A team of IPv6 enthusiasts in Japan have initiated a series of ‘study meetings’ to help non-technical people working in the communications industry understand why IPv6 is important.
“Many people in the communications and Internet industry have heard the term ‘IPv6’ but know little else about it other than it’s a new form of Internet protocol,” says Akimichi Ogawa, one of the co-organizers of the study meetings.
“These meetings provide a basic understanding of the technology, why it came about—IPv4 exhaustion—and what needs to be considered, including who needs to be involved in planning to deploy IPv6.”
Over 250 people have attended the two meetings held so far with many attendees highly engaged in the topic, as judged by the many questions and the feedback they’ve provided to help improve the course.
Feedback has included more examples of practical deployment strategies shared by organization representatives (particularly non-technical representatives), greater simplification of meaninglessly long technical explanations, as well as more opportunity and encouragement to ask less technical questions.
Although the meetings have been targeted specifically at ‘non-network engineers/technicians’, Akmichi says that many network engineers and technicians have attended to listen to what is being explained.
“This has been an added bonus of the initiative, as these engineers and technicians are learning how to communicate and explain the need for IPv6 to non-technical people, particularly their managers, who are the decision makers,” says Akimchi.
Meetings took place in June and October 2017, with more planned for 2018. Akimichi also plans on publishing a free IPv6 ebook in 2018 having reached his crowdfunding goal.
Akimichi has been writing about IPv6 for several years on his blog Geek Page. He also writes on Internet governance, TCP/IP, Internet infrastructure and Japan’s blogosphere. Read Akimichi’s account from meeting one and two (in Japanese).
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