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Re: A proposed experiment in narrative minutes of IESG meetings

2005-07-19 08:20:21
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:55:55 -0700 (PDT)
 Ned Freed <ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com> wrote:


--On torsdag, juli 14, 2005 21:33:05 -0400 Sandy Wills 
<sandy(_at_)WEIJax(_dot_)com>
wrote:

Directed towards the IESG:
    Recording meetings, and publishing those recordings, may be a hassle,
but it answers all questions about the integrity of the decision-making
process.  There may still be questions about knowledge and wisdom, but
you put to rest all questions about integrity.  Refusing to record (for
whatever reason*), after having been asked (for whatever reason) by the
people you represent, says something rather different.

I'm sorry to be this blunt, but...

   Nonsense.

Anyone who has watched the on-stage, recorded, extremely-public board
meetings of ICANN and has also watched the multitude of conspiracy theories
about the ICANN board knows that conspiracy theorists will take the
existence of a recording as proof that the REAL conspiracy was going on
somewhere else, and what was recorded was an orchestrated public charade.

You are, of course, correct. But guess what: This is one where the conspiracy
theorists are actually partly right. They know good and well that there are in
fact plenty of private conversations and off the record exchanges going on
behind the scenes. There have to be.

Like it or not, the members any small group charged with making important
decisions need to be able to communicate off the record.


Indeed. And if you are foolish enough to try and stop it,
it will just go underground.

Having been on the IESG, I can tell you that private communication with other
IESG members is very common, if only because bothering the entire IESG with
every small issue that comes up would be a huge time waster for the group as
whole. So any notion that recording IESG meetings will capture the process in
its entirety is simply silly.

As for atually recording the meetings, I'm pretty ambivalent about that. For
one thing, I think people are seriously underestimating the amount of time  
and
effort that would be needed to make this work. And for another, I don't think
it improves transparency nearly as much as people think it will. OTOH, the
added insight it would provide to general IETF participants about how the IESG
operates would be a very good thing. Perhaps the right thing to do is to 
record
1-2 meetings a year, as someone else suggested.

I agree about the time required to process the recordings. Someone _who is 
knowledgeable
about IESG sensitivities_ would have to listen to every word and mark edits, 
someone would have to 
edit the recording into some sort of package, the IESG would probably want to 
review it, and it
would have to be posted. This would chew up a lot of time, including a fair 
amount of IESG time.

Here is an alternate suggestion :

The IESG could have open meetings at selected IETF
meetings. Since the infrastructure is already there, these could be
webcast and recorded at no additional cost, except to everyone's already 
overburdened schedules (and a little for media and disk space). Since those 
meetings would
be open, the recordings would not need to be edited. And, those who really are 
interested could
attend in person, and maybe even ask questions.

Regards
Marshall


Been there, done that, no cigar.

Anyone with corporate board experience has been there as well. Or school board
experience. Or, for that matter, corridor conversations at IETF meetings.
There's certainly no shortage of examples.

                              Ned

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