Subject: [ericas] Starting the discussion

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:55:04 -0700

Hello,

I would appreciate if anyone or any organization from non-emerging 
regions do not take any ideas proposed by people from emerging 
regions and take credit for it.  There are some people from 
non-emerging regions on this mailing list who have been unselfish and 
have helped emerging regions.  I have not seen them taking credit for that.

There are currently only three persons from emerging regions on 
directorates (Fernando, Vinayak).  What I would like to highlight is 
that it is difficult to find people from emerging regions who can and 
will contribute.

There is the money barrier.  It is very expensive to attend IETF 
meetings.  It's nearly impossible to get funding probably because the 
local community does not see any value in the IETF.  There are a few 
people who may have heard of the IETF.  Some of them have very little 
understanding of how the IETF works.

It is mentioned that individuals from Africa or South America are 
participating in the IETF when it is well-known that the number of 
individuals is so small that it is not even relevant.  As someone 
mentioned in a report, it is a known fact that organizations will 
bring in people from these regions even though it is well-known that 
they cannot participate.  There are people from emerging regions who 
make the matter worse.  They understand the politics and use it for 
their own gain.  Emerging regions end up having a bad reputation 
because of that.

It would help if the IETF put in effort in reaching out to people 
from emerging regions.  That is not happening at the moment.  I 
understand that the IETF does not have the resources to do that.

I would describe the main barrier as politics.  Some people from 
non-emerging countries turn a blind eye to the problems or choose to 
tackle problems where the outcome might suit their interests.

I would like to thank Lars Eggert for setting up this mailing 
list.  I encourage people from emerging regions to use this 
opportunity to discuss about the challenges.  It is up to you to 
speak up by posting you opinion to this mailing list.  If you do not 
do that people from non-emerging regions will speak in your name and 
it is unlikely that it will be in your interest.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:15:41 -0800

> understanding of how the IETF works.

Do you feel that ISOC has a role to play in this?

I should add that I'm not thrilled with the emphasis on meeting
attendance as a marker of participation or non-participation.  We
may not be doing a very good job of communicating how to participate
in the IETF process without traveling to meetings.

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
No Mountain Software
[email-masked]

"Software longa, hardware brevis."

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:45:57 +0100

> in the IETF process without traveling to meetings.

Sort of agree. I'd be interested in learning more about how
and why Internet protocols work well or badly in emerging
regions and in suggestions as to what could be done about
that. That doesn't need bodies in Berlin but would benefit
from that.

S.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:00:43 -0700

Hi Melinda,
>Do you feel that ISOC has a role to play in this?

There was a meeting between some IETF people and the German Federal 
government ( http://www.isoc.de/wer-macht-das-internet/ ).  My guess 
is that approach is more effective.  It's not easy to identify the 
"right" people to talk to in emerging regions.  Someone also has to 
identify what the people want.  It is a huge challenge.

>in the IETF process without traveling to meetings.

I am not thrilled either.  I was chatting with a PhD student from 
Greece who was following an IETF plenary remotely even though it was 
very late for him.  He has never attended an IETF meeting.  He was 
participating in an IETF WG.  He also writes code.  That is the side 
of the IETF which might go unseen.

I agree that we do not a good job of communicating how to 
participate.  I don't know how to solve that. :-(  There are language 
and cultural barriers for people from emerging regions.  I guess it 
is like entering a strange place and trying to find your way.  You 
are without any friends and you don't know who will help you.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:35:23 -0700

Hi Stephen,
>that. That doesn't need bodies in Berlin but would benefit

That's a general question.  It may be easier for the person reading 
your message if the question is about a specific protocol.  The 
question could also be framed in terms of a request for someone from 
an emerging region to test an Internet protocol.

There is a community in Brazil which seems quite active (my 
guess).  As a start you could get someone to translate your message 
in Portuguese and help reach out to them.  There may be also be 
people involved in open source projects which might be able to help 
find answers.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:58:13 +0100

Hiya,

On 04/28/2013 11:35 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> That's a general question.  It may be easier for the person reading your
> message if the question is about a specific protocol.  The question
> could also be framed in terms of a request for someone from an emerging
> region to test an Internet protocol.

I'm not sure if a general or more specific question will be
better to be honest. Probably the right people are more
important than the right question at this stage.

