Session Date/Time: 08 Nov 2023 10:45

WG Chairs Forum

Summary

This meeting of the WG Chairs Forum focused on the IETF Administration LLC's chairs training, exploring ways to improve participation and gather feedback. There was also an open mic session discussing document shepherd roles, GitHub usage in working groups, coordination between working groups, and general tips and tricks for chairs.

Key Discussion Points

Chair Training:
- Greg Wood presented an update on the online chairs training. Feedback was positive, with an excellent Net Promoter Score.
- Interactive nature of the training and conversations between chairs were highly valued.
- Discussion on the differences in participation and satisfaction between the two training sessions, mainly attributed to time zones.
- Need to encourage more people to participate in chair training and consider different training modalities.
- Suggestions to have ADs and experienced chairs attend the training to provide guidance and support new chairs.
Document Shepherd Responsibilities:
- Emphasis on the importance of document shepherds in keeping discussions and documents moving forward and escalating issues to chairs when needed.
GitHub Usage in Working Groups:
- Interest in learning from experienced chairs how they utilize GitHub in their working groups.
- Concerns about conversation fragmenting between mailing lists and GitHub issues.
- Guidance needed on how working group chairs should coach the working group on the use of GitHub, including how to ensure that conversations can be available in a searchable format.
- Suggestions to use GitHub activity reports to provide a summary of GitHub activity to the mailing list and link back to issues so that mailing list readers can follow along on GitHub.
- A suggestion for authors to use a Google Doc to import it into an Internet Draft format, and an awareness that authoring standards requires technical expertise to author an internet draft, and that this reduces participation in the community.
- Archiving of GitHub issues and discussions in the data tracker.
Coordination Between Working Groups:
- Need for better coordination between working groups working on similar protocols to avoid divergent implementations.
MeetEcho Tips and Tricks:
- Suggestion to have a session on tips and tricks for using MeetEcho, including how to change slides.
Newcomer Support:
- Request for tips on hosting sessions or creating documentation for newcomers interested in authoring or reviewing IETF documents.

Decisions and Action Items

Action Item: Greg Wood to send a link to the on-demand versions of the chairs training to the looking-be-chairs list.
Action Item: Forum to invite someone, possibly Martin Thompson or Mark Nottingham, to present their experiences using GitHub in working groups.
Action Item: IETF Secretariat to remind working group chairs to double-check meeting conflict schedules.
Action Item: Forum to include a session about using meet echo, particularly changing slides without re-uploading.

Next Steps

Analyze feedback from the chairs training sessions to inform future training efforts.
Plan a session on GitHub best practices for working groups.
Consider ways to create simplified tools to reduce the friction of manually creating a draft.
Continue gathering feedback on missing topics for chair training.