I am more and more convinced that, instead on counting on some centralized way to attract new people and then get complaints when they do not stay, maybe there is a better way would permit to achieve our goal in a more distributed way. I do not think that group mentorship for the IETF is working -- I tried at a previous company, and none of the mentorees are still participating, so that's not the way.
But I am thinking that the key could be a mentorship that would extend beyond a meeting week. That would mean working with a mentoree for a whole publishing cycle, starting by explaining how to read an RFC (people told me that they do not know how to do that), then how to review an I-D (a place where most of the mentoring work should be done, IMO), then upgrading to co-writing an I-D and going through the whole publishing cycle. I think offering that kind of guidance to a mentoree for a couple years would help more than that any other kind of program.
Now if most of the follicle pigmentation deficient people[1] at the IETF take on a couple of mentorees each two years, I think it could be possible to at the same time create a continuity of tradition and still embrace the energy of newcomers.
In fact I have someone in mind that would be perfect as my first IETF mentoree, so I am going to just do it.
[1] Graybeard.
On 4/14/21 11:59 AM, John Levine wrote:
It appears that Nico Williams <nico@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
Fernando has pointed out repeatedly that ISOC used to have a sponsorship
program for participants from economically disadvantaged countries, and
that this program has been terminated.
It wasn't working. The people would come to a meeting but then
wouldn't write I-Ds or continue to engage with the IETF. In one
particularly unfortunate case, the person didn't even speak English
and somehow the selection process missed that. We want to resume it
with a selection process that finds people who can benefit from IETF
meetings and are likely to be ongoing IETF contributors.
But we _care_ so *so* much!
Thanks for your thoughtful anaylsis.
R's,
John
--
Marc Petit-Huguenin
Email: marc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Blog: https://marc.petit-huguenin.org
Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petithug
