 15:56
Favicon

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Henning Schulzrinne <hgs <at> cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> 
>> My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still  
>> (used to be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin)  
>> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN.
> 
> I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My  
> ssh and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room would  
> periodically kick out a large fraction of the participants.

   There certainly have been wireless problems, and they certainly could
recur.

>> If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd  
>> have more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes  
>> worked as an inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably  
>> other places as well).

   It would be good to have ethernet and power for the jabber scribes.
Might I suggest a microphone as well, in case the jabber scribe can't
figure out who's speaking, or finds the need to channel a jabber
question?

>> Beyond that ... so how many working groups have formal secretaries?
> 
> Having formal secretaries seems like a better long-term approach; it  
> also provides recognition to the individuals and, in some cases, a  
> training ground for future WG chairs.
(Continue reading)

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Marshall Eubanks | 4 Aug 16:10

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


On Aug 4, 2008, at 9:56 AM, John Leslie wrote:

> Henning Schulzrinne <hgs <at> cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
>> On Aug 4, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>>
>>> My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still
>>> (used to be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin)
>>> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN.
>>
>> I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My
>> ssh and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room  
>> would
>> periodically kick out a large fraction of the participants.
>
>   There certainly have been wireless problems, and they certainly  
> could
> recur.
>
>>> If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd
>>> have more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes
>>> worked as an inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably
>>> other places as well).
>
>   It would be good to have ethernet and power for the jabber scribes.
> Might I suggest a microphone as well, in case the jabber scribe can't
> figure out who's speaking, or finds the need to channel a jabber
> question?

If there is a separate microphone plus projection screen for scribes,
(Continue reading)

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Joel Jaeggli | 5 Aug 00:10

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
> I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My ssh 
> and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room would 
> periodically kick out a large fraction of the participants.

There's potentiallly an interesting logical fallacy expressed here, as 
wireless quality and tcp reset related events are probably not unrelated.

 From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally managed 
wireless controller model offers, some wireless users experienced fairly 
chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to offer the users in the 
minority a magic bullet but I don't have one. I suspect that if they 
have anything with an intel 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's 
probably time to upgrade preferably with a fresh os as well...

There are particular elements of the building layout at city west that 
exacerbated rf planning but we rarely use venues that are free from 
these issues.
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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 5 Aug 11:56
Favicon

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 5 aug 2008, at 0:10, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally managed  
> wireless controller model offers, some wireless users experienced  
> fairly chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to offer the users in  
> the minority a magic bullet but I don't have one. I suspect that if  
> they have anything with an intel 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless  
> chipset it's probably time to upgrade preferably with a fresh os as  
> well...

I was on the 5 GHz network almost exclusively, mostly by choice (by  
putting the ietf-a network in the list above the ietf network) but  
even if I did use the 2.4+5 GHz network my computer was smart enough  
to use 5 GHz most of the time. It worked just great, very good  
connectivity even during the plenaries.

My 802.11b/g iPhone wasn't so happy on 2.4 GHz during the plenary,  
though...

So good job having 5 GHz stuff in the first place and also as a  
separate SSID so those of us who are able to, can choose this manually  
and let the others duke it out in the overpopulated 2.4 GHz band.

I wasn't not overly impressed with the room network though, not only  
the performance on some days but also that the network was dead on  
friday evening and saturday morning. Thanks to Eircom for their free  
wifi access point, but it really wasn't upto the task even with the  
small contingent of IETFers still around on saturday morning.
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Marshall Eubanks | 5 Aug 13:29

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Dear Iljitsch;

