If this is your first time chairing a working group—or even if you have chaired a working group previously—the tips, information, and resources below can help make chairing easier and more effective.
Consider your co-chair(s) and Area Directors to be part of your team.
Area Directors, and the IESG in general, want your working group to be successful!
Familiarize yourself with roles that support and complement the work of chairs
There are many defined roles that complement especially:
Review the IETF chairs training on-demand courses
These courses were developed specifically for IETF group chairs with input from current and past chairs, as well as Area Directors, to help run effective working groups.
Use your subscription to the Working Groups Chairs list
You are signed up for wgchairs@ietf.org automatically. This is the place to ask questions and offer ideas to your fellow chairs. It is also the place where information specifically for chairs is shared, such as details about upcoming IETF meetings.
Acquaint yourself (anew) with the IETF Datatracker
As a chair, the IETF Datatracker is the day-to-day front-end for getting various working group tasks done, such as scheduling interim meetings, updating the description of your group, and more. Use the IETF Datatracker sandbox to try things out.
Make sure your Working Group About page is up to date
The working group About page has much of the general information about your group. It is found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/FOO/about where “FOO” is the group acronym. As a chair, regularly checking the information about your working group is a good way to be sure participants and potential participants have the correct information. Some items to check:
If your WG plans to use Github, then please contact support@ietf.org to ensure the correct set up.
Review and update your IETF Datatracker profile
As a working group chair, it is helpful if your Datatracker profile biography–which you can edit yourself–is up to date. If you’d like to update your photo, please send the request along with the picture to support@ietf.org.
Ask questions
No one has all the answers so you should always feel free to ask questions of your Area Director or co-chair. For just about any IETF-related tool, resource, or activity, you can send email to: support@ietf.org and the query will be routed to someone who can help.