> There is a community in Brazil which seems quite active (my guess).  As
> a start you could get someone to translate your message in Portuguese
> and help reach out to them.  There may be also be people involved in
> open source projects which might be able to help find answers.

Well, I don't have a "message" but rather would like to hear from
folks in emerging reasons about how well/badly Internet protocols
work for them.

I doubt trying to translate that query into any specific language
is really the next step. I suspect that if there are folks on
here that could talk about that, those folks have enough English
to do that here. (If not, or uncertain, feel free to contact me
off list, I'm happy to try help if there's a specific way in which
I can do that.)

S.

---

From: Vinayak Hegde <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:06:07 +0530

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 12:25 AM, S Moonesamy <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I would appreciate if anyone or any organization from non-emerging regions
> do not take any ideas proposed by people from emerging regions and take
> credit for it.  There are some people from non-emerging regions on this
> mailing list who have been unselfish and have helped emerging regions.  I
> have not seen them taking credit for that.
>
> directorates (Fernando, Vinayak).  What I would like to highlight is that
> it is difficult to find people from emerging regions who can and will
> contribute.
>
>
Partly I think these people are self-selecting. It is a chicken and egg
problem. People do not participate and hence do not see value. There is
some initial handholding required. The IETF culture is very different from
most other conferences I have been to. The ISOC Fellowship to the IETF does
help people to get to meetings. That is very useful as nothing can replace
the meeting experience. I am saying this from the personal experience. I
had been participating remotely and on the mailing lists before attending
the meeting. The meeting was a very different experience.

> There is the money barrier.  It is very expensive to attend IETF meetings.
>  It's nearly impossible to get funding probably because the local community
> does not see any value in the IETF.  There are a few people who may have
> heard of the IETF.  Some of them have very little understanding of how the
> IETF works.
>
>
True. A chicken-and-egg problem. Thanks to ISOC, we have some participants
from India. I am planning to get them together and create a small community
in Bangalore (which has enough critical mass of techies related to
Internet). Also I think people from emerging countries should help
themselves and not wait for outside help. I think South America has some
critical mass and has some good leaders in Alejandro / Eduardo / Hugo who
attend meetings regularly and also participate in the regional conferences.
I have met quite a few active participants from South America. I am pretty
sure that atleast some of this success can be replicated in other regions.

I attended SANOG and local ISOC meetings and talked about the IETF (and my
experience at the meetings and the mailing lists). There was a good deal of
interest and a few people joined the mailing lists and applied for the
fellowships but again there was no initial handholding and some of these
people dropped off. IF anyone has any suggestions on how to do this better,
then they are welcome.

> individuals is so small that it is not even relevant.  As someone mentioned
> in a report, it is a known fact that organizations will bring in people
> from these regions even though it is well-known that they cannot
> participate.  There are people from emerging regions who make the matter
> worse.  They understand the politics and use it for their own gain.
>  Emerging regions end up having a bad reputation because of that.
>
>
True. I have seen people from emerging regions who come to the meeting but
do not contribute (at least continually) but it is a hard problem to solve.

It would help if the IETF put in effort in reaching out to people from
> emerging regions.  That is not happening at the moment.  I understand that
> the IETF does not have the resources to do that.
>

I think having IETF meetings in places where you want to encourage
participation is a good idea. I have raised these before but honestly the
answers were unsatisfying. The worst I have heard is that most of the
participants come from NA/Europe and for them traveling is hard /
expensive. If we want to maintain the status quo then it will be maintained
(if we accept reasons such as this). I see very few reasons why a IETF
meeting cannot be held in India or in South America. I have brought this up
with IAOC members (active/inactive) and not got convincing answers. The W3C
meeting was held in Hyderabad a couple of years back and a SIGCOMM meeting
was held in Delhi. SANOG has been held in India for several years. All were
well attended and went off well. What will also help is that if we can have
a pre/post meetings (I don't know how this can be done) so that there is
continuous interest leading to the event so it is not a one-off thing. I
think this happened in Beijing and there is some good participation from
China.

