[Accountability-tf] Notes from 18th call

Dear task force members,

Here are the notes from our "No Go" call on Monday.

As a summary: the group agreed that it was best not to formally publish 
a draft document ahead of RIPE 76.

At the meeting, there will be a ten-minute plenary presentation that we 
will use to give a brief update and invite people to come to the BoF. If 
there is little community interest in the BoF, then the slot can be used 
for a task force meeting.

Cheers

Antony


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Accountability TF call minutes - 18th call

Attendees:
Antony Gollan, Alexander Isavnin, Peter Koch, Paul Rendek, Carsten 
Schiefner, William Sylvester

William noted that Hans Petter, Malcolm and Carsten had already sent 
some comments to the list.

Peter said he'd had a cursory read of the document. He shared Malcolm's 
concerns that the document needed more work. He also had some issues 
with the consensus section and the weight that this section had in the 
document overall. He agreed it needed more work given the history of the 
feedback they'd received from the community.

Carsten agreed with Malcolm's comments. However, they had 27 pages 
already and he was worried that adding more might end up creating a much 
larger document. He wondered how they would achieve what Malcolm had 
suggested (which he supported) while not bloating the document.

William said the length of the document was somewhat arbitrary and was 
due to some of the areas reviewed. If the task at hand required that 
length, then so be it. But if they thought no one would read the 
document, then there were other things they could do - summaries, 
presentations, etc.

Alexander said on one hand he liked Malcolm's comments. However, he was 
worried that they were working too much on the document. He was 
concerned that they were returning to the same topics and focusing on 
re-wording. While he supported the changes by Malcolm, he thought they 
should throw it to the community to get more comments and maybe some 
fresh blood on the TF, just to change what they were doing. The pefect 
was the enemy of the good.

William agreed that they wanted to wrap this up and they didn't want to 
be in the same place a year from now having the same conversations.

Alexander said he had earlier suggested they have a focus group or even 
send a "preliminary version" of the document to community members and 
invite them to help. Maybe it was not about "go vs no go" - but rather 
"go vs go half-way". Maybe they could change the way they were working 
on this.

William said it looked like they would have a short plenary presentation 
that gave an update and promoted a BoF. They wouldn't necessarily need 
to publish the report for this meeting - they could use the BoF to gauge 
community interest outside the TF and to open the floor for community 
feedback on some of the issues in the report.

William said they could continue to work on the document using the 
comments they had received and use that to get the document further 
along. Rather than using a draft document to drive their conversation, 
they could use the BoF as a way to drive this forward in a more 
productive way than getting comments at the mic in a plenary 
presentation. They could then use the input from the BoF to update the 
document (which would hopefully be in a better condition by then) - and 
then publish the draft to the community a couple of weeks after the meeting.

Carsten said the only request he had would be to make this clear - both 
to the BoF and the general audience - that they hadn't forgotten to 
publish the document, but that this was intentional.

William said this was the intent - this was about transparency and 
including the community in the discussion.

Carsten said it would be to head-off comments that the community hasn't 
seen any work from the TF so far. They should make it clear that there 
was a document, but it was not yet ready for publication. Rather, they 
would like to walk the community through the draft as they saw it and 
seek further input. There was a document, but it was a deliberate 
decision not to publish this so far.

Peter said this sounded quite defensive. They weren't in a position to 
avoid the perception that there was a lack of progress. Everything they 
did was published and it was on the mailing list. They didn't do these 
things in dark rooms - it was all open. The other point was that he 
wasn't complaining of a lack of progress, but looking at it from a 
community member's perspective - what was the additional information and 
how far along did they think they were? Much of the other stuff people 
had seen already. What exactly were they asking of the BoF attendees? He 
asked if they were getting new people in and trying to re-vitalise this 
from a new beginning. If they weren't ready, maybe they shouldn't 
exercise transparency just for the sake of it - they could simply say 
they weren't ready and move it to another meeting.

Carsten asked if he was suggesting a kind of public TF meeting.

