12 problems

[Andy Bierman]

At 05:19 PM 1/14/2003 +0100, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>My assumption is that this is a temporary dip due to the
>economic situation. But of course it's possible that it's
>permanent - only time will tell. In any case, even with
>1500 people, we have a lot of observers in many sessions, so
>the issue is not completely historical.

Since the next meeting is in San Francisco, the attendance 
is likely to be higher, and the increase will be due to more
observers.

I don't think observers at a WG meeting is such a horrible thing.
An observer is monitoring specific IETF activities for their
company to determine if specific emerging standards are relevant
to their business plans.  The IETF needs companies to deploy
standards as well as people to write standards.  Some of these
observers eventually become active participants. Some go away 
and decide the IETF is a waste of time.  It is a mistake to
assume that because they don't actively write or review drafts,
they don't play a part in the IETF standards process.


>    Brian

Andy



>Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>> 
>> Spencer,
>> 
>> the total attendance has been lower - down from 2810 in San Diego to around
>> 1500-1600 at the last few US meetings.
>> 
>> My (vague) impression is that there are far fewer newbies.
>> But I've asked the secretariat if they can come up with specifics.
>> 
>>                       Harald
>> 
>> --On mandag, januar 13, 2003 09:11:58 -0600 Spencer Dawkins
>> <sdawkins at cynetanetworks.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > Harald,
>> >
>> > Could you say anything about changes in IETF meeting attendee
>> > demographics since (say) IETF 52?
>> >
>> > My impression is that SubIP attendance has been lower, and that
>> > first-time attendance has been lower, but I don't know if either of these
>> > are actually true, and have no idea if there are other trends that would
>> > be interesting, as long as we're trying to understand what's going on.
>> >
>> > For instance, I've heard that we were running at a sustained
>> > one-third-new-attendees rate for several years - so assume most of these
>> > people don't recognise most other attendees in the halls, so fewer
>> > hallway conversations ...