On 7/27/13 3:52 PM, Aaron Yi DING wrote: > What do you mean by conference? too much information inferred in your > term that may confuse others on the list. Will appreciate, if you can > share bit more on it, behind the single term "conference" that you > particularly don't like. I love conferences but I'd hate to see IETF meetings turned into them. By "conference" I mean something in which people give papers (or other talks) and most of the participants have an audience role. IETF meeting participation should be active. It is almost always the case, of course, that someone attending a meeting will sit in on working groups in which they're not active, but it should be unusual for someone who has no particular work in the IETF and who's active in no working groups and active on no mailing lists to come to a meeting. IETF meetings are places to get work done. > I agree with you that changing the working culture in WG meetings can be > bad, and we shall not go out of the ways to accommodate anything under > the name of "diversity". I actually do think we should go out of our way to accommodate and encourage diversity, but again, that's in the interest of getting work done (and getting our work correct). But back to the original question of how to bring newcomers in through remote participation - I would start with the assumption that they'd be participating, remotely or otherwise, because they have some networking problem (and possibly solution) that needs standardization. I'd also assume that they've done a basic literature search, etc. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to put together some material (video or otherwise) that would help people decide whether or not their problem belongs in the IETF. Melinda