Chair Training: The Human Dimension -- 17 Jun 2014

<koalie> scribenick: koalie

introductions (<1 min please)

Chaals: We may be recorded, if you do not wish your comment to be recorded, please, write /me in IRC

Group Dynamics - fatigue, timing

Andy_Coleman: XML Query WG co-chair, recently appointed

Giri: Geolocation WG co-chair, recently appointed

Kerry_Taylor: SSN XG a couple years ago, will be appointed to a new WG in the future

Lisa_Seeman: TF on cognitive accessibility

Nigel_Megitt: co-chair Timed Text WG

Cindy: Team Contacts of Web Apps WG

Yosuke_Funahashi: Co-chair of Web and TV IG

<chaals> The driving document

chaals: I chose fatigue and timing topics on purpose
... hard to concentrate more than one hour
... you can take small breaks
... I plan to take a break after one hour into this call
... We may use or not the second hour
... But we'll take a break
... No-one is forced to take a break
... I hope to stop after an hour
... I use that break A LOT
... We often find that groups get wound up on details and lose focus
... When I chair meetings, I reset the focus on the agenda
... My experience is that if people have not found agreement in one hour, they're unlikely to find it for an hour and 15 minutes and so on
... If people are close to agreement, I find that either during the break, or that evening, they solve the problem on their own
... and next time we have the discussion we find we've come to consensus.
... I hope not to be giving a lecture for an hour; please do use the queue

The Chair

chaals: A lot of the things I know about chairing I learned by sitting in meetings and watching chairs
... and thinking at time "oh, if I'm chair, I don't want to do this"
... It's valuable to collect lists of "don't do that"
... Are there things that Chairs do that drive you nuts?
... speak up

Nigel: When a chair allows someone to talk for too long without giving much information

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to say "replying to each speaker, before the next person in queue gets to say anything"

chaals: Yes
... One of the things I find annoying is a chair that replies to every speaker
... it takes a lot of time and isn't always useful

Andy: Outside W3C I've experienced a chair monstering the group and acting more like a president than a chair not very helpful for getting things done

Lisa: One of the things that bug me is when something from previous meetings comes up again despite this having been minuted and the chair lets the re-hashing happen
... chair should give orientation
... and suggest to revisit only if there are issues

<Andy> Experiences a chair that acts as a President with advisers rather than as an 'equal' as far as decision making is concerned

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to complain about chiars who don't know the tools

chaals: Another frustration is about Chairs unaware of tools we have, and how to use them

<chaals> W3C tools for chairs (last chair training session)

chaals: Here's a link to Ralph's tools session in previous chair training
... Also, chairs who don't manage to keep the agenda
... I'm happy with changing an agenda during the meeting, but it can be frustrated when you travel or get up at 3 in the morning and an agenda is hi-jacked
... agenda needs to be fair to anybody
... There are other things that Chairs do wrong, and we, I in particular, are humans and volunteers; it's not surprising we don't get everything right
... but it's important we try to set an example
... I will come back to the topic perhaps
... There is another part of the difficulty: giving your own opinion

Giving your personal opinion

chaals: in a WG, we are possibly our company's representative
... balancing the way we chair the group and the way we represent our own perspective is quite difficult
... Andy, you mentioned a chair

Andy: Yes, in a government body, supposedly organised the same way; the chair thought himself as the leader
... and dismissed opinions

chaals: One of the issues is that chairs reasonably have strong personality
... they're appointed because they're deemed to be able to leading the group
... How to balance that?

Nigel: So far, I've tried to stay quiet as long as possible
... treading the tricky line between summarising and telling what the decision is

Lisa: what I try to remember to do is to say when I'm speaking my opinion as a member of the group

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to say I try to use the queue strictly, especially on myself.

