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Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

2008-08-05 04:58:47
Wow. I know I've spent more time raving at the IETF during the past 10 days than I had during the previous ten years, but could we get back to having a conversation that is remotely

(1) on topic FOR THIS THREAD, which Marshall kicked off to try to improve the scribe situation, and

(2) somewhat focused on getting the work of the IETF done?

> > have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an
intel 2100 or
> > with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to upgrade
> > preferably with a fresh os as well...

IMO, Joel's observation here was reasonable. I read it as "ya know, if old technology is getting in the way of jabber scribing, newer technology would probably help", which seems fair to point out ...

> Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at
> ease.

IMO, Dan also made a statement I understand to be true. But pretty quickly after that, we went someplace very strange.

I was astounded at the threads on the 72attendees lists where we came very close to debugging Mary Barnes' dietary restrictions, so I guess I'm not surprised that some people are coming very close to saying that if you don't replace your hardware and OS before the warranty runs out, you're doing something unreasonable.

I carried two laptops for years at the IETF, keeping my IETF life completely separate from my professional life. I look forward to doing that again, in the very near future, for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. But people who don't have a personal laptop might also want to participate in the IETF.

I should also say that my IT-provided laptop's three-year warranty expired in June, and I am filling out the replacement paperwork now, so this is not about MY ability to carry a Compaq Luggable from 1985 to IETF meetings and expect IETF-provided dialup support in the meeting rooms.

Did anyone notice the plenary slides on where participants at this IETF came from to attend this IETF?

We are getting more and more participants from countries that are not among the richest countries in the world. Those participants are often the technical elites from their countries, but they aren't always the economic elites from those same countries.

I'm also seeing (especially outside the RAI area) an increasing number of self-funded participants who are "borrowing" hotel rooms because they aren't currently employed. Again, we as the community can choose to accommodate them, or we can choose to tell them that they won't have IETF network access if there's a more recent IEEE 802 wireless variant than their personal computer supports, but the culture we've had was to encourage individual participation, not just corporate-funded participation.

If that is changing, please feel free to let me know.

And have a wonderful week, of course.

Spencer

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