On Aug 5, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> On 5 aug 2008, at 0:10, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
>
>> From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally managed  
>> wireless controller model offers, some wireless users experienced  
>> fairly chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to offer the users in  
>> the minority a magic bullet but I don't have one. I suspect that if  
>> they have anything with an intel 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless  
>> chipset it's probably time to upgrade preferably with a fresh os as  
>> well...
>
> I was on the 5 GHz network almost exclusively, mostly by choice (by  
> putting the ietf-a network in the list above the ietf network) but  
> even if I did use the 2.4+5 GHz network my computer was smart enough  
> to use 5 GHz most of the time. It worked just great, very good  
> connectivity even during the plenaries.
>
> My 802.11b/g iPhone wasn't so happy on 2.4 GHz during the plenary,  
> though...
>
> So good job having 5 GHz stuff in the first place and also as a  
> separate SSID so those of us who are able to, can choose this  
> manually and let the others duke it out in the overpopulated 2.4 GHz  
> band.
>
> I wasn't not overly impressed with the room network though, not only  
> the performance on some days but also that the network was dead on
(Continue reading)

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Romascanu, Dan (Dan | 5 Aug 12:43
Favicon

RE: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-bounces <at> ietf.org [mailto:ietf-bounces <at> ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Joel Jaeggli

> 
>  From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally 
> managed wireless controller model offers, some wireless users 
> experienced fairly chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to 
> offer the users in the minority a magic bullet but I don't 
> have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an intel 
> 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to 
> upgrade preferably with a fresh os as well...
> 

Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at
ease. 

Dan
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David Kessens | 5 Aug 13:17

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


Dan,

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 12:43:10PM +0200, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> 
> From Joel Jaeggli
> 
> [ ... ]
>
> > have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an intel 
> > 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to 
> > upgrade preferably with a fresh os as well...
> 
> Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at
> ease. 

But is that a problem for you or for the network team ?

There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not going to
cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the fault of the
network team. 

Basically, whether you like it or not, this is a problem between you
and your IT department (and yes, I do understand that that is not
necessary an issue that you would like to deal with).

David Kessens
---
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Romascanu, Dan (Dan | 5 Aug 13:28
Favicon

RE: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Kessens [mailto:david.kessens <at> nsn.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 2:18 PM
> To: Romascanu, Dan (Dan)
> Cc: Joel Jaeggli; Henning Schulzrinne; IETF Discussion
> Subject: Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation
> 
> 
> Dan,
> 
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 12:43:10PM +0200, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> > 
> > From Joel Jaeggli
> > 
> > [ ... ]
> >
> > > have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an 
> intel 2100 or 
> > > with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to upgrade 
> > > preferably with a fresh os as well...
> > 
> > Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at 
> > ease.
> 
> But is that a problem for you or for the network team ?
> 
> There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not 
> going to cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the 
> fault of the network team.
(Continue reading)

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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 5 Aug 13:38
Favicon

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 5 aug 2008, at 13:28, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:

>> There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not
>> going to cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the
>> fault of the network team.

> I respectfully disagree. I would claim that the problem is one of the
> network team, as long as the hardware is standards compliant and not
> something exotic. An IBM ThinkPad acquired three years ago running
> Windows XP is still one of the most popular machines, it is carried by
> many people and will continue to be carried for another two-three  
> years.
> As it is fully IEEE standards compliant and some kind of industry
> standard (whatever this means) many people expect to be able to use it
> at an IETF standards meeting.

What are the limitations of such a machine?

A year ago I replaced a four-year-old laptop that came with 802.11g  
built in. I don't think it would be unreasonable to turn off 802.11b  
support by now and set the multicast speed to 6 Mbps or more in order  
to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.
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John C Klensin | 5 Aug 13:52

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


--On Tuesday, 05 August, 2008 13:38 +0200 Iljitsch van Beijnum
<iljitsch <at> muada.com> wrote:

>...
>> As it is fully IEEE standards compliant and some kind of
>> industry standard (whatever this means) many people expect to
>> be able to use it at an IETF standards meeting.
> 
> What are the limitations of such a machine?
> 
> A year ago I replaced a four-year-old laptop that came with
> 802.11g built in. I don't think it would be unreasonable to
> turn off 802.11b support by now and set the multicast speed to
> 6 Mbps or more in order to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.

With the understanding that I don't expect IETF to support
either my 900 MHz RoamAbout hardware or the FHSS card I bought
some years ago specifically for IETF use, please note that the
comment above is yet another way to increase costs to
participants.

   john
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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 5 Aug 14:09
Favicon

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 5 aug 2008, at 13:52, John C Klensin wrote:

>> I don't think it would be unreasonable to
>> turn off 802.11b support by now and set the multicast speed to
>> 6 Mbps or more in order to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.

