On 15/04/2024 13.01, Anupam Agrawal wrote: > India never had any IETF meeting. Though some cities have been chosen > and listed, India is yet to host an IETF meeting. > Many people based in India have contributed to recent RFCs. Some slides with information about IETF RFC author locations and IETF meeting locations: https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html Meeting locations: https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html#4 Recent RFC author locations: https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html#5 A large number of in person participants travel from the USA, so their collective preferences have affected meeting locations. Many meetings have been held in G7 countries or more broadly WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries. These countries have been the initial ones to widely use and develop the internet. However, recent IETF participation from India and China is rather high relative to the number of meetings held in these countries - there has only been one meeting in a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) country. The relative cost of in person participation for people not residing in high income countries will mean that more of them will participate online, but it would be good to have some way to enable them to occasionally participate in person. The IETF is an anomaly as a standards body, and it is nice that unlike other standards bodies, online participation is made easy and RFCs are easily available online. Sustaining this is great, but has costs associated with it. The IETF needs to evolve to accommodate a wider variety of regional perspectives - the ITU has a structure that accommodates voices from many regions, but primarily government and large corporate voices. > Regards > Anupam >
