Re: How to judge what is the fair site for participation

[Benson Muite <[e-mail]>]

On 15/04/2024 13.01, Anupam Agrawal wrote:
> India never had any IETF meeting. Though some cities have been chosen
> and listed, India is yet to host an IETF meeting. 
> 

Many people based in India have contributed to recent RFCs.  Some slides
with information about IETF RFC author locations and IETF meeting locations:
https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html

Meeting locations:
https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html#4

Recent RFC author locations:
https://kichakatokizito.solutions/presentations/afrinic2024/index.html#5

A large number of in person participants travel from the USA, so their
collective preferences have affected meeting locations.  Many meetings
have been held in G7 countries or more broadly WEIRD (Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries. These countries have
been the initial ones to widely use and develop the internet.  However,
recent IETF participation from India and China is rather high relative
to the number of meetings held in these countries - there has only been
one meeting in a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa)
country.  The relative cost of in person participation for people not
residing in high income countries will mean that more of them will
participate online, but it would be good to have some way to enable them
to occasionally participate in person.

The IETF is an anomaly as a standards body, and it is nice that unlike
other standards bodies, online participation is made easy and RFCs are
easily available online.  Sustaining this is great, but has costs
associated with it.  The IETF needs to evolve to accommodate a wider
variety of regional perspectives - the ITU has a structure that
accommodates voices from many regions, but primarily government and
large corporate voices.

> Regards
> Anupam
>