Hi, It may not be line a hiring manager, but all those who have budget can make it a point to make sure some of the younger engineers get to some of the meetings, at least the ones that are relatively local to them. I assume that many of the older participants, have the means to influence the travel lists. For years there have been people working on the gender balance perhaps some focus on the age balance may become appropriate. It was good, though to see that the distribution was not too skewed toward the older participants. As for bringing new work in, doesn't that take a plan for introducing the subject and showing why it is relevant to the IETF community. Although, knowing you, you probably had such a plan. I think that the technical privacy issues, for example, while belonging in the IETF, might still feel strange to some of the traditional engineering participants. So in this case, you may need to promote a slight cultural change that accepts privacy as a requirement as well as the technical challenge of the issue. avri On 2 May 2012, at 15:14, Hannes Tschofenig wrote: > Hi PHB, > > the IETF is not like an enterprise where you can decide (as part of the hiring process) what characteristics your employees should have. > > In a volunteer organization the offered topics drive the participation. Ask yourself: what you as someone who just finished a university education want to hang around in the IETF to standardize yet another IPv4/IPv6 transition mechanism or to participate in the MPLS-TP discussions? > > When people suggest new work to the IETF they often see a strange reaction. I remember when Mozilla came to the IETF and proposed to work on the privacy topic "Do Not Track". I couldn't find support for doing the work in the IETF. I don't exactly know why people didn't like it but the W3C immediately picked it up and had seen lots of new companies (mostly from the advertising industry) joining the W3C. > > Ciao > Hannes > >