Buenos Aires, allá vamos!

Last week I was at an ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires. This is the place for the 95th IETF meeting as well, on April 3-8, 2016. The meeting will take place at the Hilton, in the same neighbourhood as the ICANN meeting was at.

I found Buenos Aires, and specifically the area where we will meet, to work well for meetings. It is an energetic and friendly city to visit. Having been in this area now a couple of times, there are multiple large and small hotels and services around. The international airport also works well, although the taxi drive to the city can be long during rush hour.

But most importantly, there is a lot of interest on Internet technology matters in Argentina and in the rest of Latin America. In many meetings in the area (e.g., RIR meetings such as LACNIC and LACNOG), there are special sessions about the IETF and its work. For instance, there has been IETF-related sessions or otherwise plenty of IETF participation in LACNIC16 (Buenos Aires), LACNIC21 (Cancun) and LACNIC23 (Lima). Even during the Buenos Aires ICANN meeting, the locals had setup a tutorial session on IETF with Russ Housley, and another session discussing our upcoming Buenos Aires meeting and how to participate the IETF (with Christian O’Flaherty, Carlos M. Martinez and others). I was very happy to see the interest, and connected with many technology people from the region. Mobile networking specialists from Haiti, as an example, eager to participate in the IETF.

Brochures and books about the IETF in Spanish were handed out. As an aside, the IETF EDU team and some new volunteers (thank you Fernando and Inés) are working on Spanish EDU program for IETF-95.

There is also a mailing list and an introductory video in Spanish:

What other things could we do to make IETF-95 a success in terms of reaching new people who will get involved in IETF work? One thing to keep in mind is, of course, that much of the IETF work happens over longer period of time and over the net, rather than just in the meetings. Getting involved in the work is the first step.

Let us know if you have an interest or if we can help anyone in any way to contribute to the IETF. Many IETF people – including the leadership – have made trips to various conferences in the region. Are there additional events where talking about some IETF topic would be useful?

P.S. I’ll also note that with my apparently frequent travel to the region, I should really learn at least basic Spanish myself. I’m fortunate in that my office has many Spanish-speaking folk. I promise to learn at least some by IETF-95!