Hi John, I agree and I will add, that What makes that participant continue to volunteer, or even witness/read the ietf work process? Making someone interested to do something freely is not an easy task. The difficulty is how to make that individual participate with value, he/she may need help to notice that *IETF needs* their regional-participation. Example, I got once a response that IETF or WG chair's jobs are not to educate others, but who said that IETF is better educated or that WG chairs are better educated than others. It always depends on the relativity of education with the region needs, not only eduaction related to the Internet technology. I think we *need* in IETF to gain all best educated people of world-regions into IETF (volunteering), so that we make the Internet better for the WORLD, because technology SHOULD follow the community-regional *needs*. Not that we need to gain best standard/technology experts to make all regions follow the technology-product requirements, because will may never be *used* that way :-) Comments below, AB On 5/27/13, John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I think this is a summary of the issues people have mentioned that > discourage participation from LDCs, in rough order of importance. > > * People aren't aware the IETF exists, or what it does, or that it has > an open participation model Also IMHO, the IETF is not aware of existance of Internet community-regional *needs* for their better Internet technology future, > > * People don't read and write English well enough to be comfortable > participating That is not an issue, well educated people around the world know english reasonably, but the problem is that many of current IETF participants like to read correct english, hope they change to adapt to the World's English. > > * People are unaccustomed to and perhaps uncomfortable expressing > overt disagreement That is true, but mostly Chairs and editors are responsible to make that continue or stop. > > * People don't think they have anything to contribute to an organization > that is mostly people from rich countries This point is important, please read my addition above. > > * People don't have adequate Internet access for mail, or to use the > remote participation tools Yes that is true, but also we need people like old participants, or 98% of participants to get use to participating remotely at IETF meetings. I don't want to see complains on journey expenses of money but of spending-time is ok :Z > > I have to say that I don't see one or two meetings in South America > addressing any of these. Given that the incremental cost to the > participants, compared to meeting in North America, would likely be on > the order of a million dollars, it seems to me very likely that there > are better ways to spend the money. I don't care how much money spent, we SHOULD focus on how much time gained by IETF and how much volunteer-time spent for IETF. Attendance can spend the same time remotely, the World is well connected now, > > For example, if language and net access is a problem, it might be > interesting to set up a remote participation center in B.A. during one > of the North American meetings (it's one time zone off from Toronto) > with screens and cameras, paid interpreters, and a few volunteers to > help explain what's going on. I think the problem is contribution access to IETF. We need centers to increase access to documents-produced per regions, centers to increase participants per region, centers to increase remote users per regions, etc. > > R's, > John > > > > >