John, > * People aren't aware the IETF exists, or what it does, or that it has > an open participation model > > * People don't read and write English well enough to be comfortable > participating > > * People are unaccustomed to and perhaps uncomfortable expressing > overt disagreement > > * People don't think they have anything to contribute to an organization > that is mostly people from rich countries > > * People don't have adequate Internet access for mail, or to use the > remote participation tools Thanks for sending out a list of potential issues. I think there may be one issue missing from the list. At the end of the day, what tends to drive people actual, concrete benefit to themselves or their organisations. A drive that is so big that it forces you to cross language and other barriers and make at least a time investment in participation. As an example, the number of Chinese participants has increased rapidly in the IETF. Why? We probably didn't suddenly get much better at welcoming new people at the IETF, but the new participants felt that work on the Internet is important to them personally, and their organisations felt that they need to be part of making Internet standards. This isn't very surprising, given, for instance, the rise of the Chinese technology industry to a very visible role in the world. So I feel that the issue in many cases is simpler than the ones in the list: "What's in it for me"? This obviously has to do with the role of vendors in the IETF and the distribution of tech industry in the world. It may also have something to do with doing things that are important. I'm sure we could be working on topics that are even better aligned to what the world needs… if the people who need them were here to tell us :-) The IETF can't change the distribution of industries in the world, but we can, for instance, focus on the vendors that are there or work more on topics that are interesting for the operational folks. The latter would be a good idea for the IETF, anyway. > 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) We've been looking at setting up something like that (not for BA specifically). Jari