OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

Sat Mar 27 11:44:57 UTC 2021

On 3/27/21 12:20, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:

>
> (not directed at anyone specifically)
> I think for the people who are concerned about the younger generations 
> not having this knowledge, think of how to fix it rather than just 
> giving up on the younger generation.
>
> Sure not everyone will be interested in historical context, and 
> certainly not in every topic, but some are.
> I think connecting with the younger generations in order to answer 
> these questions is a much better approach than blaming them for not 
> wanting to use mailing lists or whatever.

In Africa, at least, there is still quite a lot of interest from many 
youth to get into the nuts & bolts of how to build large scale Internet 
networks. What needs to evolve is how we support their training, as the 
way it was done before is coming under pressure due to the disappearance 
of traditional hands-on labs, the older generation of teachers slowing 
down in life, the pressure from industry to build and operate networks 
with a GUI, the pressure from software and automation confusing network 
engineers about whether they need to be great at IS-IS or Python, e.t.c.

In the past year, we've found ways to virtualize the workshops and the 
labs, but also to virtualize the entire workshop over several days, and 
the signs are looking good for the evolution of how knowledge is 
transferred, in that respect.

Many thanks to the good folk at the NSRC for making stuff like this 
possible, for various regions around the world, especially the 
developing ones.

Mark.