On Fri Apr 27 15:06:36 2012, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that 20 years
ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants and 20 years later
that still seems to be the case.
I suspect that there's a marked skew toward the older participants in
those who actually attend meetings, compared with those who simply
participate on the mailing lists - but that said, I think the average
age in both cases is on the up.
I'd posit that there's at least two primary factors in play:
a) Many of the "bright young things" are working in smaller
organizations which are less likely to foot the (quite huge) bill for
attending IETF weeks, as well as feeling the pinch when their staff
are out of the office for nearly a month a year on IETF business. As
a manager myself, I can barely justify sending one person, let alone
all those involved in standardization work. (Yet I send four to XSF
events...). I suspect rather strongly that larger organizations will
tend toward sending more senior - in rank, and therefore age -
engineers, and thus it's the smaller organizations that we need to
bring on board.
It seems possible that if we designated one of the three yearly
meetings as the "main" meeting, we might focus such smaller
organizations' attendance.
b) Also, many are working on "web" things, and as such both the
pressure to standardize is less, and most of all, the pressure to
standardize *here* is less. I'd note that the XSF does reasonably
well in recruiting people of all ages to its cause - there, I'm a
disturbingly ancient greybeard, whereas in IETF terms I'm a young
whippersnapper.
I think that the XSF does better here because it's maintained a
closer relationship with implementors and deployers of its protocols.
In particular, people often do kick off work within the XSF, rather
than creating the work elsewhere and bringing it to the XSF in whole
cloth for some mystic process called standardization. People
regularly ask on its mailing lists (and chatrooms) about protocols -
both extant ones and ideas for new ones.
I think in general, the way to ensure the IETF is at the centre of
internet developments is to ensure it is a developer's organization,
as well as an SDO, and unfortunately it's lost this connection - if
you want to get some advice for that mail client you're writing, the
IETF probably wouldn't help if you asked, and certainly wouldn't
spring to mind as the place to ask.
There's a purist kind of atmosphere at the IETF - we don't do
interop, we don't sully our hands with development - so we're in
danger of reducing the benefit we have to developers and the
organizations they work for. Re-engaging with those communities (and
in some cases, reinventing them) would, I think, do wonders for
attendance and interest - and benefit our standards as well, by
increasing the focus on applied engineering.
That all said, I'd note that whilst the XSF solidly trounces the IETF
in terms of the numbers of people below 40, it sorely lacks the
significant benefits of the rest of the age-range - the IETF's
combined experience is vast, and the ability to tap into that
expertise is a real plus point.
Dave.
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