Practical tips for task forces

Preparing for a telecon

For: the meeting chair

Depending on how your teleconference is set up, participants may need a password and a host key . These are set up by the staff contact and communicated to the chair. They should be sent on to participants in email or private IRC channels directly. They should not be sent via any publicly visible list, since otherwise you will find unknown people camping on your call.

(To get rid of unknown participants, you'll need to go to Reclaim Host Role, and enter the host key. You'll then be able to remove the individual by right-clicking on their name.)

You should send out an agenda on the public-xlreq-admin mailing list (change x as appropriate) far enough in advance for people to do prep work. We find it effective to also call for agenda items from the participants at the same time.

Starting a telecon

For: the meeting chair

To get a meeting started on IRC the chair should go to IRC and type:

 mynick:   trackbot, start meeting

You should see something like the following:

trackbot is preparing a teleconference. 
trackbot   RRSAgent, make logs public 
RRSAgent   I have made the request, trackbot 
trackbot   Zakim, this will be 
trackbot   Meeting: Hebrew Layout Task Force Teleconference 
trackbot   Date: 18 July 2017

You may want to set up a list of agenda items . Do this in IRC using this pattern:

mynick:    agenda+ Action item review 
mynick:    agenda+ Issue review
mynick:    agenda+ Do this
mynick:    agenda+ Do that 
...

If you have regrets from some participants, indicate that for the minutes by typing:

mynick:    regrets+ personsname anotherperson etc

You'll need to set up someone as a scribe (to take the minutes). To do so, type:

mynick:    scribenick: persons_irc_nickname

Depending on how your telecon is set up, you may need to claim the host role to start the meeting. To do this.....

For: the participants

You should sign in when you join the call by typing into IRC:

mynick:    present+ myname 

This records you as present in the minutes, and the zakim bot keeps track of participants this way.

During a telecon

To start a new topic type:

 mynick:    Topic: title_of_the_topic_here

Alternatively, if you have set up an agenda on IRC, you can type:

mynick:     zakim, take up agendum X

where X is the number of the agenda item. You don't need to progress through the agenda sequentially. Setting the topic will automatically create a linked heading in the minutes.

To check what's on the agenda , type

mynick:    agenda?

To give someone an action , type

mynick:    Action: Person's_nickname to do something

Note that the person's name needs to be the one the bot recognises, and that the word 'to' is important for the action to be recognised by the bot.

To close an action , such as action number 10, simply type

mynick:    close action-10

Depending on how your telecon is set up, you may need to claim the host role to start the meeting. To do this.....

Anyone can correct the minutes in IRC using the substitution command. For example, the following will change the record in the minutes.

mynick:    s/@@ said he would do it/David said he would NOT do it/

Scribing

You need to tell the bot who the scribe is . Do this by typing in IRC:

mynick:    scribenick: person's_nickname

Doing this will produce much tidier and more readable minutes.

To scribe what someone is saying , type the name/nick of that person followed by a colon, then add what they say. You can continue the same person's comments by starting a new line with ... (three dots). The bot will then stitch the lines together when it produces the minutes. So, for example:

 mynick:    r12a: this is me scribing what someone is saying
mynick:    ... and now i'm adding something else they are saying
mynick:    ... and yet more!

There not much more to it than that. But don't forget to save the minutes before the end of the call and before dismissing rrsagent!

Creating minutes

You need to ensure that the rrsagent bot is on the IRC channel before starting to record minutes. If you start the meeting using trackbot, it will usually start up rrsagent automatically. Otherwise, do this in IRC:

mynick:    /invite #channel_name rrsagent

If you don't have rrsagent running, producing minutes will be a major hassle.

To tell rrsagent to draft the minutes , type the following:

 mynick:    rrsagent, draft minutes

The bot will reply to you with a URL where the minutes are being stored. (It may take a moment for the page to refresh.)

You should ALWAYS ask rrsagent to draft the minutes at the end of the telecon, but you can also do so at any time during the call.

You may need to set the access rights for the minutes . You can do this in IRC using:

 mynick:    rrsagent, make log public

Once the meeting is finished, the chair or scribe should check that the minutes look ok. If you want to change anything in the minutes page, use the substitution command mentioned above (ie. s/xxx/yyy/). You'll need to do this before dismissing rrsagent!

Finally, send the minutes out to the group's mailing list . You should send the minutes to the mailing list your group uses for public discussion, ie. public-i18n-xxxx.

Set the subject of the email to something like

 [minutes] Hebrew layout telecon 2017-07-19

Add a link to the minutes at the top of the email body, and it's usually recommended to add a text version of the minutes after that. To get the text version,

1. look at the minutes using a web page
2. at the end of the URL in the address bar, add ,text and hit return/go.
3. cut out from the plain text page you see the useful information and paste it into the email.