Re: Oh look! [Re: Remote participants, newcomers, and tutorials]

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At 15:10 26-07-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
However, the IETF has been having a lot of discussions about
newcomers, diversity, and attracting new folks to participate
and get work done.  I think those populations will be better
served if it is possible for people a lot less experienced than
the two of us can participate actively and constructively
without attending every meeting.  I also think that, especially
for many people from developing countries, universities, small
companies, and far-away places, we will be far more successful
in recruiting if we can encourage remote participation as a
starting point with the expectation of getting people physically
to meetings only after the value to them and their organizations
of doing so has been demonstrated.  I'd personally even favor
making remote participation at a could of meeting be a
prerequisite for most applications for ISOC's IETF Fellows
program.

Discussions that do not translation into actions are, well, discussions. What is the easiest to enable the person from the university participate in the IETF meeting; what is the easiest way to enable the person from the small company to participate in the IETF meeting? It is:

  (a) an audio stream

  (b) a jabber service

  (c) a jabber scribe

(a) and (b) are already available. (c) is doable. Will there be any results from that? No. Why should the IETF do that then? Because it is simple, it is cheap, and if it works, who knows, there may be results.

But the above picture isn't going to happen unless we are
serious and treat that seriousness as an integral part of our
strategies about newcomers and diversity.  Seriousness to me
says that we get more careful about how experienced one has to
be to find critical information, that we make sure remote
participation works, and that we make any session that would be
relevant to remote participants accessible to them (and with
materials available as much as possible in advance and from
easy-to-find places).  Seriousness implies that, if there are
extra costs, we figure out how to cover them (or how to cut
somewhere else).

Making information available is a first-step in getting things to work. Please note that I do not see that as publishing some random web page. I see that as making the information readily available to the target audience.

I'll quote part of a message from Benoit Claise:

  'Let me explain what the targeted audience is for those posters.

   It's not intended for the people who know about a specific BoF and plan on
participating. It's intended for people who have not prepared for a specific
   BoF, but just come to listen to it, and in the end, go to mic. to provide
some useful feedback: "pay attention to this!", "similar work was done ...",
   "don't forget that ...", "don't forget OPS" ;-)'

It is a down-to-earth explanation about how to get people interested in a specific BoF.

Two years ago (minus one day) Brian Carpenter objected to the fact that the regular audio streaming is not available for the plenaries. The link for the technical plenary audio stream is not available in the (tools) agenda.

Or, if we are not serious, it would probably be to the benefit
of the community for us to face that and stop wasting energy and
resources on outreach efforts that are expensive in one or the
other (or both).

It is a waste of energy and money to pursue outreach efforts if the IETF is not serious about how to lower the barriers for newcomers and its strategy about diversity.

Regards,
-sm




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