> non-emerging countries turn a blind eye to the problems or choose to tackle
> problems where the outcome might suit their interests.
>

See above

>
> I would like to thank Lars Eggert for setting up this mailing list.  I
> encourage people from emerging regions to use this opportunity to discuss
> about the challenges.  It is up to you to speak up by posting you opinion
> to this mailing list.  If you do not do that people from non-emerging
> regions will speak in your name and it is unlikely that it will be in your
> interest.
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy

---

From: Vinayak Hegde <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:22:22 +0530

> Do you feel that ISOC has a role to play in this?

ISOC has been doing a decent job with the ISOC fellowship to the IETF and
NGL (Next Generation Leaders) programme. What would help is some kind of
workshops co-located with ISOC regional Chapters events which give an idea
of what IETF meeting works and how to participate. Maybe a local
co-ordinated effort when IETF meetings are in progress.

> Yes and No.

First the Yes part. Agree on the part that IETF meetings should not be used
as a marker.

Why the reserved No ? Traveling to a meeting is a very different experience
than attending remotely. A couple of examples to qualify my reservations.
When participating remotely, it is not possible to have/eavesdrop on
corridor conversations. Much of my IETF learning has been this way. I
listen into conversations and ask "dumb" questions. Most people are helpful
with pointers and context. People who attend IETF regularly underestimate
the amount of knowledge trapped in the heads of regular IETF attendees.

Another aspect is cultural. I have been lucky enough to get several good
mentors at IETF who encouraged me. I have also been lucky to have attended
a few meetings thanks to ISOC. The #1 piece of advice I give to people from
Asia (especially South-east Asia) is to not take the comments on the draft
/ discussions personally. You will not believe the cultural shock that
people get from direct feedback. People have thanked me for giving this
advice. In Asia, we are every non-confrontational so it can be a little
jarring to attend some of the WG meetings. I had worked with an American
based MNC where this kind of interactions were quite frequent but even for
me the initial IETF WG meetings were a little jarring. I will not bore
people with the details though. I have come to appreciate deeply this
aspect of IETF culture to "get stuff done" but it does take a while to get
it.

Regards
Vinayak

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:43:02 -0700

Hi Vinayak,
At 17:36 28-04-2013, Vinayak Hegde wrote:
>Partly I think these people are self-selecting. It is a chicken and 
>egg problem. People do not participate and hence do not see value. 
>There is some initial handholding

Thanks for participating.  I agree that people do not participate and 
hence do not see value.

>enough critical mass of techies related to Internet). Also I think 
>people from emerging countries should help themselves and not wait 
>for outside help. I think South America has some critical mass and 
>has some good leaders in Alejandro / Eduardo / Hugo who attend 
>meetings regularly and also participate in the regional conferences. 
>I have met quite a few active participants from South America. I am 
>pretty sure that atleast some of this success can be replicated in 
>other regions.

I agree that people from emerging countries should help themselves 
and not wait for outside help.  In my opinion there is critical mass 
in South America.  I attended a few IETF meetings.  I see people from 
South America emerging (you mentioned some of them above).

>I attended SANOG and local ISOC meetings and talked about the IETF 
>(and my experience at the meetings and the mailing lists). There was 
>a good deal of interest and a few people joined the mailing lists 
>and applied for the fellowships but again there was no initial 
>handholding and some of these people dropped off. IF anyone has any 
>suggestions on how to do this better, then they are welcome.

It might be good to identify people early and peer with them to 
overcome the barriers instead of letting people drop off.

I once participated in a standardization forum.  Someone complained 
that he applied for the ISOC fellowship several times and he never 
received any answer.  I asked what he can do to contribute to the 
IETF.  There was a heated discussion after that.  One of the 
responses I heard was "we have to go to a meeting before we can contribute".

I followed another standardization forum at a remote hub.  There were 
a few IETF working group chairs doing presentations.  At the end of 
the event I had a talk with a few participants (university 
people).  I did not see any interest in participating.  This brings 
us to the "do not see value" mentioned above.

>  India for several years. All were well attended and went off well. 
> What will also help is that if we can have a pre/post meetings (I 
> don't know how this can be done) so that there is continuous 
> interest leading to the event so it is not a one-off thing. I think 
> this happened in Beijing and there is some good participation from China.

By the way China is better organized than India.  There are some 
people from South America who have been arguing for meetings in South 
America.  The is only person I know who argued for meetings in 
India.  It can be seen as "not sufficient interest".  You might be 
able to change that. :-)

Regards,
S. Moonesamy