Practical tips for task forces

Before your first meeting

• Find the meeting date, time zone, joining link, and IRC channel in the group's meeting information.
• Connect to IRC using the W3C IRC guide, choose a nickname, and join the group's channel.
• If you cannot find these details or need help joining, ask the chair or the group's W3C staff contact, listed on the group home page.

For more commands, see the Zakim guide, RRSAgent guide, scribe guide, and agendabot manual.

Preparing for a telecon

For: the meeting chair

Check the meeting credentials with your staff contact. Send any participant password through a private channel. Share a host key only with people who need to host the call. Keep credentials out of public mailing lists, IRC logs, agendas, and minutes.

Send out an agenda using the group calendar far enough in advance for participants to prepare.

Starting a telecon

For: the meeting chair

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

If Zakim is not already in the channel, invite it first:

/invite Zakim #channel_name

zakim, start meeting

You should see something like the following:

Zakim      inviting RRSAgent
RRSAgent has joined the channel
Zakim      RRSAgent, make logs Public 
RRSAgent   I have made the request, Zakim 
RRSAgent   logging to https://www.w3.org/2026/10/16-hlreq-irc
RRSAgent   I have made the request, Zakim

Check that RRSAgent has joined before scribing begins. If it has not joined, invite it:

/invite RRSAgent #channel_name

Check that the log visibility matches the group's meeting policy. For a public meeting, use:

rrsagent, make logs public

Set the meeting title and chair for the minutes:

Meeting: Task force meeting
Chair: chair_name

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

agenda+ Action item review
agenda+ Issue review
agenda+ Review proposed document changes

You can also ask agendabot to read an agenda that is already published at a URL, such as a calendar entry or a mailing list archive. Invite the bot to the channel, then point it at the agenda:

/invite agendabot
agenda: https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/6dd39f11-933f-43d7-b0af-9685bf77788e/

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

regrets+ absent_person

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

scribe: scribe_nickname

For: the participants

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

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:

Topic: title_of_the_topic_here

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

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

agenda?

Zakim also keeps a queue of people who want to speak. To join the speaker queue, type:

q+

If you want to say why you are queuing, add a note, eg. q+ to ask about the deadline. Type q- to leave the queue, and q? to see who is waiting to speak. The chair acknowledges the next speaker with zakim, ack next (or zakim, ack name), which also removes that person from the queue.

To give someone an action , type

ACTION: myname to propose revised wording in the GitHub issue

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.

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

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:

scribe: scribe_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:

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

Record an agreed decision on its own line, for example:

RESOLVED: Adopt the revised wording discussed in this meeting

If another person takes over scribing, enter scribe+ scribe_nickname with the new scribe's nickname.

Creating minutes

For: the meeting chair and scribe

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

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:

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 (replace this with your group's actual list address).

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.