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>>>>> "Phillip" == Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
Phillip> A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that
Phillip> 20 years ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants
Phillip> and 20 years later that still seems to be the case.
Phillip> I see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but
Phillip> not as many as I think there should be. By now at least a
Phillip> third of the organization should be younger than me,
Phillip> preferably half. That is certainly not what I see when I
Phillip> attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of women is also highly
Phillip> noticeable.
I suspect your observation is correct, but the real question is:
Is the IETF aging faster than
- the population at large
- the IT population in general
- the network engineering population in general
I also think that more and more "IETF" related work is now done at much
larger companies than 20 years ago. The companies are more mainstream
in their culture, are not startups.
They run by older people who ignore the contributions of younger people,
and in particular, do not feel a need to encourage their people to
contribute to IETF. With money being less plentiful, and there being
less low hanging fruit at the IETF, it simply takes more of a business
case for a younger person, earlier in their career to argue for the time
and money expensse of their participation.
Finally, layer-5+ things are now way more cool.
So, given a choice of IETF or RubyConf, a lot of younger people pick
RubyConf...
- --
] He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life! | firewalls [
] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON |net architect[
] mcr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
Kyoto Plus: watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE>
then sign the petition.
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