But
I think these issues should be balanced with the overall benefit
that the IETF World Tour provides.
As I've said repeatedly, I don't think the world tour actually
does bring much benefit. I'm very hopeful that some of the
South Americans who attended their first IETF meeting because
it was held in Buenos Aires will continue to participate (as in:
bring in work and participate in ongoing work, and not as in: sit
in meetings) but historically that has not been the case.
Just to put some numbers into this conversation, we have 8 people from Latin
America who have signed up to be a part of the Internet Draft Review teams.
The first review team to form will likely be the Spanish-speaking DNSOP review
team.
This is one week after IETF 95 and after 3 days of soliciting review teams and
basically zero publicity.
I wonder if there has not been more participation in active IETF work before
from other regions because there was no structured way to start participating
and language insensitivity. (BTW, there is a new member of the Mentoring Team
from Latin America, that I met in Buenos Aires who will translate the Mentoring
emails into Spanish.)
But the effort of the Mentoring Team is standing on the shoulders of giants.
People such as Carlos Martinez, Christian O'Flaherty, Alvaro Retana, Dr. Juliao
Braga, and many others who have done such a tremendous job of outreach to their
community in Latin America.
So, let's do some changing of history.
Nalini