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 +++ 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.