> On Thu, 21 Dec 2000, Ken Hornstein wrote:
>
> > That hasn't been my experience; I've seen what can only be described as
> > an "old-boy" network in operation. I'm not saying that such a thing is
> > necessarily bad, just that sometimes it takes significant effort to
> > overcome it if you're a newbie.
>
> Both the "old-boy" network and the undue skepticism are natural and occur
> in every field. My intuition is, if you try to suppress them, they'll show
> up in other ways!
>
> On the other hand, I was a first-timer at the 49th IETF (although I was
> already known to some in mmedia wg before), and had a rather atrocious
> proposal to lobby for (see my I-D - you *can't* possibly believe it at
> first reading :-). I've seen no less openness and no more skepticism at
> the IETF than within my own organisation. I think the people are wonderful,
> including many "old timers" - I quite enjoyed the many first-hand stories
> in the many hallway discussions.
But here is the difference between your first time experience and
those of others. You were already known in one of the WG communities;
and you came with an I-D that you were trying to build support for.
In other words, you were a participant rather than a lurker.
You are exactly the type of first timers that should come to IETF
meetings.
Jeffrey Altman * Sr.Software Designer C-Kermit 7.1 Alpha available
The Kermit Project @ Columbia University includes Secure Telnet and FTP
http://www.kermit-project.org/ using Kerberos, SRP, and
[EMAIL PROTECTED] OpenSSL. SSH soon to follow.