> With the understanding that I don't expect IETF to support
> either my 900 MHz RoamAbout hardware or the FHSS card I bought
> some years ago specifically for IETF use, please note that the
> comment above is yet another way to increase costs to
> participants.

No it isn't. You are welcome to use the wired ethernet if the one-time  
$30 investment in a 802.11g USB dongle is the straw that breaks the  
camel's back. That is of course highly inconvenient (until the "wired  
ether for the jabber scribe" policy is implemented), but only for a  
few people. Several hundreds of other participants who have 802.11g  
(or 2.4 GHz n) but not 802.11a / 5 GHz n will be much happier because  
the network works much better.
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Joel M. Halpern | 5 Aug 16:53

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Well, I personally would not recommend that $30 investment.
My machine speaks B and G (I don't think it speaks N, although the site 
monitor can detect that.)  I had repeatedly awful connectivity.  When 
rooms were sparse, (i.e. away from Convention 1, 2, &3 or before morning 
start) things worked great.  However, in those main rooms, during 
sessions, I was lucky to be able to use the net.  I could usually get an 
IP address.  But much of the time I could not actually reach anything 
over the net.  No DNS, no responses from anything I could test.  It got 
very tiresome repeatedly re-establishing my network connection so that I 
would get something that worked.

So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And 11a 
has much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my 
laptop.

Just what it looks like to me,
Yours,
Joel

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> On 5 aug 2008, at 13:52, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>>> I don't think it would be unreasonable to
>>> turn off 802.11b support by now and set the multicast speed to
>>> 6 Mbps or more in order to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.
> 
>> With the understanding that I don't expect IETF to support
>> either my 900 MHz RoamAbout hardware or the FHSS card I bought
>> some years ago specifically for IETF use, please note that the
>> comment above is yet another way to increase costs to
(Continue reading)

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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 5 Aug 17:35
Favicon

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 5 aug 2008, at 16:53, Joel M. Halpern wrote:

> Well, I personally would not recommend that $30 investment.
> My machine speaks B and G (I don't think it speaks N, although the  
> site monitor can detect that.)  I had repeatedly awful connectivity.

> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.

There are three issues. Two are immediately dependent on support for  
802.11b and one is mostly unrelated.

Issue 1:

802.11b stations must send and receive at a maximum of 11 Mbps, which  
is only 20% of the speed of a 802.11g station. The former can reach a  
throughput of about 700 kilobytes/sec on a good day, the latter 3 MB/ 
sec. So a b user using 175 kB/sec uses up 25% of the total channel  
capacity but if that user upgrades to g, it's only 6% of the total  
channel capacity. So fewer b users means more capacity for everyone  
else.

Issue 2:

802.11g and n stations use encodings that 802.11b stations don't  
understand. To avoid collisions, whenever a b station is present on  
the channel, g stations use an extra two-packet exchange to reserve  
the channel before sending the actual data. This reduces 802.11g  
performance by about 50%.

Issue 3:
(Continue reading)

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David Kessens | 5 Aug 21:53

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


Joel,

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 10:53:08AM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>
> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And 11a has 
> much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my laptop.

It is not hard to find 11a capable minipci or pccards that sell for
less than what shipping of the card costs. I cannot speak for you, but
these are prices I stop using words like "investment" but instead you
could consider just buying one as an experiment and see how far it gets you. 

David Kessens
---
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Henning Schulzrinne | 5 Aug 21:57

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

I used 802.11a (on a PowerBook Pro) in Dublin, and it didn't help with  
the Jabber server flakiness. Otherwise (ssh, etc.), it was rock-solid.

