Re: [89attendees] The experience as new comer for Sunday

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2014 at 09:05:09AM +0100, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:
> I wanted to
> see if the body leaders will come closer to the new comers even 10 minutes
> within the week while the new comers are gathered together group and those
> leaders be seen in such gather.

That's what the newcomers' reception is for, on Sunday afternoon.  I'm
sorry I didn't manage to meet you there, though I made a point to get
to it (as I always do).  I'm happy to meet you or anyone else in the
hall, in the meetings, and so on. 

As usual, though, I also want to push back a little on the focus on
"the leadership".  I'm not trying to suggest that it's not important
for people wearing various dots to meet new contributors.  But I also
think it's really important that we not think of "the leadership" as
somehow dragging the IETF along somewhere.

The thing that got me involved in the IETF was that there were
particular things that the IETF was working on where I thought I might
contribute.  I think the most valuable thing newcomers (and any other
comers!) to the IETF can do is find something they know about, find
some drafts that they're interested in, and read them carefully and
comment as usefully as possible.  Visiting WGs that might be
interesting and picking up a draft that strikes you as at all
interesting can be helpful.  Listening carefully in meetings where you
don't really know what's going on, and then going back and rereading
the drafts and asking questions (even clarifying ones, maybe not in
the meetings or at the mic) makes an important contribution.  I still
find those activities to be the things that are most interesting and
useful to me at the IETF.  (I will leave it to others to determine
whether my acting that way is useful to anyone else!)

I'm quite sensitive to the recent suggestion on another list that the
IETF is a private club.  But there really is a way to "join this club"
(I'd prefer to say "contribute to this activity"), and it's not by
talking to the so-called leadership.  It's by working on the standards
that we're here to develop.  That's the thing the IETF contributes to
the universe -- not meetings, or "leadership", or long discussion
about cookies or IETF processes (amusing as all that may be).  I'm
more than happy to talk to anyone at any time to the extent I can help
them involve themselves in that core IETF activity; and I hope that's
what the newcomers' reception and the hallway discussions are about.

Best regards,

A (IAB member, speaking for myself)
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]