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. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 1] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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. Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 2] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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 Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 3] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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. Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 4] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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. Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 5] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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. Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 6] Internet-Draft outreach-day July 2021 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, . [RFC5540] Editor, RFC., "40 Years of RFCs", RFC 5540, DOI 10.17487/RFC5540, April 2009, . [RFC8700] Flanagan, H., Ed., "Fifty Years of RFCs", RFC 8700, DOI 10.17487/RFC8700, December 2019, . 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 Yao Expires January 2, 2022 [Page 7]