John,
* People aren't aware the IETF exists, or what it does, or that it has
an open participation model
* People don't read and write English well enough to be comfortable
participating
* People are unaccustomed to and perhaps uncomfortable expressing
overt disagreement
* People don't think they have anything to contribute to an organization
that is mostly people from rich countries
* People don't have adequate Internet access for mail, or to use the
remote participation tools
Thanks for sending out a list of potential issues.
I think there may be one issue missing from the list. At the end of the day,
what tends to drive people actual, concrete benefit to themselves or their
organisations. A drive that is so big that it forces you to cross language and
other barriers and make at least a time investment in participation. As an
example, the number of Chinese participants has increased rapidly in the IETF.
Why? We probably didn't suddenly get much better at welcoming new people at the
IETF, but the new participants felt that work on the Internet is important to
them personally, and their organisations felt that they need to be part of
making Internet standards. This isn't very surprising, given, for instance, the
rise of the Chinese technology industry to a very visible role in the world.
So I feel that the issue in many cases is simpler than the ones in the list:
"What's in it for me"? This obviously has to do with the role of vendors in the
IETF and the distribution of tech industry in the world. It may also have
something to do with doing things that are important. I'm sure we could be
working on topics that are even better aligned to what the world needs… if the
people who need them were here to tell us :-)
The IETF can't change the distribution of industries in the world, but we can,
for instance, focus on the vendors that are there or work more on topics that
are interesting for the operational folks. The latter would be a good idea for
the IETF, anyway.
For example, if language and net access is a problem, it might be
interesting to set up a remote participation center in B.A. during one
of the North American meetings (it's one time zone off from Toronto)
We've been looking at setting up something like that (not for BA specifically).
Jari