On Fri, 24 May 2013, Stephen Farrell wrote:
There is no need to wait for a nearby meeting. I'd say starting to 
participate via email makes such a meeting far more likely if 
participants turn up and do good technical work.
It's my experience that non-native english speakers are more comfortable 
exchanging text than speaking. I've met several people who write excellent 
english but who it's difficult to communicate with verbally.
So if language is considered a barrier, would having an IETF meeting there 
really help? I feel overall that outreach by a few people would be more 
effective in bringing in people to start doing work via email (and 
perhaps, teleconferencing), and then where there is a few more people 
active in South America, then a physical meeting there would be more 
effective?
As a Fidonet user from the late 1980:ties, I felt the IETF had a really 
low barrier of entry. What would a 20-30 year old who started to use the 
Internet 5-10 years ago feel about it? I don't know. What is the target 
audience? A telecommunication professional? A student who might be a 
would-be telecom profession? An App programmer? All of the above?
--
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike(_at_)swm(_dot_)pp(_dot_)se