Hi all, The IETF is composed of a bunch of working groups, all doing serious standards work, and made up of serious standards people talking about serious matters... but, when we are not doing serious stuff, some have hobbies and (non-IETF) interests. Many of us spend 3 weeks or so a year together. Some of us share these hobbies[0] already and some of us may wish to share more. To make it easier for IETF participants to find existing hobby groups and create new ones, we have created an Affiliate Groups page on the IETF web site and a simple mechanism for creating new groups. We are not trying to take over any existing groups, we are just creating a convention that people can use if they want. Affiliate Groups (AG) allow IETF people to (self organize) around interests, hobbies, outside activities, and similar. They are explicitly *not* for doing / discussing IETF work, and are instead intended to be social - IETF work should happen in Working Groups, and new work described in BoFs / bar BoFs. So, what exactly is an AG / what does it get? An AG is basically just a group of people interested in a topic - examples of things which might become AGs are rock-climbers, HAM operators, guitarists, runners, pipe-organ enthusiasts, photographers, sushi-lovers, etc. This isn't an attempt to formalize these, rather it is just a way to help people (especially newcomers) find out about them. All that an AG gets is a mailing list (<something>-ag@xxxxxxxx), and gets listed on a webpage. Example: https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/affiliate/ Affiliate Groups are not special, they don't get any preferential treatment if asking for a side room, the organizers don't get dots on their badges, etc. Questions: Q1: Meh. So, how is this different from just having a mailing list, like e.g runners already has? A: It's not very different at all - basically this just helps others find out about your group; we already have a number of these sorts of self organized groups, but many of them are unknown to people not already in the group. This is basically just creating a catalog of groups, and starting a *convention* where new groups / mailing lists of this ilk end in -ag (to help make them easier to find, etc). Q2: Great, I'm sold! I'd like to form the Extreme Ironing Affiliate Group - there are dozens of us interested in this sport... A: Great! All you have to do is request a new mailing list and make it clear that you’d like it to be listed as an affiliate group. The procedure for requesting a mailing list is at [1]. I'm the current stuckee / champion for affiliate groups, so send your requests to me. In order to cut down on clutter, we'll go through the list every few years and see if any of them are sufficiently dormant that they should be closed down, but the main idea is that these are self-organized, and incredibly low touch. Q3: Gah, you haven't listed the soapcarving / birdwatching / sword-swallowing / <whatever> group.... A: 'pologies. Plese send me: A the name of the group, B: a short (2 or 3 sentence) blurb to put on the webpage and C: a pointer to your mailing list. Please also put "Affiliate Group" in the email subject - I don't know how many of these I'm going to get, and I don't want to lose track of them. Q4: Is this really the most important thing that the IESG could be working on?! A: Nope, not by a long shot -- but it's something that *I* felt was worth doing, and the rest of the IESG agreed, somewhat so I'd stop talking about it :-) Q5: Does the Note Well apply to these groups? A: Yes. Any email sent to IETF lists is considered an IETF "Contribution" as defined in RFC 5378, Section 1 (see also the NOTE WELL statement), as is anything which you intend to influence the standards process -- but, these really are intended to be social type groups, and so if you are talking about standards stuff, you are doing it wrong! And while these are social-type groups we have the same expectations around conduct as apply to all formal IETF activities. If you have questions about how any of the IETF’s policies apply to affiliate group activities, please contact iesg@xxxxxxxx. W ---- [0]: Many of which are frankly somewhat nerdy, says Warren, the ham radio operator.... [1] https://ietf.org/how/lists/nonwglist-guidelines/
