Minutes of the Web Elucidation of Internet-Related Developments (WEIRD) Working Group IETF - Washington, DC November 1999 Recorded by April Marine. Chair is Chris Burke. The WEIRD WG met on Thursday, November 11 1999. The agenda looked like this: Agenda: 1. Welcome / circulate sign-up sheet sheet 2. Review of Progress on Action Items from IETF 45 3. Discussion of relationship of WEIRD to proposed ICANN Ad Hoc / draft any resolution if the group desires it. 4. Assign new action items. 5. Adjourn Accompanying these minutes are the slides Chris used during the meeting. The latter several slides are really notes taken during the meeting to capture the discussion that happened as part of item #4 on the agenda and carry more detail than these minutes. 1. Welcome / circulate sign-up sheet sheet Chris welcomed the group and gave the usual introductory info regarding the mailing list and location of web information, as well as a very quick recap of the Charter of group so everyone understood the goals. 2. Review of Progress on Action Items from IETF 45 We then went through the pending action items and noticed the status of each. Quick and Dirty links - This was started and the current web page consists just about *only* of quick and dirty links to such useful information as the RFC Editor Queue, etc. Area Director's Overview - April had agreed to do an overview of USV as a kickstart to getting overviews of all areas. Didn't get done! (I got confused re sequence of events there--not that that is an excuse. :-) Hot Topics - No particularly solid action item was developed in relation to fleshing out the content of hot topics. Ginny had agreed to monitor the list, and did so, but no info came over that related. Still pending. Core Web Design Team - There is a core design team who agree to put info on the web, but they haven't had much to work with, so they haven't designed much. 2nd Level Domain Name (really it's a Third Level name :-) - We were considering getting a domain under ietf.org, but haven't yet. Chris will troll the list for votes/ideas and coordinate this. Other/related progress: - A prototype of the "quick and dirty" links is at http://usv.ietf.org/weird/ - Robert Ferrell put up a link at http://rgfsparc.cr.usgs.gov:8090/sysadmin/int_rpt.html#weird which was "ask a weird question" - service to forward questions to the weird list - Chris Burke circulated a strawman template for Area input to the User Services, Application, and O&M Area Directors for comment 3. Discussion of relationship of WEIRD to proposed ICANN Ad Hoc / draft any resolution if the group desires it. Chris reviewed what the ICANN Ad Hoc committee was and noted that, from their stated goals, they could be construed as overlapping with WEIRD. Given that, he wondered if it was worthwhile for the WG to form a liaison relationship with the Ad Hoc committee, on the model of USWG and TERENA. The consensus of the group was the Ad Hoc committee was in fact doing quite different sorts of work and that a liaison right now would not be the best choice. 4. Assign new action items. The group then got into a discussion of new action items, which really turned out to be a general discussion of how best to proceed next. It was agreed that developing a couple of templates to aid in gathering input would be wise (so as to leave the info we needed less open-ended and therefore hopefully people would be more inclined to provide it). The types of templates agreed on preliminarily: - Hot Topics template o including initial info collection and o update of existing info - BOF template - Area Director's plan/news/overview - Participant Questionnaire - what do newcomers to IETF want/need to know? - exit questionnaire re what info would have helped them participate better? It was agreed that we didn't just want to list "what" but also "why." For example, not just what BOF was happening, but why was it added to the agenda? What was the motivation for it? The group then decided to try to flesh out one of the templates and chose the Hot Topics template. Many concrete suggestions were provided and a template draft will be circulated to the list soon. The template discussion led naturally to a discussion of the process of getting all this done. That discussion fell into two parts: data collection and an editorial function. It wasn't clear how much editing the group was up for, and some of those details were punted until we had actual content to look at. For example, would we merge information from multiple resources into one "document" on the topic? Or would we let each statement stand on its own with credit to the person who offered it? A very useful distinction was made between "solicited" input and "unsolicited" input. Having an outlet for unsolicited input, e.g. "letters to the editor" or a "counterpoint view" would allow for openness and mitigate feelings that the group was trying to dictate rather than describe a topic. At this point, new action items came down to: Action Items: Finalize data collection/editorial process who? Chris/April Finalize templates who? Chris/April with WG review "Do it": - Gather Content who? existing volunteers - Edit Content TBD - Put Content on Web who? existing volunteers The group was asked to make sure they participate!