Internet Architecture Board J. Yao
Internet-Draft CNNIC
Intended status: Informational July 1, 2021
Expires: January 2, 2022
Setting Up A special day for the IETF outreach
draft-yao-iab-special-day-for-outreach-00
Abstract
Outreach is very important for IETF's development. This document
suggests to set up a special day for the IETF outreach. This day can
be used to propaganda the Internet standards, promote their
deployment, and attract more new IETFers to join IETF to contribute
to the Internet. This day can be called Internet Standards Day.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Why should IAB care for the Outreach? . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Motivation of having a Special Day for outreach . . . . . . . 3
4. Current Practice of the Special Day in other organizations . 4
4.1. World Standards Day set up by IEC, ISO and ITU . . . . . 4
4.2. International Internet Day set up by UN . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3. World IPv6 Day set up by ISOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4. Data Privacy Day set up by the Council of Europe . . . . 5
5. Suggested Date of Internet Standards Day . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Organization of Internet Standards Day . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
Outreach, as the name implies, is an active form of reaching out to
other groups or persons to create a possible partnership or share the
information. This may lead to attract more people to join IETF and
contribute to IETF's work. This may also help to improve the
relationships between IETF and other SDOs.
IETF standards are key to make Internet run better. Outreach is very
important for IETF's development. This document suggests to set up a
special day for the IETF outreach. This day can be used to
propaganda the Internet standards, promote their deployment, and
attract more new IETFers to join IETF to contribute to the Internet.
This day can be called Internet Standards Day. At that day, every
IETFer can broadcast IETF's message on all available channels all
over the world, and transmit the IETF's message to the right
audiences.
2. Why should IAB care for the Outreach?
Firstly, the Internet Architecture Board provides long-range
technical direction for Internet development, ensuring the Internet
continues to grow and evolve as a platform for global communication
and innovation. In order to reach this aim, IETF needs to attract
more people and new generation to join. IETF outreach plays a key
role for fulfilling this aim.
Secondly, the IAB is responsible for liaising with other
organizations on behalf of the IETF. Outreach also helps the liaison
work of IAB.
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Thirdly, if there has a special day to call IETFers and volunteers
all over the world to action together to promote the IETF value and
culture, it will help IETF's protocol to prevail in the Internet,
which will help to ensure the Internet continues to grow and evolve.
3. Motivation of having a Special Day for outreach
Currently, there are two kind of community IETF can reach usually
through IETF channels. One is Direct Community, which can be
regarded as RFC Producers. The direct community includes those who
join the IETF mailing lists, who write RFCs and drafts, who join IETF
discussion. The other is Indirect Community, which can be regarded
as RFC Consumers. The indirect community includes those who read
RFCs, who apply RFCs into the products and operations, and who follow
RFCs. Many IETFers are not only RFC producers but also RFC
consumers.
According to the IETF survey in early 2021, there are around 50K
subscribed email address over all active mailing lists, 13K followers
of @IETF on Twitter, 5.1K followers of the IETF YouTube channels,
6670 datatracker user records, 6336 number of unique email addresses
across I-D authors, I-D submitters, posters to ietf.org email lists,
and IETF meeting registrants in 2020. This is the total number of
people IETF can directly reach. The number is less than 100K.
The global digital population as of January 2021 is around 4.6
billions. With the explosive growth of Internet, the IETF also needs
to reach more people and new generation. The new people and
generation can contribute to the IETF standards, help the deployment
of IETF standards, and become the new strength of IETF.
It is necessary to let IETF protocols and IETF culture to more people
and new generation. IETF needs an effective outreach strategy to
reach more. There are various outreach strategies that can be used.
The most common outreach strategies include passive outreach such as
social media and blogger outreach, and active outreach such as
influencer outreach. Social media has become an incredible tool for
reaching audience and building brand awareness. Many modern audience
do not trust something that lack a social media presence. Social
media is a medium by which IETF can share IETF's activity.
An active approach can be taken via influencer outreach to engage the
audience further. Influencers outreach are often more engaged and
have a strong emotional connection in different places in the world.
Influencer outreach can propaganda and recommend something through
their channels. Both active outreach and passive outreach are very
important. Taking a multifaceted approach is key to the effective
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outreach. Great outreach does not happen by magic. It takes hard
work, research, and dedication.
Outreaching separately can not have a strong influence. More hands
together will produce a stronger flame, helping IETF to outreach
more. The main motivation for setting up a special day was to
collect all IETFers' strength together to make it work strongly.
During the special day, both active outreach and passive outreach can
be used. During this special day, IETFers, companies, industry
players and any organizations or individuals who are interested in
IETF can help to do something. An additional goal was to motivate
organizations across the industry Internet service providers,
hardware makers, operating system vendors, web companies and more to
help to promote the deployment of some IETF protocols, such as IPv6.
Many organizations have their own special day to action together to
promote their value and activities. IETF needs its own special day,
which can promote IETF value, celebrate IETF technology, and attract
the future IETFers.
