On May 27, 2013, at 5:23 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 5/27/2013 4:13 PM, Yoav Nir wrote: >> Anyway, What I found most useful when I was starting out 9 years ago, > > > One might wish for a document that gives such guidance to folk who are new to the IETF. > > And indeed... > > The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering > Task Force > > http://www.ietf.org/tao.html > > If the content needs to be improved, let's do it! Yes, and for extra credit you can read RFC 4144. I find it hard to improve on the Tao, but I think that its target audience are people who are ready to plunge - review documents, attend meetings, write drafts. It took me over a year of mostly lurking and little discussion to get there. Others may be quicker. I've also found that it's hard to make generalizations about working groups and their associated mailing lists. Some are low-traffic, some have 50 messages a day. Some discuss protocols in abstract terms, while others take the "running code" part seriously. Some have dominant chairs that moderate the discussion such that all threads become dialogs with the chairs, while in others the chairs move out of the way to let the discussion flow. Some have dominant experts and everyone waits for their (final?) word on the subject, while at others not only everyone may speak, but almost everyone is listened to. Regardless of what we would like groups to be like, I think it's important - particularly for a newcomer - to lurk for a while and get a "feel" for the working group. Otherwise you get into arguments with the local crank that everyone else knows to ignore (I've done this lots and lots of times). Another think I've learned is that you don't necessarily end up being involved in the things you came into the IETF for. I came to the IETF to follow things that were important to my part of the company: IPsec, TLS, PKIX. I ended up contributing in MSec, and finally chairing the WebSec group, which is really far away from my day job. Interestingly, a lot of the same people show up in different working groups, so it works very well to do work in one group, while still following the groups that you came in for. IOW my ability to follow the groups that are related to my day job is enhanced by being active in other working groups. That was kind of surprising to me at first. So like the Tao says, take the plunge. The more you're involved in something, the more you can do in other things. Much of being effective in the IETF is about knowing people and making yourself useful to them. Yoav