On Aug 5, 2008, at 3:53 PM, David Kessens wrote:

>
> Joel,
>
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 10:53:08AM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>>
>> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And  
>> 11a has
>> much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my  
>> laptop.
>
> It is not hard to find 11a capable minipci or pccards that sell for
> less than what shipping of the card costs. I cannot speak for you, but
> these are prices I stop using words like "investment" but instead you
> could consider just buying one as an experiment and see how far it  
> gets you.
>
> David Kessens
> ---
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> Ietf <at> ietf.org
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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Joel Jaeggli | 5 Aug 22:02

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And 11a 
> has much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my 
> laptop.

Strickly speaking, 8 indoor and 3 outdoor non-overlapping channels 
coupled with better attenuation makes the map coloring problem a lot 
easier than only 3 (or 4 in .jp).

Magic bullets are not in the toolkit.
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Spencer Dawkins | 5 Aug 13:58

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Wow. I know I've spent more time raving at the IETF during the past 10 days 
than I had during the previous ten years, but could we get back to having a 
conversation that is remotely

(1) on topic FOR THIS THREAD, which Marshall kicked off to try to improve 
the scribe situation, and

(2) somewhat focused on getting the work of the IETF done?

>> > > have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an
>> intel 2100 or
>> > > with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to upgrade
>> > > preferably with a fresh os as well...

IMO, Joel's observation here was reasonable. I read it as "ya know, if old 
technology is getting in the way of jabber scribing, newer technology would 
probably help", which seems fair to point out ...

>> > Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at
>> > ease.

IMO, Dan also made a statement I understand to be true. But pretty quickly 
after that, we went someplace very strange.

I was astounded at the threads on the 72attendees lists where we came very 
close to debugging Mary Barnes' dietary restrictions, so I guess I'm not 
surprised that some people are coming very close to saying that if you don't 
replace your hardware and OS before the warranty runs out, you're doing 
something unreasonable.
(Continue reading)

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David Kessens | 5 Aug 15:30

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


Spencer,

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 06:58:44AM -0500, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>
> We are getting more and more participants from countries that are not among 
> the richest countries in the world. Those participants are often the 
> technical elites from their countries, but they aren't always the economic 
> elites from those same countries.

I am way more concerned about the registration fees, hotel prices and
airline tickets in the context of the cheapest, but nevertheless
modern laptops being available for around $400 and even lower when one
does a bit of an effort to find a good deal. 

Eg. even if one buys a laptop just for IETF attendance, it is not
inconceivable that this will cost you $65 per meeting if the laptop
last for just 2 years.

David Kessens
---
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Joel Jaeggli | 5 Aug 18:55

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David Kessens [mailto:david.kessens <at> nsn.com] 
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 2:18 PM
>> To: Romascanu, Dan (Dan)
>> Cc: Joel Jaeggli; Henning Schulzrinne; IETF Discussion
>> Subject: Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation
>>
>>
>> Dan,
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 12:43:10PM +0200, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
>>> From Joel Jaeggli
>>>
>>> [ ... ]
>>>
>>>> have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an 
>> intel 2100 or 
>>>> with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to upgrade 
>>>> preferably with a fresh os as well...
>>> Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at 
>>> ease.
>> But is that a problem for you or for the network team ?
>>
>> There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not 
>> going to cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the 
>> fault of the network team. 
>>
(Continue reading)

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michael.dillon | 5 Aug 14:38
Favicon

RE: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

> > Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at 
> > ease.
> 
> But is that a problem for you or for the network team ?
> 
> There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not 
> going to cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the 
> fault of the network team. 

Given the subject line above that started this thread, are you
sure you are taking the discussion in the right direction? 
Demanding perfection from wireless networks is probably not
the way to go, and demanding perfection from participants'
laptops doesn't seem to be the right way either.

One thing that does seem interesting to explore is whether
scribing could be made easier by building a special piece 
of software to support the scribing activity. Such software
could include a Jabber client that has some more robust features
to deal specifically with the type of intermittent connectivity
problems that occur on wifi networks at conferences, not just 
the IETF ones. The scribe could just keep on typing and the software
would log every keystroke locally, and automatically log in 
and send anything that was missed. In addition you could add
features to make typing easier as in "predictive texting".

