Hi John,
At 08:58 21-10-2013, John Day wrote:
From my experience over the years, I would generalize this that the
developed world has dominated the standards process in this field,
whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others. Most
of that has to do with the expense involved in
participating. Since the 1990s, the ability to
Yes.
participate on-line has done a lot to lower that barrier and we see
that. At one point IEEE was considered a US professional organization and all
Let's assume that ietf@ is a data point for "participate on-line". A
scan of the mailing list archive for this month would show that the
following IESG and IAB members have participated:
Jari Arkko
Benoit Claise
Ted Lemon
Barry Leiba
Adrian Farrel
Stephen Farrell
Joel Jaeggli
Pete Resnick
Gonzalo Camarillo
Stewart Bryant
Spencer Dawkins
Hannes Tschofenig
Andrew Sullivan
Eliot Lear
Russ Housley
Joel Halpern
All members have not participated (see above).
I would look at it this way; if I tell Person X that he/she has the
ability to participate on-line and the person tells me: "I don't see
everyone participating on-line", what would my response be? If I
give a less-than-honest response it won't be convincing.
It still takes time for countries to "come up to speed" and do we
really have any idea how many are watching but contributing
infrequently. As Jorge points out we are seeing this change,
although perhaps not as fast as we (or they) would like.
I don't think that there are any numbers for "contributing
infrequently". It is premature to say whether there is a visible
change (in terms of countries) or not.
Yes, English is a problem for all non-English speakers. It takes a
lot of effort to work in a foreign language even when you are
fluent, and English isn't the easiest of languages. ;-) I have
Yes.
The is also the problem of culture. Person X and I may speak the
same language (it might not be English) but it can still be difficult
for us to have a conversation. Person X might not be comfortable to
tell me what he/she thinks or that he/she has not understood what I
said. It might be some variation of cultural leveling.
As with most things like this, if the problem isn't stressed
progress against the issue will be even slower. There are
structural issues in the IETF that allow over representation in
meetings, what some might call stacking meetings, but this seems to
be a case more of companies stacking meeting rather than countries.
Yes.
There is a clash of values at some level ...
Regards,
-sm