On Sun, 11 Nov 2012, SM wrote:
Is there any analysis to determine whether there has been an increase in IETF participation from these economies? Is the outreach effort a failure?
Personally I believe there could be value in describing what the value is to attend the meeting physically. I attended the last meeting in Stockholm because it meant I only had to pay the entrence fee, since I live there.
Getting buy-in from management to allow me to go for a week somewhere and not be available in the office, pay for hotel and travel, plus the entrence fee, it's hard to justify to management. What is a good answer to the question "why?".
Remote participating works well in some WGs, in some WGs I have had a hard time getting through. People in different WGs treat the WG mailing list differently, culture seems to differ quite a lot.
So elaborating on what the benefit of being there physically would probably help. Remote participation both during and between meetings is crucial for a lot of people I would imagine (it is for me anyway, it's my only chance to participate). Getting a low bar for entry into the discussions is what I feel is the biggest advantage of the IETF model, some WGs really work well in this aspect.
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@xxxxxxxxx