If you think of this in terms of "Meeting Scribe" software,
not a special Jabber client, then it could have a bunch of
other features as well, such as uploading the transcripts
to a website, assisting the scribe in producing summary minutes
(Continue reading)

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Dan York | 4 Aug 16:17
Favicon
Gravatar

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Answers inline prefixed with "DY>" answering both Spencer's and  
Marshall's points:

On Aug 4, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> Hi, Marshall,
>
> Speaking as a scribe...
>
> My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still  
> (used to be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin)  
> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN. The typical  
> Monday morning problems of long ago kept me from trying it for about  
> two years ("once burned, twice shy").

DY> Yes, either the wireless network - or the *Jabber server* - can  
potentially be a serious challenge.  I was a frequent Jabber scribe at  
IETF 71 in Philadelphia in the RAI sessions and those of you who  
attended those sessions will recall my quite frequent trips to the mic  
to say for the remote attendees who were listening to the audio stream  
something like "the jabber server is done. help has been requested" or  
"the jabber server is back up".

DY> Having said that, the Jabber server performance was rock solid at  
IETF 72 (and I know we switched to using a new Jabber server) and I  
saw no issues whatsoever with its performance as a remote attendee.  I  
did, though, see comments from a few of the folks who were Jabber- 
scribing saying that they were having wireless network access problems  
in a few of the rooms there.
>
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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 4 Aug 09:36
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Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 3 aug 2008, at 18:26, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

> I find that scribing on jabber has a number of advantages

On the other hand, having the jabber room monopolized by the scribe  
reduces its usefulness as an additional channel for communication.

Now that we have audio for all sessions (although sometimes the  
quality is far from ideal) is it really necessary to repeat everything  
that's being said in jabber?

I think the jabber scribe function should be reduced to announcing new  
speakers and giving some hints about which slides are on the screen.  
The jabber room can then be used by local and remote participants as  
an extra channel rather than a reduced bandwidth copy of the audio.

> 3.) A minor point, but I would urge WG chairs to formally designate  
> someone (possibly themselves) to
> relay questions from jabber. This seems to fall to the jabber  
> scribe, even though it is impossible to stand at the
> mike and scribe at the same time !

An extra microphone for the question relayer would also be useful.  
What I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...
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Frank Ellermann | 4 Aug 10:03

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> Now that we have audio for all sessions (although sometimes the  
> quality is far from ideal) is it really necessary to repeat
> everything that's being said in jabber?

> I think the jabber scribe function should be reduced to announcing
> new speakers and giving some hints about which slides are on the
> screen.  The jabber room can then be used by local and remote
> participants as an extra channel rather than a reduced bandwidth
> copy of the audio.

It helps to have a good approximation of what later ends up in
the minutes on jabber.  As you say the audio was sometimes not
good:  Not loud enough to hear anything while pressing my ear
to the speaker, a position where I can't see the jabber room ;-)

On another day there were two intersting sessions at the same
time - actually more, but I tried two, one with jabber + audio,
the other only jabber.

A "reduced bandwidth" version of the audio could in fact help,
but good scribes - again thanks to those who volunteered, and
to folks channeling remote remarks - are more important.

All this doesn't prevent folks from using jabber as an extra
channel. 

 Frank
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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 4 Aug 10:13
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Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 4 aug 2008, at 10:03, Frank Ellermann wrote:

> All this doesn't prevent folks from using jabber as an extra
> channel.

Maybe not in theory, but I think it does to a large degree in practice.

Maybe Marshall's idea of having two different rooms makes sense.
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Frank Ellermann | 4 Aug 10:41

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> Maybe Marshall's idea of having two different rooms makes sense.

Dunno, I tried that once in an SPF debate, one room had a public
log, the other was "off the record", and it was rather confusing.

For participants (remote or physically elsewhere) it could be
also confusing to have two jabber rooms for each meeting they
are interested in.  Likely your eyes are sharper than mine, and
you can afford lots of simultaneously open chat windows... :-)

 Frank
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Matthew J Zekauskas | 4 Aug 15:26

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

On 8/4/08 3:36 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> On 3 aug 2008, at 18:26, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

>> 3.) A minor point, but I would urge WG chairs to formally designate 
>> someone (possibly themselves) to
>> relay questions from jabber. This seems to fall to the jabber scribe, 
>> even though it is impossible to stand at the
>> mike and scribe at the same time !
> 
> An extra microphone for the question relayer would also be useful. What 
> I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...

