For the TPAC(W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee) meeting, we're going to use IRC to performing minuting and speaker queue management. Since we'll be doing queue management in IRC, it is very important that you stay logged in to IRC during the meeting so you can ask for a turn to speak. There's a whole guide to using IRC at the W3C, and further details on the Zakim IRC bot, but this documentation lays out the key bits.
Please note that we don't want this to be overwhelming, and it doesn't mean that you cannot speak without holding the virtual baton - however, we want to ensure that everyone gets an equal chance to make their points, so expect the chairs to discourage long speeches out of turn.
We'll be using the irc.w3.org server, in the channel #immersive-web. If you have your own IRC client (I'm a big fan of IRCCloud, personally) point it at irc.w3.org:6667. If you want to use the W3C's basic IRC web client, head over to http://irc.w3.org/, enter a nickname for yourself (please use something identifiable as you!) and the channel name #immersive-web.
Quick Guide to Queue management in IRC:
- When you want to get a chance to speak, type "q+" in the IRC channel, and hit enter.
- If you want to get fancy - or like me, you're worried you will forget what you had to say before it's your turn - you can say something like "q+ to say I want to suggest an approach based on quantum mechanics". The "q+ to say" prefix is required verbatim, followed by freeform text. Note that others in the channel will see this comment when you queue up (i.e. before it's your turn).
- You can ask who is on the queue by typing "q?"
- If you decide you no longer need to be on the queue, you can simply type "q-". (For example, if people saw your statement above and it's already been incorporated in the conversation and you had nothing more to say.)
- You'll see the chairs using "ack x" when someone is at the head of the queue - that means it's your turn to speak (we'll acknowledge you in person too).
Minuting using IRC
We will be using the W3C's IRC-bot-based RRSAgent system to take minutes, too. The short version of how this works is that you join a meeting, you should type "present+" to let the system know you're in attendance.
If you are the scribe, you should first make sure Zakim and RRSAgent are in the channel - type "/invite Zakim" and "/invite RRSAgent", then type "scribe: <your name>" or "scribenick: <your IRC handle>" and "Zakim, this is immersive-web". From then on, just take notes like you normally would - preface people's comments with their initials or IRC nick or the like. At the end of the meeting, type "RRSAgent, make minutes" followed by "RRSagent, make log public". It will respond with a URL for the minutes.
If you want to change the log - for example, you believe the scribe did not capture your point adequately, or there's an error - you can tell the bot to change things when the minutes are generated by typing "s/<old text>/<new text>".
Finally, sometimes it's useful to make comments that you don't want in the minutes, or that may even be a side-channel conversation that you don't want recorded in the minutes. You can do this using IRC "action" statements, which are typically entered in most IRC agents by typing "/me " first - for example, when we're in the middle of a conversation but I'm getting hungry, I might type into IRC** "/me thinks it's time we broke for lunch"**, and the IRC channel will see "cwilso thinks it's time we broke for lunch" as an out-of-band comment - and then the RRSAgent bot will omit that entirely when generating the minutes. In general, your snarky side comments should be in /me statements. :)
(There's also a Quick Start guide for RRSAgent for scribes.)