Hi PHB,
the IETF is not like an enterprise where you can decide (as part of the hiring
process) what characteristics your employees should have.
In a volunteer organization the offered topics drive the participation. Ask
yourself: what you as someone who just finished a university education want to
hang around in the IETF to standardize yet another IPv4/IPv6 transition
mechanism or to participate in the MPLS-TP discussions?
When people suggest new work to the IETF they often see a strange reaction. I
remember when Mozilla came to the IETF and proposed to work on the privacy
topic "Do Not Track". I couldn't find support for doing the work in the IETF. I
don't exactly know why people didn't like it but the W3C immediately picked it
up and had seen lots of new companies (mostly from the advertising industry)
joining the W3C.
Ciao
Hannes
On Apr 27, 2012, at 5:06 PM, 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 see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but not as
many as I think there should be. By now at least a third of the
organization should be younger than me, preferably half. That is
certainly not what I see when I attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of
women is also highly noticeable.
If this is the case it should worry us greatly. But first I think we
need to determine if it is the case or not. I suggest an optional
demographic survey of participants in the next IETF meeting to be
repeated at regular intervals (no more than 5 years apart).
People can argue about process, RFC formats and governance but it
should be beyond argument that any institution that cannot recruit
younger members is going to die.
--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/