Peter said maybe. He didn't know how many people would be interested in 
this. That was one of the difficulties. It would be bad to have a closed 
TF meeting, but maybe they shouldn't advertise it much. Or at least not 
raise expectations too much. He was worried about push-back because 
they'd wasted a BoF or another slot. He added that while they hadn't 
published, their draft document was publicly available.

Alexander said for sure they were transparent because the mailing list 
was open. And they should review what they had promised at Dubai, 
because he felt they had promised something. If they didn't want to 
publish the document, they should publish some of their progress - to 
sketch out some of their ideas and the structure of the report.

William said these were all valid points. Publishing in this context 
wasn't about making the document public - it was about presenting it to 
the community in a deliberate way and asking for input. It sounded like 
they weren't ready to publish the final draft. It still needed some 
work, and they weren't sure how much more work it needed. There were 
still a couple of areas that they didn't have enough input to tackle 
inside the document and maybe they would like to seek more feedback. 
This seemed to indicate they were not ready.

William said of course anyone was free to participate, but there didn't 
seem to have been much participaton. If they didn't formally publish the 
document, it seemed like there were a couple of options:
1) Publish the document as it is and seek feedback
2) Don't publish and seek feedback at the meeting
3) Don't seek feedback and contiue to work internally, before publishing 
ahead of the RIPE 77

He asked what the group thought they should do next.

Peter said Alex made a good point. He suggested they make a proactive 
status report that went to RIPE-list that explained where they are and 
pointed to the word document. They could skip the presentation in 
Marseille (probably both the BoF and the plenary presentation). They 
could have a task force meeting in a room that allowed 
observers/participants.

Carsten said that would work for him.

Alexander said he didn't think they should skip the plenary 
presentation, as many meeting attendees might not be on RIPE-list and so 
would miss the email.

William said the current idea was ten minutes in the plenary with no 
questions and using that to promote the BoF, which would give them a 
chance to discuss their doucment in more detail and address any issues.

William said his only concern was that in setting up a public TF 
meeting, it seemed like they were creating their own WG. A BoF seemed a 
little more appropriate, because people could attend and give feedback 
without the TF needing to formalise or adopt any other structures in the 
RIPE community.

William said the question was whether they wanted to keep the BoF 
timeslot or not.

Carsten asked if they needed to confirm the BoF slot now or if they 
could keep it open until the last minute.

William said last minute changes would frustrate the PC, but that was 
their job, so whatever they needed to do they would do. He asked what 
would change now before the meeting that would affect whether or not 
they wanted to hold a BoF. He also said they had control over the format 
of the meeting.

Carsten said if they had observers that would be fine and if they wanted 
to interact that would also be fine. And if no one had any interest, 
then it could just be another task force meeting.

William summarised by saying 1) keep the plenary presentation, 2) 
promote the BoF, 3) keep the BoF open as a meeting and allow anyone who 
wants to participate.

Peter asked what they meant by participate.

Willam said they would have a series of discussions in the meeting and 
they could open the floor to anyone who wanted to offer feedback. They 
would discuss it amongst themselves, but anyone else who wanted to 
attend could offer input.

Alexander supported keeping the BoF and plenary presentation.

Peter said he thought this might be a bit too much - he thought they 
could drop the plenary.

Casten and William said they could use the plenary to promote the BoF.

Peter said he was afraid of making too much noise.

Paul said this was something that impacted the whole community and 
giving it some airtime was probably worthwhile. Paul thought it was 
better that someone in the TF to promote the BoF rather than just having 
Hans Petter mentioning it in the opening plenary.

William said this time around they would be saying "We've made some 
progress and we've got a BoF and you are welcome to come along and 
participate."

William said in the meantime, they would be updating the document and 
would try to incorporate the feedback they'd received so far. He said it 
looked like it was a "No Go" for this meeting. He said they would move 
foward and execute against this plan. He encouraged others to supply 
revisions and comments to the document - the more specific the better.

Paul said the TF had made some good progress and agreed with Alex's 
earlier comments about overcooking this.