On Feb 17, 2014, at 6:10 PM, Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
wrote:
factotum
This may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, but just in case you are
serious, no, this is not what IETF "leaders" do, so the word isn't appropriate.
That is, we are active participants in the community who are responsible for
things like facilitating and evaluating the consensus process and deciding what
work we are willing to do within our areas. There's a great deal more agency
here than "factotum" implies.
Really, the notion that leaders are bosses or controllers is mistaken. Even
in organizations where leaders perform these roles, it's because the
participants in the organization decide to follow them to a greater or lesser
degree, not because they exert any actual control. The term for a person who
uses coercion to establish control is "despot," not "leader."
My personal experience as an IETF "leader" is that I listen to what people say,
think about it, occasionally salt it with my own ideas, and then repeat it
back, and people either agree and go along, or more often debate some more.
So to my mind the right term for "leaders" in the context of the IETF would be
agents provocateurs, but it would probably be misinterpreted by the media.
:)