Re: WG Chairs Training

[Margaret Wasserman <mrw@windriver.com>]

Hi Aaron,

At 08:21 PM 3/17/2003 -0800, Aaron Falk wrote:
> Very interesting and generally good.   I have a couple of points of
> feedback:
Thanks for the feedback!

> 1. No mention of the ID tracker, wg chair's page, wgchairs mailing
>    list, RFC2026, and other useful tools/docs.
Good points.

Although we've been iteratively improving the materials, some of our
references are clearly still incomplete/out-of-date.

One thing to think about is: What material is best presented face-to-
face, and what is best presented through other means?  I've been
thinking that most of the "administrivia" section could be reduced
to a pointer to the WG chairs web page.

And, what do folks think of the idea of having a reading list of
material to read in advance of the training -- presumably RFCs
2026 and 2418, among others?  That way we could hit on the
highlights/decision points of the process, and the parts of our
processes that modify/extend those RFCs.

> 2. Suggest spending some time discussing finding good reviewers -- it
>    can be *very* helpful in generating good discussion and consensus
>    on a document.  Choose reviewers wisely.
Good idea.  The materials tend to be rather heavily influenced by
what we have found that we needed to know as chairs, and this is
certainly something that has fit my experience.

> 3. My approach is to make clearly charge the document editor with
>    ownership of extracting feedback and consensus from the mailing
>    list.  The editor is responsible for tracking and getting closure
>    on open issues.  An important part of this is having the editor
>    send issue summaries to the list (sometimes with proposed
>    solutions, sometimes not).  YMMV.
I agree.

One of the things that I have been wondering about is whether
we should do similar training for document editors...

One of the tricky parts of doing training like this is that
the IETF has not officially adopted/encouraged internal WG
processes, and the role of WG chairs, editors, etc. can (and
does) vary by area, specific AD, scope of the WG, etc.

I think that it is actually important for a large organization
to have more consistency in roles and processes than the IETF
has right now (without eliminating the ability to scale to
fit).  This allows people to move between groups more effectively,
and for us to communicate more clearly across the organization.
But, I'm not sure if the community agrees.  This is something
we'll discuss on Wednesday.

Margaret