On Mar 22, 2013, at 5:47 AM, Dave Cridland <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > But I suspect the idea that there are fewer companies when the word "startup" seems to automatically imply something Internet related is wrong. There's plenty of small companies, but engagement in the IETF is either irrelevant - because the IETF has slipped lower down the stack - or too expensive - because when you have fewer than 10 people in your organization, losing one engineer for half a day a week of IETF activity represents 1%, whereas if you've a company of even "just" a thousand, losing an engineer to the IESG full time is an order of magnitude less. That's not considering the cost as an issue, which it undoubtedly is for a small company, especially those outside the US for whom the travel costs are higher. These sorts of arguments would make more sense if it weren't the case that the candidate pool published by the nomcom is more diverse (in this and other ways) than the people who are selected by the nomcom. Granted, it may be that the list of _qualified_ candidates is less diverse than the set of all people who are willing to run. But, if so, that isn't because there aren't companies who are willing/able to support candidates... Margaret