FYI: WG summaries ideas

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Here is a note we just sent out to the INT WGs. Feel free to borrow,
suggest, whatever.

> WG Chairs,

> In the past, WG chairs have been asked to produce a 2-3 paragraph
> summary of what happened during their WG meetings. The ADs used these
> to review status and they also appeared in proceedings. But they've
> largely fallen into disuse. At the same time some WG chairs have
> suggested that it would be good to have some summary, e.g., to remind
> those that ended up with action items from the WG meeting.

> For the Vienna IETF, we would like to try something a little
> different. The thinking is to make the summary a bit more useful to
> both the ADs and the community as a whole. The intent is to be able to
> quickly summarize what decisions the WG made (with more details in the
> minutes), remind those with action items that they have action items
> (instead of waiting with such reminders until just before the next
> IETF meeting), and help keep the charter milestones both more visible
> to the WG and more up to date.
>  
> What we would like to see is a fairly short (e.g., 1-3 screenfuls of text)
> summary that focuses on important decisions made during the meeting,
> and what is expected to happen in the 3-4 months before the next
> meeting. The summary would be sent to the WG list, so that the
> community can review and comment as appropriate.

> Specifically, the summary should include the following:

>   - summary of decisions made  (e.g., document accepted as WG item,
>     documents ready for IETF LC, etc.)
>     
>   - summary of action items, owner of action, and a target date for
>     the action item to be complete (e.g., revised ID)
>     
>   - review of the charter milestones to verify they are still correct
>     (well, OK, to update them :-) 
>     
>   - Review of current charter, checking for:
>      - is it still current or does it need tweaking
>      - verify that all documents being discussed in WG are
>        appropriately covered by the charter (i.e., does document
>        belong in WG and/or does charter need tweaking)

> This summary should be done quickly, i.e., within a week of the WG
> meeting. Note also, that the last two items can probably be done at
> least partially in advance, with WG time used to discuss as needed.
> Based on the comments and experience from doing this for the Vienna
> meetings we can refine things going forward.

> Thomas & Erik