The IETF has a big problem, IMHO, in that effective participation really does
currently seem to require meeting attendance. There's a reason
that nomcom members have to show up—if they didn't, they wouldn't be part of
the actual culture of IETF, because so much IETF culture is
bound up in the physical meetings.
The interaction we get in the physical meetings is really important.
I think this is going to be difficult to change unless we let robots
do the work. The social part is an important component for cooperative
work.
Probably, this lack of social interaction in our region is one of the
main reasons for low participation. Most of latin american IETFers are
currently living outside the region and they engaged in the IETF when
living in the US or Europe. It's difficult to be involved when no one
else around is working in it or think it doesn't fit well in their
current work. A physical meeting will help to "demystify" the IETF,
making it "accesible" from a professional perspective.
Christian
I would very much like to see the IETF try to discover new ways of using the
technology our forebears (and some remaining senior
participants) invented to achieve the same effectiveness without requiring us
to all burn tons of fuel getting to remote corners of the globe.
But "achieve the same effectiveness" is an important requirement for any such
new solution. And right now we don't have a solution like that, so we do
what we do, and you are right that that means that effective participation in
the IETF is much easier for people who are able to attend at least a
sufficiency of meetings on an ongoing basis. We should see this as a
starting point, not as an end state.