In message <51A4E625.3020406@xxxxxxxxx>, Melinda Shore writes: > On 5/28/13 6:20 AM, Christian O'Flaherty wrote: > > 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. > > Any sense of why that didn't happen with Australians after > the Adelaide meeting? Adelaide is a small city. If you were picking Australian cities to promote local interaction Adelaide would be the 4th-6th city you would choose. Melboure, Sydney and Brisbane are the top 3 with some debate about the order. > I'm not opposed to meeting in South America but there have > been an awful lot of assertions about this or that happening > if we do, without a lot of supporting evidence. History, > unfortunately, doesn't support many of these assertions, and > I think beating the meeting location question to death is > at least some small distraction from trying to get at the core > issues. > > For whatever it's worth, I was participating on IETF mailing lists > well before attending a meeting. Granted, I'm a native English > speaker and wasn't dealing with that as an issue but probably > more to the point was that there was work going on in the IETF > that directly impacted work I was doing myself. > > Melinda -- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@xxxxxxx