--On Thursday, October 17, 2013 09:26 -0700 joel jaeggli
<joelja(_at_)bogus(_dot_)com> wrote:
The only solution allowing independents to become an AD that
I can see would be for larger companies to partially or
wholly sponsor slots and/or particular individuals. If this
were to happen, I think we'd get both more, and more diverse,
nominations; but I appreciate that like John's suggestions,
mine is unlikely to solve the problem this time around.
At the point where we pay people to occupy the role the nature
of it changes dramatically.
Joel,
Yes.
At the same time, having positions that can predominantly only
be filled by those who work for, or can scrounge long-term
funding commitments from, large companies, governments, or
organizations that see particular benefits to themselves to
having someone on the IESG (or IAB) changes things dramatically
too. And I suggest we are already very far down that slippery
slope.
Speaking as one of those independents who, in recent years, has
had to weigh the costs of every meeting against whether there is
really sufficient benefit to being there (if I hadn't already
made several commitments and missed Berlin, I wouldn't be coming
to Vancouver), I think it might be possible to do three things
without causing more harm than we have done to ourselves already:
(i) We could try to get broad support for the marginal expenses
associated with leadership positions. Not salary or equivalent
(that would cross over into "paying people to occupy the role")
and probably not even the basic costs of attending IETF
meetings, but it might help if the extra costs associated with
retreats, extra days of meetings, etc., became community
expenses rather than additional burdens on people who volunteer
for leadership roles. It would still leave most independents
with the problem of giving up actual income to participate
because a day spent on IETF work is a day or no pay while most
company-sponsored participants continue to draw salaries while
working on IETF things, but, for at least some of us, there is a
large psychological difference between forgone income and out of
pocket expenses.
(ii) We could try to trim these roles back to the 1/4 to 1/2
time they represented 15 or 20 years ago. For many people,
there is a huge difference between "full time commitment for a
couple of years" and "you may need to work hard, long, hours but
can expect to continue to do your day job with real design,
product, implementation, or management responsibilities while
serving as an AD".
Again, the Nomcom can't do much about either of these things
other than trying to recruit and select people who think the
issues are important (if the community actually believes that
they are). However, I think that those of us who are concerned
should remember that these sorts of issues are unlikely to be
personal priorities for any seated IESG member -- after all,
they, by definition, have the time and support needed to do the
job and the Nomcom has yet to fail to fill a position because no
one could be found who was reasonably qualified and willing to
do it.
john