Note that I didn't say 'give back in terms of attendees' , I wrote 'give back in terms of participation', in my mind, participation *can* be remote, although as I mentioned in an earlier email the IETF needs to improve remote access facilities a lot. However, the perception of almost everyone I've spoken with is that if you really want to push a document (not being a reviewer, not being a 3rd or 4th co-author), you need to be there in person. I'm sure I will be pointed to exceptions to this rule, but that seems to be the general perception. regards, Carlos On 11/15/12 4:00 PM, Melinda Shore wrote: > On 11/15/12 8:47 AM, Carlos M. Martinez wrote: >> I do believe that regions wanting to have an IETF meeting should also >> give back in terms of active participation, I agree with that. > > I really think there's an enormous disconnect here. I'm really unclear > on how this is supposed to work: if someone thinks they need to attend > a meeting in order to participate in the work and there's only one > meeting in their region in some large number of years, it's difficult > to see how that one meeting is going to lead to active participation. > Arguing that IETF openness is a function of meeting location is > totally missing the point. Clearly we could be making that point > better, but it seems to me that privileging meetings as a more > important part of the process of producing documents very clearly works > against an open participation model. > > The main benefit, it seems to me, is not geographic but that we > are woefully short on participation by operators and that many of the > folk in developing or less affluent countries work for operators, > registrars, regulators, etc., and we may benefit from one-off > participation from them. > > Melinda >