A number of people need to have active drafts, be in a leadership role, or giving a presentation to attend any standards meeting unless it is part of their job to report back on what happened at a particular standards meeting. Some are measured on getting publications as well if they attend. At ITU-T meetings, it was often the case that researchers had to get a publication as part of a funded research project, considered a deliverable for the project. For me, I started attending because I wrote a document in a call for papers years ago. Then the paper was selected and I was asked as a next step to submit it to the IETF. Now I attend for several reasons, but make a point of providing summary reports back to my colleagues so they see the value in me attending in addition to my chair roles and any documents I may be working on. I don't think it's the IETF's place to provide a policy back to companies on who to send or how many people can attend. This is a financial decision for many companies. The cost of the trip itself isn't the issue, but the person's time for the week may be. Best regards, Kathleen -----Original Message----- From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alessandro Vesely Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 7:49 AM To: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: The first issue (was : A sort of council of elders for the internet) On Wed 13/Nov/2013 20:44:38 +0100 Andrew Feren wrote: > On 11/13/2013 02:08 PM, SM wrote: >>> You and I arrived to the IETF through quite unusual paths. >> >> :-) >> >>> A key question is how everybody else happen to join in. In >>> particular, how do companies decide who of their employees >>> participates in IETF activities, if any. >> >> I don't know whether anybody would want to look into that. Because it involves confidential info or because it's boring? > I can't speak for anyone else, but every time my employer (for several > values of employer) has sent me to an IETF meeting it has been because > I was the one who was participating and asked to go. > My participation has never started out as an employer directive. That's the ideal case scenario here. Thank you for sharing it. If a company has more people asking to go than the number it is willing or capable to support, it is forced to make choices. The rationale can vary widely, from practical considerations, favoritism, or discrimination to formal policies, possibly including gender diversity. Should the IETF recommend a specific policy? Self-employed and companies so small that the number of people they are willing or capable to support is zero deserve special attention: A good deal of free software is developed by such people. See http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Software_Production_-_Class_Structure A per-country distribution of computer-related employment shows small businesses accounting for only the 32% in the US, but that figure goes up to 67% in the UK and 73% in Italy. See figure 4 in http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/small-business-2009-08.pdf Ale -- The current legal definition of small business does not allow small businesses to compete effectively against giants in the telecom industry. http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7540/12143