Lisa: At the end of the conversation, I ask if anyone would like to comment@@

chaals: I do something similar and use the queue strictly
... I try to distinguish me giving an opinion and me being chair
... this goes back to what Nigel said, trying to make resolutions really clear
... the difference between providing and being chair: I'll try to clarify what people have said
... I'll do that as an individual, but if we're reaching a conclusion point, I'll try to reach a resolution
... a statement that people can agree, or disagree with
... write that down as a clear resolution; separately from the things I said as a member of the group
... Chairs who don't clearly state the things we agreed to do so you can object is a problem I've had with a number of chairs

what if we reconsider… - decisions

chaals: This is the point that Lisa mentioned
... How do you get a group to make a decision?
... this is really tricky
... as Nigel said, chairing is difficult
... the cracks of what is difficult, when the goal is to get consensus, if how to get consensus as opposed to discussing forever
... and how Lisa mentioned, to prevent re-hashing past discussion

Lisa: Our 1st deliverable: gap analysis
... what can be done to help people have better access to the Web
... for such a vast topic, there are numerous topics
... Also, educating the group
... issues on a document, summary of different technologies, so people can refer back to them
... we use wiki a lot
... Any topic that comes up I try to make sure there's a logical place on the wiki to save it
... so people ought to be on the same page
... Also, I give my group my Skype handle etc and try to be available for them, especially for newbies
... people can re-open discussion, but often they need to be filled in.

<Zakim> nigel, you wanted to say we set a 10 day post-resolution 'cooling off' period

Nigel: We have a statement in our charter that I often reiterate
... There is a ten-day period after resolutions are made that allows people to object, catch up, raise issues, etc.
... That's another tool

<chaals> [enabling email decisions]

Nigel: if people are late, I can use this tool (I have yet to)

chaals: as an AC rep, I object to charters which do not enable that
... I think it's a great tool.
... The ability to stop recycling discussion depends on having things written clearly written, and in obvious places, like Lisa said.

Kerry: I have to leave, thanks very much!

chaals: Thanks for coming!

[Kerry Taylor leaves]

chaasl: I had not heard the cooling off expressed as such as Nigel mentioned it. And writing things down makes sense.
... there's another side of recycling discussion
... when someone brings a new perspective,

<Zakim> nigel, you wanted to say that with issues we sometimes close them off and then allow new issues to be raised against the resolution in the previous issue

chaasl: is there a way, any tool (other than memory) to highlight it as new perspective?

Nigel: We sometimes close issues and a new issued is raised on a solution that closed a previous issue
... It creates a multi-layer thing and makes it a bit harder for the Chair
... Very often it's a new thing that somebody thought of.

chaals: I like that, actually
... one of the thing that's attractive is that it lets you close issues
... but provides a way to go back to the original discussion
... so when you go back to the discussion you can go back to the old discussion.

what next?

Lisa: Having people to create the deliverable they signed up for, in time or not too late, is really hard

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to suggest "I don't need your input" as a topic

chaals: How do we use the next 15 minutes into this hour?
... going one by one.

Meeting timelines with volunteers

chaals: I'd love a solution to this!

Nigel: I've had this problem recently; two deliverables with overlapping timelines
... different people more keen to progress on one more than the other deliverable
... I've begun a standard practice at every meeting to prioritise agenda items
... when I do that, people who're keen on something want to bump things up the queue
... our problem is that we don't have enough time
... we break the one-hour rule, as a result
... next time, I'll suggest we have a break after 1 hour
... slightly tangantial: when people commit to a timeline and don't deliver output to meet that
... is there anything that can be done?

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to add a problem...

Nigel: waiting for something be be more perfect? or bring down the axe and publish?

chaals: recently, it took 6 months to deliver 3 days of work, but I didn't have 3 days until finally I got it done
... the problem with "let's ship now" is if you are too strict in applying that, people will ignore what you've done
... there is a real judgement to make
... one approach we've tried with some success: offer to other people to help edit a spec and move it forward
... the problem with that is you had a problem and may end up with two problems

Lisa: I've tried to ask for a draft in 6 weeks for something we want to publish in 3 months
... a 6-week deadline for a chunk is doable
... you can't ignore a 6-week deadline.

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to +1 this idea of small manageable chunks, and then talk about balancing busy people and deliberate blocking

chaals: Breaking it down into manageable sized pieces is something I like a lot
... I'd be interested to know more about how do you find that work or not
... Another snenario:
... sometimes you have busy peopls, and sometimes in controversial groups, people going to the group just to block the work
... volunteers on one hand, and people trying to block progress on the other
... taking up work, requesting extensions and blocking the group for months
... How do you tell the difference?
... and, what do you do?

