The most important thing for the IETF to do is to continue to organise and manage itself to develop the highest quality technical work and to do so in an efficient and open way that is inviting to new people.

As a UCLA graduate student in the 1960s Steve Crocker helped create the ARPANET protocols which were the foundation for today's Internet. Steve Crocker was instrumental in creating the ARPA "Network Working Group" which later was the context in which the IETF was created.

While at UCLA Crocker taught an extension course on computer programming (for the IBM 7094 mainframe computer). In 1994 Crocker was one of the founders and chief technology officer of CyberCash Inc. For this work Crocker was awarded the 2002 IEEE Internet Award.