Re: [Mtgvenue] Do you believe in magic, Update of RFC8719 not needed

[John R Levine <[e-mail]>]

> I don't have a strong opinion yet, but... It doesn't make much sense to say that we need to meet in person to be effective, but also that not meeting in certain parts of the world is not a problem for participants who live there because they can attend remotely. Pick one.

Good point.

> This is going to be a philosophical (political?) debate between those 
> who think that representation should match current reality and those who 
> think that it should match a desired reality which can only come true if 
> under-represented groups get disproportionately higher representation 
> right now. I suspect that there will never be consensus on this point - 
> not in this organization.

You put it very well.  I find it frustrating that the latter viewpoint 
depends on a great deal of magical thinking, that somehow if we take our 
meetings on the road, people who have never subscribed to our mailing 
lists, never written or commented on an I-D, will appear out of the 
woodwork and start writing standards.

We did a real life experiment when we met in Buenos Aires.  While I drank 
a lot of excellent wine, I didn't learn anything particularly interesting 
about the state of the Internet in South America that I didn't already 
know, nor did we get a flood of new people doing IETF work.

Compare this to the ANRP, which finds people doing work relevant to us and 
brings them to our meetings to talk about it.  The papers are great, and 
we and they make real contacts for the future.  We certainly need more 
people from all over the world, but it would be nice to make efforts in 
ways that are likely to have results.

R's,
John