One document matched: draft-saintandre-jabber-scribe-00.txt
Network Working Group P. Saint-Andre
Internet-Draft &yet
Intended status: Informational D. York
Expires: August 22, 2015 Internet Society
February 18, 2015
The Jabber Scribe Role at IETF Meetings
draft-saintandre-jabber-scribe-00
Abstract
During IETF meetings, individual volunteers often help sessions run
more smoothly by relaying information back and forth between the
physical meeting room and an associated textual chatroom. Such
volunteers, commonly called "Jabber scribes", might benefit from the
suggestions provided in this document.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 22, 2015.
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Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Know Your Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Primary Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Additional Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.1. Before the Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.2. As the Session Is Starting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5.3. During the Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Reporting Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
During IETF meetings, individual volunteers often help sessions run
more smoothly by relaying information back and forth between the
physical meeting room and an associated textual chatroom. Because
these chatrooms are currently implemented using Jabber/XMPP
technologies (see [RFC6120] and [XEP-0045]) the role is commonly
referred to as that of a "Jabber scribe".
This role is important because it is the primary way for a remote
attendee to provide feedback or comments back into most IETF meeting
sessions. Although there are multiple ways that a remote attendee
can listen and follow along, the chatroom provides a method of
returning feedback to the physical meeting in something close to real
time. These methods hold true for IETF working group sessions, IRTF
research group sessions, IETF "birds of a feather" (BoF) sessions,
and similar sessions at IETF meetings.
This document provides suggestions for fulfilling the role of a
Jabber scribe, based on the authors' personal experience as well as
input from other individuals who frequently volunteer as Jabber
scribes.
2. Know Your Users
The participants in a chatroom typically fall into three categories,
labelled here for ease of understanding:
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o Remote Participants
Remote attendees who are listening to the audio stream or in some
cases following the proceedings using a real-collaboration system
(currently exemplified by the Meetecho service). These
participants might wish to send questions or feedback to the
physical room.
o Observers
IETF meeting attendees who are in another simultaneous session in
a different physical room. These participants often monitor the
chatroom to find out when a particular topic is being discussed or
to observe what is being discussed in the chatroom. Typically
they are not able to listen to the audio stream and sometimes they
ask for a higher level of commentary so that they can know when
they might need to change locations to participate in the
session's physical room.
o Local Participants
IETF meeting attendees who are in the same physical room.
Sometimes these participants like to follow the discussions in the
physical room and the chatroom at the same time. They can also
provide some assistance to Jabber scribes.
Because all chatroom sessions are logged during IETF meetings and the
logs are publicly available, the logs can be a useful history of what
occurs during a meeting. For that reason any additional information
that can be supplied to remote participants can be helpful.
3. Primary Tasks
Individuals who volunteer for the role of Jabber scribe usually
complete the following tasks:
o Relay questions and comments from the chatroom to the physical
room. This typically involves going to the microphone to relay
the comment from the remote participant.
o Count the number of chatroom participants who virtually "hum",
raise their hands, volunteer to provide feedback on documents,
etc., and feed that information back to the physical room.
o Relay information about hums and similar interactions from the
physical room to the chatroom (preferably after receiving a
"readout" from the session chairs).
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It is the convention in most sessions that the Jabber scribe has the
privilege to go to the front of the microphone line to relay
information from remote participants. Some Jabber scribes choose to
exercise that privilege while others choose to wait in line along
with the participants in the physical meeting rooom.
4. Additional Tasks
Additionally some Jabber scribes often complete the following tasks:
o Relay the names of people speaking in the physical room to the
chatroom.
o Relay the slide numbers or slide names to help chatroom
participants follow along.
o Query remote participants about audio streaming quality, and relay
such information to the session chairs.
o Relay to the chatroom participants any logistical or procedural
issues related to the meeting (e.g., known technical glitches at
the physical meeting or delays in starting the session).
o Provide links to the current set of slides and the document being
discussed so that chatroom participants can easily follow along.
Although Jabber scribes are not generally expected to transcribe the
complete contents of conversations that happen the physical room to
the chatroom, they sometimes relay the gist of such conversations,
especially during ad-hoc discussions for which slides are not
available. (By prior arrangement between the session chairs and the
Jabber scribe, more detailed scribing might be expected for
particular sessions.)
5. Suggestions
Experience has shown that the following behaviors make it easier to
act as a Jabber scribe.
5.1. Before the Session
If you have volunteered before the session:
o Coordinate with the chairs to ensure that remote participants have
received information about where to find the meeting materials,
agenda, audio stream, etc. (e.g., this information can be sent to
a working group discussion list so that remote participants do not
need to ask about it on entering the chatroom).
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o Coordinate with the chairs to see if they have any special
expectations for the Jabber scribe (e.g., some chairs might want
you to transcribe more detailed information about the session
proceedings into the chatroom).
o Ask the session chairs whether it is acceptable for you to advance
to the front of the microphone line with time-sensitive comments
from remote participants.