Nigel: the only way to find out whether they're busy or blockers is to know them as individuals
... talk to them outside of meetings
... the two behaviours seems to be undistinguishable.

chaals: Knowing the people is really helpful
... Frankly, I, as a Chair, just make judgement calls.
... Figuring out what's going on depends on knowing people and their goals
... tools I use to get closure is impose deadlines
... problem I have is: it's easy to be seen as unfair
... in some cases, I'm more or less strictly imposing the deadline.
... or the group does, based on the general impression
... That works unless people start stacking the group.
... one of the issues I mentioned already: if you impose deadlines too strictly, you lose the people that you really want
... That's one of the things I throw in the balance
... I don't have an answer, but how fast do you need to enforce a decision?

Lisa: One thing seems to be effective: I switched people around
... putting a person who's done their part really well on another part
... there were lots of good reasons to do it in any way, but it may be helpful generally and for more deliverables

chaals: we've been going on for 55 minutes
... let's take 5 or 10 minutes
... and resume for a second half
... I want 10 unless people want 5
... let's reconvene in 9 minutes.

Lisa: on blockers
... if you have serious blockers and if you have an issue, a fantastic tool: make a task force on fixing that issue
... if you've got your one or two people who block in that TF, the environment is going to be hostile for them

starting on time, and other timing issues

chaals: There's no magic: the chair needs to be there on time
... people are going to be there so respect this
... taking breaks is useful as we've stated earlier
... how to get people to start on time?
... start and expect late comers to know you start on time so they'd better be on time
... end on time too

Nigel: stopping on time is something I'm keen on too
... I've found it doesn't seem reasonable to start discussions when absent people have something to say

Andy: Generally, people start arriving on the call and it's 4 or 5 minutes into the call when all have arrived

chaals: Most of us I suspect rely on calendars and stuff start and end at the top and bottom of the hours
... if you planned to start at 5 past, would that make people to actually start at 5 past?
... counting time for people to make transition.

Editors who don't listen to the group

chaals: This is a bug bear of mine
... one thought is to replace editors
... but people who tend to not listen the group are relatively likely to just take their toys and leave...
... and people who are nominated editors are usually good at that

Nigel: I'd present the edits, and encourage other members to work on proposal for changes
... on wiki so that everyone can see and all have a chance to make changes
... The problem is that sometimes it's easier to edit directly and not look at the wiki

chaals: I don't have a very good answer for this
... but what I try to point out is that there's a legal reasons at W3C to avoid breaking; anti-competitive behaviour law
... reminding editors of that is sometimes useful

people who work outside the group

chaals: people who work outside the group: is it a problem --editors in particular-- and if so, what should we do?
... often we'll cut off the discussion because an hour has gone, people will come back with an answer
... that's sort of working outside the group
... we're back to the anti-competitive law
... if people come back to the meeting and there's a chance for the group to discuss the solution, change it if people are unhappy, I think we're ok with that
... When I find it a genuine problem is when two or three people don't bother presenting results and changes to the group at all
... it is harder to track who contributed what
... in W3C Chairs are expected to track contributions for IPR reasons
... I'm not sure what strategies people have.
... or even if they consider it a problem

Nigel: I do consider it a problem. But I don't have a strategy.
... when a doc has been used as basis for a W3C rec and has largely been made outside of W3C
... it's difficult to uncover information
... not sure it's a problem if members of the group agree on it?

chaals: You don't have to conclude that if you're a member of the group, as well as a chair
... dirty tricks like going to the webplatform.org team, seeking if it's implementable, helps assess if the basis is good enough.
... for me it's one of the big issues that I face
... I try to encourage a culture of organising meetings, semi-formal dicussions

ignoring the chair / chairing from the floor

chaals: in the wiki there were a few things about this topic
... my feeling is that it's not much of a problem if the meeting runs itself; it's a good thing
... where people just refuse to listen to the Chair, that's much more difficult.
... I wonder, how do you deal with that?
... Coralie said you can bring up to the domain lead someone that is difficult; yes, you may push a problem to the staff
... I'd like to be able to avoid having to do that
... I try to focus on the problematic behaviour; not ignoring the person
... standing up and saying "look, I'm the authority" will not achieve much
... without jumping up and down, being clear that a particular piece of work needs to be done, or someone has been standing in the queue, will work with the group most of the time

action reviews and similar "admin-heavy/traditional" approaches

chaals: using action review, formally approving minutes, the sort of things, do people do this?

