----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
To: "Melinda Shore" <melinda(_dot_)shore(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
Cc: <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:11 AM
On 15/11/2012 03:43, Melinda Shore wrote:
...
Right, I understand that (better than you might think - I live in
Alaska). But. I'm trying to understand the value in having people
attend one meeting. I've asked about that several times.
There are people who have attended one, or a very small number,
of meetings and who participate actively in IETF work. That's
certainly the case for a few people in Australia and New
Zealand, for example. I have a co-author on a current draft who
attended IETF 83 in Paris, because he happens to live there and
doesn't have business justification for the time and money for
longer trips. I think people in this class do get a lot out of
occasional participation - enough to encourage them to
participate remotely. I've gone through phases of attending one
meeting a year, and that's definitely enough to stay in touch.
However, that is very different from meetings in unusual places
*attracting* new participants who stay with us. Would we get a
cohort of new active participants if we met in Anchorage?
We'd reached 50 attendees from China at IETF 63 before we even
started seriously negotiating the Beijing meeting. It seems to
me that the causality is mainly in the opposite direction:
participation causes meetings, not meetings cause participation.
I started, some years ago, with a meeting, because the culture that I
was used to was that conferences, be they annual or triannual, were
where things really happened and that e-mail filled in the gaps in
between (and I think that this remains the case in other, related,
fora). That attendance showed me that most of the IETF meeting was a
waste of time, that it was e-mail that was the main vehicle for work,
and I think that the IETF web site has it about right when it says
"People interested in particular technical issues join the mailing list
of a WG and occasionally attend one or more of the three IETF meetings
held every year."
and
"After participating by email for a while, it may be time to attend your
first meeting."
which is not exactly sellling the idea of attending meetings:-) But as
I say, I think that that is the nature of the IETF.
Tom Petch
(IMHO, there is some value to the IETF in having one-off
attendees who don't subsequently participate: they learn what
the IETF is and hopefully tell others about it. This can't be a
bad thing, but it's definitely secondary.)
Brian