The security area meeting (SAAG) turned out to have many local presenters. I particularly enjoyed the presentation on security analysis of IPv6 transition technologies and the report from the workshop on impacts of encryption in mobile networks.
The DISPATCH working group talked about opportunistic security for RTP flows.
Plenary
This time we experimented with a different setup for community-wide discussions, having one combined plenary instead of separate technical and administrative ones. That seemed like a reasonable starting point for future arrangements as well, although there’s a lot to improve still, such as further shortening of the presentations part.
Before the plenary we got a preview of “A Net of Rights”, a short film made by members of the proposed IRTF research group on human rights protocol considerations (HRPC).
Collaboration
With the W3C TPAC meeting and the OpenStack Summit both in Japan on the previous week, I think we succeeded in visiting and being visited by a few more key individuals from these organisations. In some cases by folk who had not been recently at the IETF. Having an IETF not tightly bound to another event but happening in the same general area as other things can be useful even in the future.
Once again we had many new participants, almost three hundred! We also had visitors from the ISOC policy guest and fellows programs. Many of these visitors are first-time attendees, though often we have worked with them on important topics online. For instance, Seun Ojedeji (Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria) has been an active member in IANA transition discussion at the IETF and elsewhere, but this was his first in person IETF meeting. Similarly, Rinalia Abdul Rahim (ICANN board, Malaysia) visited the IETF for the first time. As always, the IETF meetings are just events and while they are good opportunities for discussion, any significant effort requires long-term co-operation and hard work outside meetings. We’ve already have that with Seun and Rinalia, but the same is true for all new participants: the real participation at the IETF is a joint project with others, a working group that you care for and contribute to. Hoping to see many of the new participants involved in projects that are important for them!
It was also noteworthy that there were many remote participants, including presenters. For instance, Jürgen Schönwälder held an hour-long discussion in the LMAP working group using Meetecho. We also learned some lessons in other sessions, like the plenary where remote connections had problems, and I had not set up backup jabber channels to be monitored appropriately. I apologise for that.
Thanks for everyone who was in the meeting in person or otherwise, for our sponsors, and last but not least, the volunteers and staff who made the meeting happen. Thank you!
What’s Next?
We continue work over the Internet in the coming months. We will meet in person the next time April 3-8 in Buenos Aires, Argentina! Our host will be LACNIC. This will be the first meeting in South America and only the second meeting to be held south of the equator. The IETF community recognises our need to engage with the active developer communities around the world, so I am looking forward to meeting you in Buenos Aires!
Note that the Buenos Aires IETF Hackathon will run April 2-3 on the weekend preceding the IETF, so be sure to be on site early!