Nigel: We do, agenda has a whole part on actions and issues, what's pending, what's due
... it's important
... quite often, I'll put it on the agenda and after prioritising, agenda items fall off the end and are not covered
... alternative may be worse: they get forgotten about.

Andy: We spend a fair bit of time on administative side
... sometimes quite useful
... I'm new to chairing and it's been done that way and it needs to be done that way
... it's the opportunity to go back on the work people have committed to do
... admin preamble is an opportunity to beat people up into doing the work, in my experience
... then, technical work, that is the rest of the agenda, is blocked unless actions are done

chaals: my experience is mixed
... Because the group think harder about what they said they'd do, but being more realistic about who can do what
... action item review is useful so long as you're not losing things; action items should not be the whole agenda
... Dan Connolly used to structure the agenda based on action items and actions would crop up under respective agenda items
... Out of Andy's point, confirming minutes is a tool I'll remember as a good way to get people to start the meeting on time

Nigel: I wanted to add that care should be given to using tracker's agenda tool - it needs to be carefully edited
... also, closing actions gives people a sense the group is making progress, so I try to close as much as possible

chaals: Depends on the WG
... there are groups that find it very productive
... there are others which find this is very bureaucratic
... and for which closing technical questions and changing code regularly matters
... it's a question of degree

organising meetings

chaals: Best for last!
... there has been some serious discussions up and down W3C about organisaing meetings
... we've had some events in the context of the WebApps WG; strated with a one off meeting, but mostly should have been in the context of WebApps WG
... on the Process:
... there are all kinds of ideas of what W3C requires for meetings
... if you read the Process, there are things you SHOULD do, but nothing you MUST do
... should have minutes, should be live in IRC so people can follow, should allow remote participation for f2f meetings
... those are not even mentioned
... so, I am pushing to get the process changed
... luckily, I edit the process in the AB
... the other side is getting the WG to agree to a meeting
... my bug bear is getting a group that is large and has members from all over the world to meet outside of Silicon Valley
... I don't know if there is anything we can do to encourage people this way
... any thoughts on meetings, tools?

Andy: 50%-50% US and Europe membership; we try to spread geographically and use TPAC as default
... generally, membership is amenable to that.

Nigel: I'm in the process of organising a F2F
... looking for a host, and dates, in advance
... I'm concerned that attendance will be low despite notice
... any tips?
... the other question is paying for food, what do people think about dinner or lunch to discuss outside of context?
... Should we push this forward?

Andy: we rely on generosity of hosting member
... if we're lucky they supply coffee and lunch
... we aim to organise a social evening
... inevitably it happens that there's a work/agenda aspect to the social part

chaals: my experience is that people are happy to pay for their own lunch
... people will pay for dinner too
... unless people are sponsoring, I'll go with cheap and

<inserted> scribenick: nigel

chaals: it's useful to have the people and the place but the rest is administrative details
... I'll adjourn as we've hit time. Thanks everyone for your input. I will use this to update the wiki as well.

<koalie> thanks chaals!

<koalie> thanks all!

<chaals> [Thank you all very much]

<chaals> [adjourned]

<koalie> [end of first session of "Chair Training: The Human Dimension"]

Second Session

<carybran> 831 number is Cary Bran w/Plantronics

<deiu> I can scribe.

<chaals> scribeNick: deiu

<scribe> scribe: Andrei Sambra

<chaals> Wiki page for this topic

Introductions

chaals: I will begin by asking people to introduce themselves for 30 secs
... what group you're working in, etc.
... I will start: my name is Charles
... I am co-chair of the accessibility group
... let's go with the order Zakim gives me

[people introducing themselves]

<chaals> Sandro_Hawke: staff contact of 8-9 groups

Sandro introduces himself as staff contact

<chaals> Mark Sadecki: accessibilty staff contact

carybran: I am with Plantronics

Judy: this is Judy with the accessibility team, and with me is Zhang (Kenny) Kun, based at Beihang in Beijing

