Doing the Right Things?

[john.loughney at nokia.com]

Hi Jeanette,

> > Agreed.  Also, I think it is the WG chairs' job to be list 
> moderators as well.
> > That means interveaning before the attacks get personal; 
> summarizing the
> > discussions; etc.  When the mailing list becomes free-form 
> & unstructured,
> > I doubt much can come from it.
> 
> Do you think that all working groups should appoint a moderator? 

Well, perhaps I've naively assumed that the WG chairs were the
moderator.  In fact, I think the moderator MUST be the chair(s),
as the chair needs to work out the consensus.  Part of moderating
is calling consensus.

> > > b. It's been repeatedly observed for several years that 
> face-to-face meeting
> > > time isn't used effectively - it's often taken up almost 
> entirely by
> > > presentations of material that could have been read in 
> advance, leaving very
> > > little time for activities that really do need 
> face-to-face interaction -
> > > like resolving tricky technical disagreements.  
> Persistent instructions from
> > > various ADs to WGs have had little effect.
> > > 
> > > Powerpoint-style presentations (not that it really 
> matters which tool is used)
> > > tend to lull people into passivity, if not sleep.  Video 
> projectors can be
> > > great for high quality drawings, or very occasionally, 
> animations to
> > > illustrate how something works - but using them to put up 
> words (with fancy
> > > backgrounds) that are just repeated by the speaker is to 
> make a really
> > > ineffective use of high-bandwidth meeting time.
> > > 
> > > We need to understand why we are stuck in these ineffective modes,
> 
> Judging from the improvements you and Keith suggest, the answer seems to 
> be simple: making effective use of face-to-face meeting time means more 
> preparatory work. 

One would assume (or at least hope) that would be self-evident...

John