On 5/27/2016 1:12 PM, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:34:53AM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
It seems to me that, if the IETF does nothing, it could provide
critics of the IETF community to assert that the IETF is
insensitive to issues of diversity and that its role and work
should be discounted because they represent only privileged
"majority" interests.
I have reluctantly levelled this criticism because I believe it to
be true: the IETF's fixation on physical meetings means that only the
privileged few can attend: this mechanism selects for those with time
(their own or their employer's), money (their own or their employer's),
the ability to travel, the willingness to travel, the freedom to travel
(e.g., ability to leave family and work and other responsibilities),
the willingness to undertake all the risks associated with travel (legal
or otherwise, see current discussion thread), and so on.
If all the time, money, and effort that has gone into this discussion
and this meeting had been applied to virtualizing meetings, it would
have done much more to broaden participation not just geographically
but demographically. And it would alleviate the need to ever have
this conversation again -- instead of necessitating it repeatedly,
something I'm sad to say that I think may become more rather than
less likely as political/legal conditions shift in various countries.
---rsk
The above comes under the heading of ignoring most of the evidence in
favor of a specific conclusion.
The IETF, as compared to almost every other standards and technical body
in existence, has a VERY, VERY, VERY low barrier to entry. There are no
user fees, and the only technology you really need is email to get
involved. We have 1000s of people (10s of 1000s?) that have actively
contributed to the IETF over the 30 or so years we've been in existence
without ever setting foot in an IETF face to face meeting. So trying
to conflate "participation" (your second paragraph) with "attendance" is
just not supported by the evidence.
The face to face meetings provide higher bandwidth interactions -
bandwidth that is STILL not available through any conceivable
virtualization technology, and may still be 10 or 20 years out. (And
yes, I'm talking holograms and true virtual environments). We - the IETF
- can neither buy this technology nor magically wish it into existence.
The "state of the art" technology right now seems to be closer to Webex
and its ilk. That technology barely supports a meeting of 3 people, let
alone 1500 (or the magical 10000 participants that might show up if
we're virtual).
There continues to be benefit to the organization to hold face to face
meetings. One of them is economic: fees from the meeting attendees
generally defray a substantial portion of the costs of all of the
"virtual" attendees participation. So complaining about them being the
"privileged few" and trying to eliminate them will mostly be shooting
the virtual attendees in the foot, unless we start charging the virtual
attendees for the meeting as well.
I would expect that we as an organization will continue to meet in
person for probably the life of the organization. We as humans are a
social species, and, even with all the sturm und drang that's been on
the various mailing list with respect to the meeting venue topics - at
the end we will find more benefit than not to meet in person.
Mike