With its crowded and sometimes agitated meeting rooms, 3GPP can be a difficult place to navigate successfully – particularly in the early days.

To help new delegates get up-to-speed and to sensitize the regular attendees in 3GPP to their needs, the TSG leaders have put their weight behind a training session held during a busy TSG plenary meeting, this week in Madrid.

The 3GPP Newcomers session, held on Tuesday December 10, featured a presentation by Alain Sultan, from the 3GPP MCC. During the hour long seminar he covered some general 3GPP slides, but soon took a dive into the work of the groups, and their impact on each release of the standards.

Time was spent on the three stages of the work – from requirements through to the detailed protocol work that completes a given feature. The lifecycle of a release and the steady progress across generations of 3GPP systems were also covered.

A variety of detailed slides (co-written with leaders and MCC colleagues) covered areas such as group structure, document types, the change request, Work Item Descriptions (WIDs & SIDs), Release descriptions, the website and how to dip into the work plan.

The session ended with Q&A involving newcomers and the TSG Chairs, WG leaders and recent ex-officials present.  The questions included:

• Are all meeting documents from the meeting on the ftp server after the meeting?
• What does Consensus mean – When do we vote?
• If approved over more than one release - When is a spec implementable?
• Can non members join mailing lists?

This week’s newcomer seminar attracted over 20 delegates. Future sessions for new delegates are hoped for - During either the mega-meetings of working groups or at a future plenary (TSG).

The background slideset is online ...here