I understand that it's hard for people to understand that there is no
barrier to speech in the IETF and that there is no secret handshake.
There are no *formal* barriers. I like that about the IETF, but I don't agree
that there are no barriers.
Right. We are an open organisation, but it doesn't mean that participation is
always easy and effortless, or even possible for everyone. That is of course a
known problem, and we are doing several things to make it easier.
For instance, it is difficult to enter any new culture, but we try to educate &
mentor newcomers.
Cost of attending is clearly a burden for many. ISOC has programs to
financially help people who can not come to the meetings, and to actively pull
people from, for instance, some regions of the world. Remote attendance has
become easier as time goes by, which also helps with the financial problems and
far-away participants.
The engineers are sometimes seen as working in their corner, not connecting to
the rest of the world. But I think today many of us do try to reach the rest of
the world.
I think our discussion culture is pretty hard [as these threads demonstrate I
guess], although my observation is that we're improving and at least realising
some of these issues. The culture does matter, and I think an environment with
soft discussion culture tends to be not just more inviting but also produces
better results. But we do have more work to do in this area. I think Lars' post
on the types of arguments to avoid, perhaps made tongue-in-cheek, was actually
spot on. It is up to all of us to improve the discussion culture. What can *I*
or *you* do today to make an IETF discussion go smoother? (And of course, we
can still disagree without being disagreeable…)
And of course, everything is relative. I think IETF is relatively easy to
access among different technical standards bodies, and definitely easier to
access than, say, various processes involving per-country representation. But
of course, I may just mix well with the engineers. And my definition of easy to
access relates more to making an impact in whatever standard we are working on
rather than just getting a seat at a table.
Jari