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Re: More participation from under-represented regions

2013-05-26 15:59:41
The elephant in the  room is that there hasn't been any discussion about
what has been done
to get more participation from under-represented regions but nobody has
mentioned that.

I believe there's the need for a lot more awareness creation about the IETF
in the under-represented regions. That is a sure way to get more
participation from there. In Ghana where I come from for instance not many
people know about the IETF, let alone the wonderful work they are doing to
ensure the continuous development and evolution of the Internet.

The awareness creation should start at the grassroots level : "The
Universities"!. Train the soon-to-graduate Computer Scientist/Engineer on
the values and essence of the IETF and it'll forever be with them even
after graduation.

To elicit participation from the under-represented regions, the
universities are a sure starting point, then a lot more industry-focused
awareness creation by the ISOC local Chapters.

--
Regards,

Edwin

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Melinda Shore 
<melinda(_dot_)shore(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>wrote:

On 5/26/13 12:08 PM, SM wrote:
The elephant in the
room is that there hasn't been any discussion about what has been done
to get more participation from under-represented regions but nobody has
mentioned that.

One of the things that's really popped out in the discussion
on the ericas list is that none of the people posting have
been from vendors/manufacturers, which right now is by far
the largest sector participating in the IETF.  The posters
have either been academics or from operators.  We can't even
get much participation from operators in North America and
Europe.  The industry sector bias in IETF participation is
possibly compounding the regional bias.

Melinda