5.2. As the Session Is Starting
As you are getting settled and ready for the meeting to start:
o Seat yourself near the microphone most likely to be used for
discussions in the physical room, so that you can more easily
capture the names of people who come to the microphone. Typically
this will be a seat near the end of a row or in some location
where you can easily get up out of your seat to go to the
microphone.
o It can be helpful to open several browser windows or tabs for:
* the agenda page for the session
* the materials page so that you can relay links to slides if
necessary (at the time of this writing, URLs for materials
related to IETF working groups are of the form "https://
datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/<nn>/materials.html#<name>", where
"nn" is the two-digit meeting number and "name" is the acronym
for the working group)
* the documents page for the working group or research group (or
BoF wiki page) in case you want easy access to documents
mentioned but not in the agenda page
* the meeting registration system page (see below)
o It can also be helpful to run two separate Jabber clients
connected to two separate Jabber servers, to prevent delays if one
of the servers experiences an outage during the session.
o Determine if the session will be streamed via a realtime
collaboration system such as Meetecho. If so, you can also point
remote participants to that system for interaction.
o If the session is large or is expected to be especially active
(e.g., a controversial BoF), find an assistant who can help you by
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sitting at another microphone, taking turns relaying information,
etc.
Identifying one or more assistants is particularly useful if you want
to go up to the microphone to speak as an individual or if you need
to take a break or step out of the physical room at some point.
5.3. During the Session
As you perform your role during the session:
o Identify yourself in both the physical room and the chatroom so
that participants in both venues know you are a Jabber scribe.
o Ask chatroom participants what level of information they need
relayed into the chatroom. For example if all chatroom
participants are listening via audio or a system like Meetecho
they might need less information relayed from the room.
o Ask chatroom participants to prepend statements they would like
you to relay with "RELAY" or "MIC" (the former term is less
ambiguous).
o When relaying a question or comment from the chatroom to the
physical room, say "this is X relaying for Y from the chatroom" so
that people know you are not speaking for yourself.
o It's not expected that you will know the names of everyone who
comes to the microphone. If you don't know the name of a person
at the microphone, you have several options:
* look at their name badge if you are seated nearby
* query them directly (calling out "state your name, please" is
acceptable)
* ask in the chatroom or type something like "?? at the mic",
since it is likely that a local participant will be able to
identify the person for you
* look up the name of the attendee in the meeting registration
system (this is typically found at a URL of the form "https://
www.ietf.org/registration/<meeting>/attendance.py", such as
"https://www.ietf.org/registration/ietf90/attendance.py"); you
can quickly look up a name using this system if you are in
doubt.
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o Be aware that lag happens between the time when something is said
in the physical room and the time when someone provides a response
in the chatroom, and take this into account when the interaction
is time-sensitive (e.g., during a hum or a show of hands).
o Because of the potential lag time, ask remote participants who are
doing a hum to indicate what choice their hum is for rather than
just typing "hum" into the chat room. For example, "hum yes" or
"hum for option 1". You can then more easily tally the results
and report them to the physical room.
o If you have a chance to do so, you may want to measure the lag
time between when something is said in the room and when it is
heard on the audio stream and then let the remote participants
know the length of the delay. This could be accomplished by
either listening to the audio stream yourself or working with a
remote participant who you know is on the audio stream.
6. Reporting Problems
If you need to report a problem during an IETF meeting (e.g.,
problems with media streaming), at the time of this writing there are
several ways to do so:
o For network and media streaming issues, send email to
tickets@meeting.ietf.org.
o For all other issues, send email to the "Meeting Trouble Desk" via
mtd@ietf.org.
o To chat with members of the Network Operations Center (NOC), join
the noc@jabber.ietf.org chatroom.
o To report a problem in person, visit the help desk in the Terminal
Room.
7. IANA Considerations
This document requests no actions from the IANA.
8. Security Considerations
Although XMPP multi-user chat rooms [XEP-0045] can be configured to
lock down nicknames and require registration with the chatroom in
order to join, at the time of this writing IETF chatrooms are not so
configured. This introduces the possibility of social engineering
attacks on discussions held in IETF chatrooms. It can be helpful for
Jabber scribes to be aware of this possibility.
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In addition, denial of service (DoS) attacks of various kinds are
possible, e.g., flooding a chatroom with unwanted or automated
traffic.
9. Informative References
[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, March 2011.
[XEP-0045]
Saint-Andre, P., "Multi-User Chat", XSF XEP 0045, February
2012.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dan Burnett, Dave Crocker, Jelte Jansen, Warren Kumari,
Jonathan Lennox, Alexandre Petrescu, Hugo Salgado, Yaakov Stein, and
Greg Wood for their input. Thoughts and ideas sent by Wes George and
Janet Gunn to an IETF 87 mailing list were also incorporated into
this document.
Authors' Addresses
Peter Saint-Andre
&yet
Email: peter@andyet.com
URI: https://andyet.com/
Dan York
Internet Society
Email: york@isoc.org
URI: https://www.internetsociety.org/
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