When acting a WG chair, and often as a room participant, I try to 
monitor Jabber for messages (and even wheen I'm scribe too; I personally 
like to jot down way too much, so jabber clients aren't my preferred 
mode for taking notes (and my fingers are also Emacs-trained ;) ).

One thought that came up this week -- a second projector showing the 
current Jabber chat... or even just switching to it during long Q&A 
sessions.  This might more easily allow some of the qustioners in. 
Actually, it probably gives them priority over folks at the mic, so 
maybe it's not such a good idea.

--Matt
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Dan York | 4 Aug 16:26
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Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation


On Aug 4, 2008, at 9:26 AM, Matthew J Zekauskas wrote:

> One thought that came up this week -- a second projector showing the  
> current Jabber chat... or even just switching to it during long Q&A  
> sessions.  This might more easily allow some of the qustioners in.  
> Actually, it probably gives them priority over folks at the mic, so  
> maybe it's not such a good idea.

DY> I've been to conferences where some chat room was broadcast on a  
second screen in the room as a "backchannel".  Typically it was an IRC  
chat room or a Twitter feed tied to a keyword or hashtag.  While I  
applauded the efforts to make the sessions more "open", I found it  
incredibly distracting to have that second screen there. People seemed  
to follow that chat instead of following the listener... resulting in  
the oddity of people sitting in the audience watching the screen to  
see what people in the audience thought about the person talking to  
the audience! (And then some were writing in the chat room about the  
people watching the chat room to see the people writing about.....)

DY> Having a second screen would certainly increase the ability of  
remote participants to communicate, but I would wonder about how you  
then integrate those questions in with people waiting patiently at the  
microphone.  I could also very easily see people *in the room* using  
it as a way to post questions as well and jump over the mic line.   
(Which has also happened to me with our current system where I've  
'jumped the line' to relay a question for someone in the chat room  
only to find out later that they were in the same room but just didn't  
want to go to the mic line.)
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Eric Rescorla | 4 Aug 16:07

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

At Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:36:42 +0200,
Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> 
> On 3 aug 2008, at 18:26, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> 
> > I find that scribing on jabber has a number of advantages
> 
> On the other hand, having the jabber room monopolized by the scribe  
> reduces its usefulness as an additional channel for communication.
> 
> Now that we have audio for all sessions (although sometimes the  
> quality is far from ideal) is it really necessary to repeat everything  
> that's being said in jabber?
> 
> I think the jabber scribe function should be reduced to announcing new  
> speakers and giving some hints about which slides are on the screen.  
> The jabber room can then be used by local and remote participants as  
> an extra channel rather than a reduced bandwidth copy of the audio.
> 
> > 3.) A minor point, but I would urge WG chairs to formally designate  
> > someone (possibly themselves) to
> > relay questions from jabber. This seems to fall to the jabber  
> > scribe, even though it is impossible to stand at the
> > mike and scribe at the same time !
> 
> An extra microphone for the question relayer would also be useful.  
> What I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...

Actually, what I think would be very useful would be to have a second
screen that shows the jabber channel. The burden of having to run
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Brian E Carpenter | 5 Aug 01:25

Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

Hi Marshall,

On 2008-08-04 04:26, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
...
> 1.) Is it really necessary to have a jabber scribe and a regular scribe
> as a separate
> position ? We had 117 sessions in Dublin, finding 234 scribes is clearly
> harder than finding 117.

According to BCP 25, the minutes of a meeting "should include the agenda
for the session, an account of the discussion including any decisions made,
and a list of attendees." Even if we forget about the list of attendees,
this is very different from a jabber log. So if the two jobs are
combined, the scribe will have to spend a lot of time after the session
summarising and clarifying things to focus on decisions.  I see no problem
in that if the scribe is willing to do it.

See a previous round of discussion starting at
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg42847.html

    Brian
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