4. Current Practice of the Special Day in other organizations
Different organizations normally set different special days for
outreaching or celebrating. Below are some examples.
4.1. World Standards Day set up by IEC, ISO and ITU
Each year on 14 October, the members of the IEC, ISO and ITU
celebrate World Standards Day, which is a means of paying tribute to
the collaborative efforts of thousands of experts worldwide who
develop the voluntary technical agreements that are published as
International Standards. World Standards Day 2020's theme is
Protecting the planet with standards.
4.2. International Internet Day set up by UN
International Internet Day is on 29th October every year. It aims to
honour a momentous day in the history of telecommunications and
technology. This day also highlights the sending of the 1st
electronic message which was conveyed from one computer to another
computer in the year 1969. It was celebrated for the first time on
October 29, 2005. At the World Summit on the Information Society
celebrated in Tunisia in November 2005, it was decided to propose to
the UN the designation of October 29 as the World-wide Day of the
Information Society, which resulted in Internet Day being celebrated
on that day.
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4.3. World IPv6 Day set up by ISOC
World IPv6 Day was a technical testing and publicity event in 2011
sponsored and organized by the Internet Society (ISOC) and several
large Internet content services to test and promote public IPv6
deployment. Following the success of the 2011 test day, the Internet
Society carried out a World IPv6 Launch day on June 6, 2012 which,
instead of just a test day, was planned to permanently enable IPv6
for the products and services of the participants.
4.4. Data Privacy Day set up by the Council of Europe
Data Privacy Day was originally established as European Data
Protection Day by the Council of Europe in 2007 to raise awareness of
data privacy issues and promote data protection best practices. Each
year, Data Privacy Day is celebrated on January 28 to commemorate the
signing of the first legally binding international data protection
treaty. 28 January 2014 is International Data Privacy Day, and IETF
lets Alissa Cooper say a few words about how IETF are working on
privacy topics. It is an opportunity to promote user empowerment and
education about protecting personal data.
5. Suggested Date of Internet Standards Day
On April 7, 1969, the very first Request for Comments or RFC was
issued by Steve Crocker. This RFC 1 marks the beginning of IETF
standards although the first IETF meeting happened after many years.
RFC 1 defines the IMP software used in the communication between
hosts on the ARPAnet and makes for interesting reading today. Back
in 1999, on the same day, Steve offered some reflections in RFC 2555
[RFC2555]named with 30 years of RFCs that included this bit about how
it began. On the same day of 2009, RFC 5540 [RFC5540] named with 40
Years of RFCs was published. On the same day of 2019, RFC 8700
[RFC8700]named with 50 Years of RFCs was published. The RFC will be
published to mark the first RFC on April 7, every 10 years from 1999.
This document suggests that April 7 every year is set to be the
Internet Standards Day. It marks the first RFC. Let's all IETFer
action together at that day to outreach to promote RFCs and IETF.
6. Organization of Internet Standards Day
Internet Standards Day is a special day that can be used for all
IETFers to promote IETF's activity. Different people have different
definition about the outreach, but at the Internet Standards Day,
people from all over the world can action together.
o Some may do technical outreach for improvment of IETF protocols.
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o Some may do education outreach to raise the visibility of the IETF
and the importance of standards.
o Some may do the coordination work among SDOs.
o Some may go to universities and research instituities.
o Some may do ...
o Others may do ...
Organizing an event is not easy. There are a few steps that we may
keep in mind.
o Before each Internet Standards Day, IETF can call for the topics/
themes of the year.
o IETF discusses the topics/themes, and finally decides the year's
theme.
o Call for volunteers to form the community.
o Allocate responsibilities within the community.
o Announce the theme via social medias, bloggers, and email lists.
o All interested IETFers outreach and action together on Internet
Standards Day.
o Ask for feedback after the event.
Each year we can have a different theme. For example, we can promote
QUIC, IPv6, or DOH/DOT in each different year.
7. IANA Considerations
This document does not require action by IANA.
8. Security Considerations
This document does not have any direct security impact; however, this
document will help IETF's development; failing to do so might have
negative effect in the long term.
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9. Acknowledgements
Some ideas are from discussion with the members from IAB, IESG and
ISOC, especially from Deborah Brungard, Alvaro Retana and Zhenbin Li.
10. Informative References
[RFC2555] Editor, RFC. and et. al., "30 Years of RFCs", RFC 2555,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2555, April 1999,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2555>.
[RFC5540] Editor, RFC., "40 Years of RFCs", RFC 5540,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5540, April 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5540>.
[RFC8700] Flanagan, H., Ed., "Fifty Years of RFCs", RFC 8700,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8700, December 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8700>.
Author's Address
Jiankang Yao
CNNIC
4 South 4th Street,Zhongguancun,Haidian District
Beijing, Beijing 100190
China
Phone: +86 10 5881 3007
Email: yaojk@cnnic.cn
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