Re: Is the IETF aging?

On Fri Apr 27 15:06:36 2012, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that 20 years
> ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants and 20 years later
> that still seems to be the case.
I suspect that there's a marked skew toward the older participants in  
those who actually attend meetings, compared with those who simply  
participate on the mailing lists - but that said, I think the average  
age in both cases is on the up.
I'd posit that there's at least two primary factors in play:

a) Many of the "bright young things" are working in smaller  
organizations which are less likely to foot the (quite huge) bill for  
attending IETF weeks, as well as feeling the pinch when their staff  
are out of the office for nearly a month a year on IETF business. As  
a manager myself, I can barely justify sending one person, let alone  
all those involved in standardization work. (Yet I send four to XSF  
events...). I suspect rather strongly that larger organizations will  
tend toward sending more senior - in rank, and therefore age -  
engineers, and thus it's the smaller organizations that we need to  
bring on board.
It seems possible that if we designated one of the three yearly  
meetings as the "main" meeting, we might focus such smaller  
organizations' attendance.
b) Also, many are working on "web" things, and as such both the  
pressure to standardize is less, and most of all, the pressure to  
standardize *here* is less. I'd note that the XSF does reasonably  
well in recruiting people of all ages to its cause - there, I'm a  
disturbingly ancient greybeard, whereas in IETF terms I'm a young  
whippersnapper.
I think that the XSF does better here because it's maintained a  
closer relationship with implementors and deployers of its protocols.  
In particular, people often do kick off work within the XSF, rather  
than creating the work elsewhere and bringing it to the XSF in whole  
cloth for some mystic process called standardization. People  
regularly ask on its mailing lists (and chatrooms) about protocols -  
both extant ones and ideas for new ones.
I think in general, the way to ensure the IETF is at the centre of  
internet developments is to ensure it is a developer's organization,  
as well as an SDO, and unfortunately it's lost this connection - if  
you want to get some advice for that mail client you're writing, the  
IETF probably wouldn't help if you asked, and certainly wouldn't  
spring to mind as the place to ask.
There's a purist kind of atmosphere at the IETF - we don't do  
interop, we don't sully our hands with development - so we're in  
danger of reducing the benefit we have to developers and the  
organizations they work for. Re-engaging with those communities (and  
in some cases, reinventing them) would, I think, do wonders for  
attendance and interest - and benefit our standards as well, by  
increasing the focus on applied engineering.
That all said, I'd note that whilst the XSF solidly trounces the IETF  
in terms of the numbers of people below 40, it sorely lacks the  
significant benefits of the rest of the age-range - the IETF's  
combined experience is vast, and the ability to tap into that  
expertise is a real plus point.
Dave.
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