On 20/10/2013, at 4:52 PM, Yoav Nir <ynir(_at_)checkpoint(_dot_)com> wrote:
Does it ever work that way? Did a manager ever tell you, "the market needs a
re-write of the HTTP documents, and being the good corporate citizens that we
are, go ahead and volunteer to chair httpbis" ?
My manager was happy to support me when I brought it up, and both they and the
chain above them has done so through three successive employers. Go figure.
Even for the actual writing of drafts, there's multiple examples of resources
being found for documents that the market does not demand, and for documents
that are useful and it's hard to find people willing to
edit/contribute/review. Corporations would rationally prefer to wait for some
other body to pony up their human resources. The only reason we have a
relatively large pool of WG chairs is that the cost is low enough such that
medium to large corporations can consider this "in the noise". Apparently the
time allocation for an AD job is not that insignificant.
Like I said, devil's advocate. However, I sometimes think starting new work is
too easy. The trick is sorting the speculative stuff that's important (and
likely to be successful) from that which isn't.
Cheers,
--
Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/