[Chapter-delegates] IETF and ITU

[Franck Martin]

Very good points

Yes we are looking at the ITU or rather how we should react or act
The best person to share your thoughts is Bill on the staff
Your ideas put together should be interesting

Your promotion ideas are good and if you have noticed, some more  
bedtime papers for you, the ISOC budget in comm has been doubled, I'm  
ok for a budget increase but I want to hear what it will achieve  
concretely

See you in a few mn

Toute connaissance est une réponse à une question

On 20/11/2008, at 18:19, "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <ocl at gih.com>  
wrote:

> This week, I have spent a great amount of time remotely listening to
> the discussions taking place in various IETF working groups & meetings
> in Minneapolis, and have found the experience very rewarding indeed.
> Thanks to ISOC, I managed to get a first-hand peek inside IETF at the
> previous meeting in Dublin & I realised how much work is currently
> taking place on the RFC front. Aside from there being a lot of very
> devoted people, there's genius about in those places and the synergy
> behind some of the most cutting-edge working groups is palpable.
>
> In parallel, Alejandro Pisanty alerted me to the October 2008 issue of
> IEEE Communications Magazine which contains a whole sub-section about
> ITU-T International Standards in Information and Communication
> Technologies. So this issue ended up being my bedtime reading.
>
> Of course, the way IEEE Comms Mag works is that a series editorial
> team is appointed specifically for the subject, a call for papers is
> made by the editorial team, papers reviewed & then published.
>
> What struck me in this issue is that the series reads like a huge
> advertising and promotion for ITU processes and the ITU itself.
> It is made up of:
> - ITU-T in 2008: Empowering Global ICT Development
> - The Working Methods and Basic Rules of Standardization in the
> Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunications Union:
> ITU-T
> - ITU-T initiatives on Climate Change
> - a technical paper, namely one on ITU-T G.722.1 Annex C Superwideband
> Audio Codec
> - a paper on Optical Transport Network evolution
> - Bridging the standardization gap to provide Quality of Service (QoS)
> in current Next Generation Network (NGN) architectures
>
> My feeling is that this constitutes another pawn put in place by ITU
> to regain some ground in telecom standards and the future of
> telecommunications. IMHO, it is fair game, since TCP-IP has virtually
> shot down its involvement in the subject of computer networking by
> making many of its CCITT/ITU X-series standards completely obsolete.
> In view of the fact that ITU Secretary General Toure's intervention at
> the ICANN Cairo meeting raised many eyebrows (I am being diplomatic
> here), it is not an isolated case of self-promotion but seems to fall
> in a well thought-out strategy, and I currently admire the way it is
> being played out.
>
> However, I do have one small problem with ITU standards processes,
> that is, the lack of possibility for users to get involved - you need
> to be part of a company or government and you need to pay a hefty sum
> of money prior to taking part. This, in my opinion, kills innovation.
> In fact, my experience with the ITU process (which I followed in the
> CCITT times in the early nineties) was that is was overly slow and
> bureaucratic and if you did not belong to some huge organisation, you
> could just shut up. Let's pass on all the other reasons I feel uneasy
> about ITU...
> On the other hand IETF has been a jumpboard for innovation. I know
> that some people do not agree with me, but let's not get into petty
> arguments - my point is that whilst IETF has given rise to the
> Internet we all know and use and love (and sometimes love to hate)
> today, very little is known about it outside of those circles. Indeed,
> even the Tao of IETF paper (http://www.ietf.org/tao.html )
> acknowledges this to some extent.
>
> So here's my question, bearing in mind the next week-end is the ISOC
> Board of Trustees meeting and I hope that trustees discuss this
> formally or informally, on-record or off-record: "Can ISOC do anything
> inline with ITU's current strategy?"
>
> For example: contacting the IEEE, but also ACM and other industry
> organisations (I am thinking consumer electronic, for example) in
> order to publish a set of papers in their journals along the likes of
> "IETF: designing tomorrow's Internet, today", "Empowerment of users
> through a bottom-up consensus design process at IETF", "ISOC thinking
> global, acting local to promote Internet for Everyone" etc. etc. These
> are just titles off the top of my head.
>
> It's great to publish papers on the ISOC & IETF Web sites, but today,
> outreach in other communities looks like the key to survival in the
> future. Can we win the hearts of minds of users, corporations,
> governments and stakeholders alike by showing each decider that
> ultimately, the current model on which the Internet has been built is
> the best and fairest one out there for everyone? Can we do this in
> their house rather than preaching in our own temples?
>
> Well done if you've reached this point. I was meaning to write only 10
> lines. :-)
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Olivier
>
> -- 
> Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond, Ph.D
> Global Information Highway Ltd
> http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
>
>
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