LCD?
Anyway, What I found most useful when I was starting out 9 years ago, was to
look over the list of areas and working groups ( http://tools.ietf.org/area/ )
and find out which of them are working on something that is of interest to me.
In my case it was mostly the security area, and the IPsec working group, since
that is what I was working on in my day job. I subscribed to that list and some
others that were also related to what I was working on (TLS, PKIX).
So the best thing is to subscribe to the mailing lists, both those that
interest you personally and those that are of interest to your employer (if
there are such groups).
Step 2 is to lurk for a couple of weeks at least, and just read what others are
posting. If they're talking about a particular draft, it's easy to find on one
of the IETF sites and read it. So you read the drafts, and read what people are
saying about the drafts. This teaches you both about what the group is working
on, and the (for lack of a better term) "political" part - who are the
participants and what are they like. You might also want to read the Tao
document, although different groups have varying dynamics.
After a while, you've read the drafts, you've read what some people are saying,
and you may have formed an opinion, either about the draft itself, or about one
of the comments. That's a good time to speak up by sending a message to the
list. Maybe the draft got something wrong. Maybe the comment is only correct in
certain contexts, but doesn't describe some situation you're familiar with.
Maybe in reading the draft you find it hard to figure out what an
implementation should do in a certain case, and you present the case, and ask
that it be clarified. Maybe the proposed protocol would require clients,
servers, or middleboxes to allocate more memory than implementations that you
know can afford. Such comments, and even better, proposed fixes are how you
build a reputation in the IETF for knowing your stuff. You can also volunteer
to review a whole document, or volunteer to write a missing section. That is
how you build a reputation for being useful. Both are necessary for suc!
cess in the IETF.
Step 4 is when you have an idea of your own, or you read someone else's idea
and you want to participate. In that case you either write your own draft or
join someone else in writing one. It's often not enough to just write it. You
also have to get people to read it, post about it to the correct lists, and in
general "sell" it and gather support. It is at about that time that you start
to feel the need to attend meetings, but you can get some things done even
without it.
Hope this helps
Yoav
On May 27, 2013, at 3:33 PM, Nthabiseng Pule <npule(_at_)lca(_dot_)org(_dot_)ls>
wrote:
as,
I am new to the IETF. I would like to contribute any way I can, but the
learning curve seems steep indeed. I am from an LCD country. I have the
necessary resources but I just don't know where to start.
Some guidance would be welcome. I am reading on stuff and hope that one day I
will be able to make some meaningful contribution.
Nthabiseng Pule
On 27 May 2013, at 1:52 PM, Arturo Servin <aservin(_at_)lacnic(_dot_)net>
wrote:
John,
Good summary.
I would add a "steep learning-curve" to start participating. It takes time
to get conformable in participating in mailing list and reviewing drafts for
I think two reasons. One is to get know how the IETF works, and another to
catch-up in knowing the topic in relation with other WG participants.
About the remote hub I think it would be good to give it a try.
Regards,
as
On 27 May 2013, at 02:52, John Levine wrote:
I think this is a summary of the issues people have mentioned that
discourage participation from LDCs, in rough order of importance.
* 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
I have to say that I don't see one or two meetings in South America
addressing any of these. Given that the incremental cost to the
participants, compared to meeting in North America, would likely be on
the order of a million dollars, it seems to me very likely that there
are better ways to spend the money.
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)
with screens and cameras, paid interpreters, and a few volunteers to
help explain what's going on.
R's,
John