Re: Newcomers [Was: Evolutionizing the IETF]

On 10/11/2012 04:11, joel jaeggli wrote:

On 11/9/12 8:00 PM, Arturo Servin wrote:

Brian,

     Your comment just reinforce my perception that the IETF is not
interested in being an global organization of standards.


Arturo: I think I didn't express myself well. As others have said since,
IETF standards development *is* global and that is one reason why
participation, and consensus-forming, via email is so important. IETF
standards are global too - despite the historical ASCII bias, there is
nothing regional about what we do. Our efforts at internationalisation
are aimed at maintaining that global approach at the same time as
supporting non-ASCII content. Where we happen to meet has little
to do with that, but a lot to do with cost, convenience, and travel
optimisation.

I have twice, in different places, been part of failed attempts to
host IETF meetings. Those failures were nothing to do with prejudice
against the locations and everything to do with cost, convenience
and travel. That's life.


     People is asking how to evolve the IETF, well, one possibility is to
start thinking global and to reach more people outside the common
venues. It is more expensive, more complex, yes. But in my opinion is
worthy if we really want to show that we care about the multistakeholder
model that we preach.

Multistakeholder is a loaded term from other contexts. IETF participants
whether they attend the meeting or not are self-selected.


Exactly. I applaud the efforts of ISOC, the regional registries, and others
(going right back to the old Landweber meetings many years ago) to
encourage people from all over the world to join the Internet technical
community, but that is quite different from the stakeholder dialogue.

    Brian


I have some thoughts about interim meetings as an outreach tool in draft
form and I would appreciate some feeback on those sections.

http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-jaeggli-interim-observations-03.txt

     Hard times may come, some people will ask why the Internet standards
are just developed in some places and will challenge us. Frankly, what I
see is that we do not care.

Why shouldn't standards be developed elsewhere (oddly enough, they are)?
IETF participants have never had a monopoly on either need or good ideas.

 Regards, as On 09/11/2012 19:50, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

Arturo,

On 09/11/2012 23:26, Arturo Servin wrote:

    So basically the IETF is roaming most of the time in  North
America,
sometimes in Europe and once in a while in Asia. Is that how the IETF
thinks about the global development of Internet standards?

No. The criterion has always been to hold meetings where they can be
most effective in making the Internet work better - as far as a
standards organisation can do that. That means choosing places where
a meeting can be run effectively and a reasonably high proportion
of those actively participating can afford to attend. As participation
in the IETF has evolved, so has the geographical part of site selection
policy evolved, as Fred described. For example, the attendance data will
tell you why the policy has recently led to two meetings in China.

I think you'll find the policy is different for more operational
meetings, which as far as I can tell have been taking place in Asia,
Africa and Latin America for years. Those meetings have different
criteria for their part in making the Internet work better.

    No wonder why some countries in Africa and Latin America are
approaching ITU.

ITU-T does a great deal of its standards-making in Geneva. The meetings
in other areas tend have a different purpose, as do many ISOC
activities.

    If the IETF really wants to make a change we need to stop
thinking that
North-America/Europe = Global.

I think nobody has thought that for at least 10 years (IETF 54).

     Brian

Regards,
as

On 09/11/2012 16:05, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:

On Nov 9, 2012, at 12:28 PM, SM wrote:

At 06:31 09-11-2012, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:

I am newcomer and not able to attend because most of meeting in
America instead of Europe.

Most of the money comes from North Americans.  There is some
historical information in RFC 3717.

I'd suggest a more thorough analysis.

Data from https://www.ietf.org/meeting/upcoming.html and
https://www.ietf.org/meeting/past.html. Take a look at the attached
spreadsheet.

IETF demographics and meeting location policy have changed over time.

Originally, in 1986, not only was the IETF entirely American, it was
entirely US Government, and nobody else was invited. That changed
pretty
quickly, but the community attending remained predominantly US for
some
time. So meetings before 1993 all occurred in North America, and if
truth be told, the reason that the meeting in August 1990 was outside
the US was that it had been intended to be in Seattle, the host had a
problem, and UBC came to the rescue.

Starting in 1993, we noted that the demographics had changed; about
one
in six IETF participants came from Europe. So, we tried to place one
meeting in six in Europe. We had a small group attending from
Australia,
and in 2000 had a meeting there in recognition of the fact. But by
that
time, we were starting to have a more significant attendance from
Asia,
notably Japan. So we changed policy to trying to position three
meetings
in six in North America, two in Europe, and one in Asia+Australia. And
starting (IIRC) in 2005, we simplified that policy to having one
meeting
each year in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Regarding that last policy, we have unfortunately had some
problems; one
meeting that we intended to have in Asia recently fell through, and we
had to move it somewhere, and in another recent case the Asian
venues we
were looking at essentially priced themselves out of the market. Our
Asian friends told us that a meeting in Vancouver was an acceptable
compromise; getting a visa wasn't as hard for them as a US visa,
and it
was not too hard to get to. So we have had at least two meetings in
Vancouver that we fully intended to have in Asia.

Since 2004, we have in fact had about 1/3 of our meetings in
Europe. If
anyone has been shortchanged, it has been our Asian friends. "Where
the
money came from" was an issue in the 1990's - we had to assume that a
meeting outside the US would be financially short due to US
participants
not attending; in 2000, the meeting in San Diego had 2810 people
and the
meeting in Pittsburg 2344, but the meeting in Adelaide had 1431. By
2004, distribution had become roughly even - meetings that year had
right around 1300 attendees regardless of location. The issues are now
related to success in finding affordable venues.