> > The IETF has a big problem, IMHO, in that effective participation really does currently seem to require meeting attendance. There's a reason > that nomcom members have to show up—if they didn't, they wouldn't be part of the actual culture of IETF, because so much IETF culture is > bound up in the physical meetings. > > The interaction we get in the physical meetings is really important. I think this is going to be difficult to change unless we let robots do the work. The social part is an important component for cooperative work. Probably, this lack of social interaction in our region is one of the main reasons for low participation. Most of latin american IETFers are currently living outside the region and they engaged in the IETF when living in the US or Europe. It's difficult to be involved when no one else around is working in it or think it doesn't fit well in their current work. A physical meeting will help to "demystify" the IETF, making it "accesible" from a professional perspective. Christian > I would very much like to see the IETF try to discover new ways of using the technology our forebears (and some remaining senior > participants) invented to achieve the same effectiveness without requiring us to all burn tons of fuel getting to remote corners of the globe. > > But "achieve the same effectiveness" is an important requirement for any such new solution. And right now we don't have a solution like that, so we do what we do, and you are right that that means that effective participation in the IETF is much easier for people who are able to attend at least a sufficiency of meetings on an ongoing basis. We should see this as a starting point, not as an end state. >