[J3] (SC22WG5.6157) Impact of coronavirus on WG5 meeting

[Nathan Sircombe]

Hi,

Arm has placed restrictions on international and domestic travel until further notice, so as things stand, it doesn't look like any of us (Srinath Vadlamani, Kiran Chandromohan and myself) will be attending.
Looking at the recent developments, it seems optimistic to think that these will be relaxed in time for the June meeting. While many members may not at present be effected by such restrictions, I would suggest it's wise to plan with the assumption that more severe restrictions (voluntary or otherwise) will be in place come June.

Preparing for a virtual meeting makes a lot of sense, especially while we still have time to prepare.
The geographic spread of the committees (WG5 more-so) makes teleconferencing difficult, and the committee(s) current processes are, perhaps, not well suited to a virtual meeting. I agree with Ondrej's point about the promise of https://github.com/j3-fortran/fortran_proposals. Changes to the way the committee(s) work could make remote (and time-shifted!) participation more workable, minimising the amount of 'live' meeting time required. The GitHub site is a great start, but we will need to act to establish (and test) new workflows asap.
The format of the meeting, too, may be worth giving a thought - why try and cram so much into 5 busy days if it turns out that no-body has flights to catch and work (not to mention family!) to get back to. Could the meeting be spread out a bit?

As previously noted, there are many, many potential meeting platforms available -  I've yet to find one that I would describe as 'faultless' so I think a live test is a great idea. If we can't get it to work ahead of time, what hope do we have come June!
This would need a reasonable number of attendees from disparate locations, and could include trying parallel subgroup sessions, and a chat platform such as the j3-fortran slack.

Having said all that, I do think it's worth considering postponing the WG5. I realise that, while it's an INCITS meeting, the J3 does have a number of regular international attendees, however I think it's fair to say the centre of mass of J3 is more firmly in the US than the WG5. J3 seems better placed to cope with the move to a virtual meeting. Maybe by the time of the October meeting things will have improved. Or at least there will be less uncertainty.

To summarise I think we should...
 - assume that travel is not going to be feasible for more-or-less everyone
 - consider moving the WG5 to later in the year and focus on making a 'virtual' J3 a success
 - do a dry run
 - take the opportunity to overhaul the committee's processes and tools

Cheers,
Nathan.





On 09/03/2020, 14:49, "J3 on behalf of Steve Lionel via J3" <j3-bounces at mailman.j3-fortran.org on behalf of j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:

    I am sure that most of you are aware of increasing restrictions being
    placed on international (and domestic) travel by employers, and many
    planned in-person conferences and meetings have been canceled or made
    "virtual". Our next WG5 meeting is still a few months off, and the world
    situation may have changed by then, but people are making travel plans
    now and may need to get approval for travel, so I am wondering what WG5
    members want to do here.

    For those of you who had planned to attend the Minneapolis meeting, do
    you still currently plan to do so? I think ISO has something we could
    use for a virtual meeting, but our usual manner of working would be
    severely disrupted. Your thoughts and suggestions would be welcomed.

    Steve



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