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Re: Ever-more-steep barriers

2014-10-03 19:43:30
On 10/3/14 3:44 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
There is a steep barrier to participation (re. don't have the time to
focus full-time).    It is worthwhile to consider whether breaking that
barrier for developers and implementers is worth it.

I hope that when you say "full-time" here, you're talking about during
the meeting week.  I think it's very clearly the case that there's a
growing number of full-time standardizers participating and that it's
increasing the workload on everybody else.  It seems to me that the
best way to provide some balance is to make it easier to participate
without being the employee of a networking behemoth, without becoming
a full-time standardizer yourself, and without further degrading the
quality of the work being done.  From where I sit that means de-
emphasizing meetings, or at least work a LOT harder at making sure that
the work of the IETF is done on mailing lists, not meetings, while
simultaneously encouraging and supporting remote participation.
For a lot of people the major cost of participation is their time, but
it's still the out-of-pocket costs which can be a serious hindrance
to participation.  Someone can usually grab 4-5 hours a week to
author documents, review documents, and quibble on mailing lists about
things that aren't actually problems, but it's another thing entirely
to incur unreimbursed expenses to the tune of $3000 or so several
times/year.

Melinda

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