Jim-Allan: I am the co-chair of the user agent working group

Arnaud: I am Arnaud from IBM, chair of the LDP WG
... and also to-be chair of the upcoming Social Web WG

AWK: I am Andrew, from Adobe

jeremie: I am Jeremie, the W3C webmaster

ted: I am the head of the systeam at W3C

ddahl: I am Debbie, with the user interaction group

<ted> Ted Guild <ted@w3.org>

Group Dynamics

<ddahl> Debbie Dahl, Chair of Multimodal Interaction and participating in task force on Cognitive Accessibility

<sandro> https://www.w3.org/wiki/Guide/HumanDimension

chaals: I've changed the page recently, but it doesn't matter if you're familiar with it or not
... one important item is to make sure the group doesn't stretch too long
... people loose focus when they are in the meeting for too long
... so we'll go for 1h and then take a break
... we have 2 hours and at the top of the hour I will take a break
... this is something useful for everyone to do (re. breaks)
... I am hoping to have an interactive session; people will provide their own experience and hopefully have questions
... do people have experience with groups that run for long periods of time?
... are groups productive during long sessions?

sandro: I'm used to longer sessions
... telecons I'm used to are usually 1h, but in crunch times we sometimes go for almost 2h
... usually we become productive after 45 mins
... during f-2-f meetings we usually take 2 hours

chaals: when people get really heated off and end up with 2-3 people arguing, or 50-80 people people during f-2-f, then is not good to watch just a few people arguing

Group Dynamics - timing and fatigue

chaals: are there any particular items that you would like to discuss? feel free to put them directly into IRC
... or you can add them to the agenda

<sandro> agenda: what a chair should do when they have opinions or technical ideas

chaals: feel free to keep suggesting things through the rest of the meeting

what a chair should do when they have opinions or technical ideas

chaals: the topic I am going to take first is sandro's item
... "don't be part of the problem"
... the specific thing is that most chairs are volunteers and they represent a member in a WG
... nearly all chairs have extra ideas they want to present
... what can chairs do to separate their ideas from their chair ones
... I'm looking for specific problems

<Arnaud> +q

sandro: so..if it's a little thing, then the chair will pick someone else to run the meeting for a while
... if there's a proposal made by a chair, then the best solution would be to ask someone else who works for the same organization to propose that item

Arnaud: I am lucky enough to work with people from my company, who represent my interests
... if you have both hats, you need to specify which hat you're wearing: by default you speak as a chair and they mention when they have a personal opinion

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to suggest that chairs use the queue when they are talking as members

chaals: when chairs speak as members with ideas, they should place themselves in the queue
... chairs should not be interrupting everybody; I find it frustrating that chairs sum up what the last person just said
... I don't think chairs represent those people
... it's nice if you can avoid the problem by having another chair, but that's not my case
... in my case I want to be clear about proposing resolutions
... I try to be very clear about proposals, to make it very distinct when proposing formal resolutions

managing conflict

chaals: managing conflict

carybran: I've been involved with IETF groups re. managing conflicts
... I'm interested to see how W3C handles them

chaals: there are two kinds of conflicts:
... 1. people have technical disagreements on issues -- I don't have a magic wand to deal with these issues
... if you disagree with someone, the first step is to make sure that you can state their opinion in a way they recognize it (so they see you understood their problem)

<chaals> Difficult Individuals

chaals: a coupld of other helpful things: look for data to break deadlocks
... or how a particular issue impacts the people beyond those in the room
... there are people who have particular needs
... those may very well be legitimate needs
... but there are also people who generate conflicts
... I'll start with people who "block the work"
... one of the problems is that it is difficult to tell the difference between people who are blocking progress and volunteers who don't have enough time to get things done
... the most interesting strategy I found is to move the work to a task force
... if the work happens in a small group where people focus on a specific problem, it becomes harder for people to @@@ negative
... in a smaller group, there's no one going along with you if you're being negative, so the group can make progress

shawn: this is Shawn, I am W3C staff and co-chair of education outreach

sandro: whenever anybody raises a problem and it seems they might be causing trouble, then you can have them take an action item

<chaals> [I am reminded of Connolly's law - those who do the work make the rules]

sandro: if people cause trouble by not getting their work done, then you can "threaten" them to get someone else to help and potentially take over their action item

