Re: [88attendees] AFRICANs @ the IETF 88

[Spencer Dawkins <[e-mail]>]

On 11/7/2013 8:24 PM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
> On Nov 7, 2013, at 3:07 AM, Asmic Computers ZA/NG <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> I would be interested in talking to you all on how we can improve on our representation and contributions to the IETF. It would also be good to discuss how we can help develop the continent via this network.
> An important consideration in this is that while your presence in meetings is valuable, your presence on mailing lists is also valuable and comparatively inexpensive. As a first step, you might consider looking through the set of drafts labeled draft-ietf-*.txt, which is to say "working group drafts". Their working group will generally be the third word, like draft-ietf-ospf or draft-ietf-v6ops. Access them online, and, if they interest you, comment on them. The most interesting comments will be those that improve them in some way - identify issues and suggest text. That will get african viewpoints into discussions regarding current work product.
>
> BTW, the same goes for south americans and anyone else that feels under-represented. Get involved on mailing lists.
>
> Daily news can be found at https://www.ietf.org, and specifically http://tools.ietf.org/dailydose/. It takes a minute to look at it, and from time to time you may find something of interest to comment on. You can also go to http://tools.ietf.org/html/.
>
> If you need guidance regarding a given working group, the obvious people to get it from are the chairs, which you can reach by emailing the [e-mail] list for the working group. For example, if you want to reach the v6ops chairs, email [e-mail]. For a list of the working groups and access to their charters and their mailing list membership processes, go to http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/.
>
> The next step might include writing your own drafts and submitting them for discussion. But you don't need to rush into that; get a sense of what's going on and then contribute to it.

I agree with Fred's suggestions, and wanted to mention a couple of other 
things ...

If during your checking around you find problems with protocols we're 
working on that don't work in your particular country or environment, 
please tell us.

I'm remembering (possibly dreaming, it's been a long week) that GeoPriv 
was rolling along when someone somewhere in Asia pointed out that in 
their country, and perhaps only in their country, some civic addresses 
included *alleys*, and asked how these addresses should be encoded. If 
we hadn't heard from participants from that country, we wouldn't have 
known until someone tried to deploy products in that country 
(inconveniently late for a standards discussion).

The TSV area has been looking at a tunneling/compression/multiplexing 
proposal (details at http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/tcmtf.html, and 
this is likely to pop back up at IETF 89 in London, if the BOF 
requestors ask for that). It turns out that we got some support from 
African participants who find it fits their connectivity to the rest of 
the Internet.

You might also check out the discussions to date on the diversity 
mailing list, where people are doing things like asking what it would 
take to set up regional meetings for folks who can't travel to an IETF 
meeting, so that more people can engage and contribute. See 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/diversity/current/maillist.html for 
the archive.

If you're thinking about how to help people back home who weren't able 
to attend, you might also make use of training materials from the Sunday 
tutorials (for instance, the IETF 87 Newcomer's Training is at 
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-edu-newcomers-4.pdf 
- I just reported that the IETF 88 version returned a 404/not found). 
These aren't all process tutorials, either - for instance, if people 
care about realtime applications and infrastructure, 
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/88/slides/slides-88-edu-introtorai-0.pdf 
would be helpful.

I hope this helps you and your colleagues contribute effectively to the 
IETF.

Spencer, in this case, writing as an AD