Meeting by jabber

That worked well!

The DKIM Working Group decided to have an online meeting today, in order to try to resolve some issues on a topic that's been going on for two weeks on the mailing list, and has gone down a rat hole. We had the discussion using jabber, with my co-chair and me moderating, and I think it really went well.

The participants cooperated in keeping the discussion on topic, and we were able to go back and forth, clarify comments and questions, propose alternatives, tweak the text for the specification, and make good progress in real time. It was nice to be able to get those clarifications immediately, rather than letting misunderstandings fester. Doing it in a medium where people have to keep their messages short and to the point was also helpful. We resolved a few issues, which we will now take back to the mailing list for ratification (which word, oddly, has nothing to do with rat holes), and we left one unresolved, but in a clarified state for further mailing-list discussion.

We did have technical problems to start, where participants had trouble joining the chat room after some initial success with it. Ultimately, we started 30 minutes late in order to make sure everyone who wanted to be there was connected, and we ran it for the full hour we'd planned.

The session log is here (look for 11:30 local time), for anyone who wants to see the details.

I love technology!