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RE: technical tutorials

2006-03-27 09:41:33
I do not like the idea of adding yet another area where the ISOC gets into
the business of competing with IETF participants. The number of people who
make their living from giving training is probably much larger than the
number of people who make their living providing registry services.

I suggest that there is a much bigger need for updates on what is going on
in other standards bodies. IETF, OASIS and W3C are roughly the same size,
all are at or close to capacity in terms of standards making (I think some
of the delays in IETF process during the peak were due to overcommitted
resources).

In DIX we had a situation where about a third of the BOF consisted of
piecemeal education of the audience re SAML. In another WG I heard someone
propose a Web Services based registration protocol for credentials (i.e.
XKMS). 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brc(_at_)zurich(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com] 
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 4:04 AM
To: John C Klensin
Cc: Romascanu, Dan \(Dan\); ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: technical tutorials

Excuse front-posting but this will be short.

The EDU team discussed this very issue with the IAOC in 
Dallas. There will be a draft revised charter for EDU out for 
comment soon, but the short version is that (for the reasons 
John gives) EDU will stick to classes aimed at the IETF's own 
functioning. That doesn't exclude all tecnical material, but 
as BCP 101 says, we don't do fund-raising ourselves.

We do have a friendly fund-raising body, the ISOC. If full 
scale technical tutorials are to be sold, ISOC should be the vehicle.

     Brian

John C Klensin wrote:
--On Sunday, 26 March, 2006 14:50 +0200 "Romascanu, Dan \\(Dan\\)" 
<dromasca(_at_)avaya(_dot_)com> wrote:


I believe that I made this proposal in the past, in a 
plenary session 
a while ago, when numbers in the IETF particpation were the issue. 
Discussions hold then led to the edu track, which is 
however focused 
on IETF process and not on technical or tutorial content.

I do not see why should not the IETF offer a full Sunday track of 
tutorials with technical content. Why should one go to a industry 
conference or trade show to hear what is going on in an 
IETF WG, when 
the principal contributors (WG chairs,
editors) who usually give these talks are all attending the IETF 
meetings? Having a full Sunday track of tutorials would not only 
attract new people to come to the IETF and help them 
justify to their 
employers and to themselves the cost of the travel, but 
also improve 
the level of understanding of the technical material in the WGs, 
increasing the chances that new attendees would become active 
participants in a shorter time.

We can even play with different fees structure (conference only, 
tutorial only, conference + tutorial) to help people optimize their 
costs.

The extra money resulting from the tutorial fees and increased 
participation would lower sponsoring costs, and hopefully 
the meeting 
fees for the technical contributors.


Dan,

I see one major problem with this.  I tried to raise it 
with the EDU 
team before Dallas but, other than one set of offline 
comments from an 
individual, have gotten no response.

Despite all of the noise in the IPR WG, the biggest risks to a 
standards body involve claims that the review and approval process 
have been captured or manipulated by particular interests, 
causing the 
documents that are produced to reflect those manipulations 
rather than 
open and balanced community consensus.

A tutorial whose subject matter is how to get things done 
in the IETF 
-- how we are structured, how we do business, the tools we use, and 
even what one needs to know technically and structurally to 
write an 
I-D or RFC -- are not problematic.
But, as soon as we start giving technical tutorials that related to 
areas that are under standardization, there is a risk of 
someone later 
claiming that the tutorial content was biased in one way or another 
that impacted the standardization choices we made.  That would be 
extremely bad news... possibly of the variety that could 
have the EDU 
team or the IESG neck-deep in lawyers.

So, if there are to be technical tutorials, I suggest that 
you start 
working on an organizational structure that would keep the 
decisions 
about which sessions to hold and their content at arms-length or 
further from anyone with decision-making leadership in the 
IETF.  Even 
then, there are risks.  But a decision made by an EDU team that 
operates under even general IESG supervision, or with a 
lecturer who 
is involved in the standards process and who is taking 
positions there 
(or is associated with a company that is doing so), are really poor 
ideas if we want to preserve both the fact and appearance 
of fairness 
in the standards process.

    john


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