Hi Jari,
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 5:15 AM, Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
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 :-)
This is the most important factor and trumps all other combined.
If the standards work is relevant to your business or research then
the probability that you will participate in the IETF goes way up.
I think many people on this list forget how different doing engineering
in the IETF is from engineering for a private enterprise. Tasks that take
1 or 2 months in a private enterprise often take 1 or 2 years (or more!).
Competitors working on a standard have a completely different set
of incentives than employees working on a product, so agreement
on standards is much harder to achieve.
Newbies can have a hard time adjusting to these differences.
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
Andy