Judy: I am a bit concerned about that
... I understand chaals issue, but it almost sounds that if someone is raising an unpopular view, you might be trying to make them take an action item in order to be able to express their perspective; but we need different perspectives

<Zakim> chaals, you wanted to support allowing others to help

sandro: I can see there is a balance there

chaals: people who are blocking the group are one of the biggest threats
... the idea of getting someone to help with a person that is not succeeding in their action is surely helpful
... generally I welcome help, but it's not the case with people who are just trying to get you to waste time
... I'd like to move to other examples
... there are also people who try to chair from the floor and basically take over the chair's work
... I personally don't really mind, as I can get to participate as a member of the group
... my concern is with people who are being ignored
... some people are less likely to speak up (for whatever reasons)
... the chair's role is to make sure everyone's voice is heard
... I find this a challenging part of being a chair

getting broad input

sandro: my answer is to go around the room and put everybody on the spot, thus allowing people to speak up
... it feels awkward to just pick specific people
... and it will not work in an 80 person group

chaals: going around an 80 person group and asking everyone to speak up will not work
... if you ask someone for an opinion, they may not want to give you their opinion
... I tend to ask specific people, but there are also back-channels

sandro: even right now you and I are speaking 90% of the time
... maybe we can try to do just that right now

ddahl: if you have a small group, it doesn't really address the problem
... the only way to effectively do that is to do it offline (email?)
... now we have a group of Japanese people who are more comfortable to talk among themselves and they act as a group
... they get a lot more done when they speak in a language they are comfortable with

chaals: how do you handle the dialog with the Japanese?

ddahl: it's almost like dealing with an interpreter -- a slower process that is not ideal
... we're still getting input that we wouldn't get at all otherwise

chaals: do you manage to have a dialog when an issue arises?

ddahl: we have a person that represents the Japanese group, but it's a non-real time dialog

chaals: standards tend not to happen in real time anyway
... this relates to another issue: if you take too much of people's time, people will walk away
... we find people who don't want to listen to people who are not fast and clear in their responses
... does anyone have experience working with people like that?

ddahl: sometimes the chair has to advocate for people who are taking longer to come up with responses
... "wait for X or Y to speak up; give them a chance"

chaals: people walk away if others are taking too much time to come up with solutions/responses
... we don't really have a strategy

volunteers don't always work to timelines

chaals: this is a different issue, not really a conflict scenario
... you give people an action item that is supposed to take an X amount of time but it doesn't happen in X
... I had a recent case like that
... the obvious solution was to ask someone else to help, which helped a bit
... but until the two of us sat down and worked together, no work was done
... are there other strategies people are using to deal with this case?

ddahl: a lot of time people will respond when nagged about it, and guilt sets in

chaals: in my case (when it was me) the discussion came up this morning

<chaals> this item, from this morning's discussion

chaals: one idea was to break down tasks into smaller pieces that are easily achievable

[ chaals going over minutes ]

chaals: the other possibility is action item reviews
... this gives the rest of the group a sense of how much time people spend making progress on actions
... using the review process (not to make people feel bad) to make the group understand how much they depend on someone

sandro: I'm not sure if that example was serious...because the idea of people having 40 action items seems strange
... the chair would usually avoid giving more action items to a person that cannot handle the load

chaals: I've seen people with long lists of action items
... I guess it depends if the group is not regularly reviewing actions

Abramski: I am Adam, with the W3C automotive platform group

chaals: I would like to remind people that this call is being recorded and that we should take a break
... does anyone object to taking 10 mins off?
... let's adjourn the call for 10 mins; do people want to continue this discussion into the second hour?
... would you like to do something else instead? we can continue by email

<AWK> I'd rather continue offline

<Arnaud> I don't have another 1h to dedicate to this but don't let that stop you

<carybran> offline is fine with me

chaals: 3/4 came up in this morning's discussion (you can take a look at the minutes)
... I propose to adjourn the meeting
... please update the wiki

Sol: the question I have (while ok with adjourning) was about my obligation as the AC for NAB

chaals: this meeting was about chairs/chairing, but you can write to me and I'll respond with details about your question
... thank you for turning up!

Meeting adjourned!

- DRAFT -

Chair Training: The Human Dimension

17 Jun 2014

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