On Fri, 24 May 2013, Stephen Farrell wrote:
There is no need to wait for a nearby meeting. I'd say starting to participate via email makes such a meeting far more likely if participants turn up and do good technical work.
It's my experience that non-native english speakers are more comfortable exchanging text than speaking. I've met several people who write excellent english but who it's difficult to communicate with verbally.
So if language is considered a barrier, would having an IETF meeting there really help? I feel overall that outreach by a few people would be more effective in bringing in people to start doing work via email (and perhaps, teleconferencing), and then where there is a few more people active in South America, then a physical meeting there would be more effective?
As a Fidonet user from the late 1980:ties, I felt the IETF had a really low barrier of entry. What would a 20-30 year old who started to use the Internet 5-10 years ago feel about it? I don't know. What is the target audience? A telecommunication professional? A student who might be a would-be telecom profession? An App programmer? All of the above?
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@xxxxxxxxx