RE: Is the IETF aging?

["Murray S. Kucherawy" <msk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In addition to agreeing with Marc, I suspect it comes in waves.  I imagine there’s a push of new stuff that comes in with new younger people, and then as the Internet digests that, those people follow it along and clean it up over the course of several years, meshing with the greybeards, and the median age increases.  Then with the next new wave, it swings downward again.

 

Seeing a graph of the median variation since IETF 1 might be interesting.

 

-MSK

 

From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Marc Blanchet
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 8:28 AM
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker
Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List
Subject: Re: Is the IETF aging?

 

If I look around me, I see young people developing PHP, AJAX, … almost all of this is not handled in IETF.  If I look at company valuations recently, there are at the same "level" in the stack: i.e. web apps. So I guess the plumbers are getting old, but the designers are younger and not here.

 

Marc.

 

Le 2012-04-27 à 11:08, Mary Barnes a écrit :

Personally, I think that may depend upon the Area in which you are active.  The RAI area from my perspective has a bunch of youngsters - mid-late 20s & 30s. And, I'm not as old as some of you all ;)   

 

Personally, I think IETF has far more of an issue when it comes to cultural and gender diversity than it does with not having enough younger folks.  This is particularly visible in the leadership.  

 

Regards,

Mary. 

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@xxxxxxxxx> 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 see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but not as
many as I think there should be. By now at least a third of the
organization should be younger than me, preferably half. That is
certainly not what I see when I attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of
women is also highly noticeable.

If this is the case it should worry us greatly. But first I think we
need to determine if it is the case or not. I suggest an optional
demographic survey of participants in the next IETF meeting to be
repeated at regular intervals (no more than 5 years apart).

People can argue about process, RFC formats and governance but it
should be beyond argument that any institution that cannot recruit
younger members is going to die.

--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/