On 09/01/2010 07:35 AM, Yoav Nir wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2010, at 4:56 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
>
>>> Consider that contributors
>>> usually start as newcomers, attend several meetings, then write a draft,
>> I don't know about you, but I wrote drafts before my first meeting.
> Me too. I actually had an RFC published two months before attending my first meeting.
>
> As an employee (rather than an independent consultant) if I ask my bosses to go to an IETF meeting, their first question is what am I going to do there. A good answer is that I want to present this draft in that working group, participate in this discussion at another working group, and meet this person to talk about that subject.
>
> If I just said I want to go to some meetings, and listen to stuff, and see if I hear anything interesting, they'd tell me to use the audio stream for that.
>
> OTOH we've all seen a whole bunch of people at meetings who always sit in the back, faces buried in their laptops, and never participating in any discussion. I'm not sure what value their employer gets from their participation, but I guess both models exist.
You are right, I did so too (and presented my first draft at the first
meeting). However, I would say it was a bit exciting and the quality of
my I-D improved drastically after the meeting and receiving direct
(face-to-face) feedback and advise from a number of people at the
meeting. If I wouldn't have gone there, it might also have been my last
I-D. And there is a lot going on beyond the meeting itself (or its audio
stream which we didn't have back then when I started), e.g. the informal
follow-up conversations with others after the meeting triggered by their
questions and comments and feedback from the WG chair or AD on a draft
and how to progress after the meeting can be equally valuable as the
meeting itself.
However, this way ("write I-D and attend the first time") is not the
only one: looking at participation numbers, there is a portion of people
(btw. relatively independent of meeting location) attending for the
first time who probably want to understand the waters first before
plunging in with a draft or who are involved and provide valuable input
to drafts without beeing the author or even without speaking up during
the meeting (e.g. prefer to communicate later via email). And I actually
saw some present at a later meeting themselves. (Although I only deduct
this motivation only based on my personal anecdotal evidence, number of
talks I had on the floor over couple of years and no hard statistics).
And just to be complete: Of course there is also a portion of people who
come only for "look and see" (and some of them may actually be
implementers and help you bring a draft to wider adoption) - however
it's hard to tell them apart from the ones who "look and learn to
contribute later". I value both groups very much as well and probably
some of them don't even know themselves which group they are until
they've been to a meeting and find out that writing a draft is not that
mystically difficult.
Best regards, Tobias
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