--On Wednesday, May 15, 2013 18:25 +0200 Thomas Narten <narten@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I don't think the IETF needs to be in the profile/resume > business. There are plenty of other places that do a fine job > already. > > What I do think the IETF should do is *require* that > participants identify themselves. That means knowing who they > are (a name and email contact) and an affiliation. For 80% of > the participants, this info is not very hard to figure out > (see below). But we also have participants that use obscure > email handles that don't correlate to anything obvious, > whether a real person or to a name in the list of registered > attendees, etc. I suspect these folk are *not* intenending to > be anonymous participants, but in practice they are. Thomas, I completely agree, but.. > Also, for some reason, some people who register don't bother > giving an affiliation. In some cases this is intentional, but > there are others where it doesn't make sense (e.g., someone > who has worked for the same employer for 10+ years and is > still working for that employer). > > E.g., if you look at the registration list for Orland0, fully > 180 names don't list affiliations -- and there are a number > pretty obvious surprises in that list... Ok. I'm probably one of the 180, although I would be surprised if I were one of the "obvious surprises". I had a corporate affiliation until somewhat over a decade ago and showed that affiliation when asked for it on registration, IAB and IESG mini-biographies, etc. Since then, I have been an independent consultant. I don't consider the way my business is organized, whether it has other employees or not, etc., to be any of the IETF's business. In order to respond to an implied part of your question, in that last decade or so, I have never been paid by a client to attend IETF or to represent that client's interests. That has been largely by choice and driven by a desire to stay absolutely independent. I have accepted travel money and waivers of registration fees on a few (very few) occasions, but never, in my post-corporate life, compensation for my time spent of IETF. So, what would you have me (and others like me) put on registration forms so that I'm not part of that undifferentiated "180 names"? I objected several years ago to the Secretariat listing me as "Independent" because I know of multiple organizations/ enterprises with "Independent" in their names (including, apparently, six separate ones with second-level domain names in six popular gTLDs I checked). You tell me how to fill in that form a way that doesn't misrepresent my situation or disclose information that is irrelevant to the IETF and I will happily do it. Up through the last IETF meeting, I could most closely approximate that condition by leaving the information box blank. To pursue this a tad further, for the purposes for which you want affiliations, someone who is legally a consultant or independent contractor rather than an employee but who is being paid by a firm to attend IETF may have no less obligation to consider the interests of that firm in their IETF actions than you have to IBM. They might even have more of an obligation. If you want affiliation information in the interest of openness --and, again, I think that would be a really good idea-- than such a person is not "independent" or representing only themselves. If we are trying to determinate affiliation to evaluate positions, he or she is definitely affiliated with that firm and should be listing it (ideally as "consultant to..." or "contractor to..."). On of the other side of that coin, in prior professional lives, I've been in situations in which an employer or research sponsor has essentially said "you are welcome to attend IETF as long as you can show (in a way that will satisfy auditors) that you did so entirely on your own time, with no portion of your salary during that time or your expenses attributable to the company. In most cases, that person is as independent of company control over positions taken as I am -- far more so than a consultant who is being paid to represent a company at IETF or to come to IETF in order to advise the company on IETF strategy. She may even be constrained to not mention the company's name in conjunction with IETF efforts for fear that mention will be taken as endorsement. What would you like to see on the registration form? Finally, do any of the answers change if the consultant or contractor either is employed directly by a consulting firm that pays a salary or is an individual but more organized as a business than I have chosen to be? Is the affiliation you want the name of the nominal employer of the organizational identity of whomever is really paying the bills and/or calling the tune? Relative to overall IETF participation, all of the above may be edge cases. For reasons similar to those of the "diversity" debates, I have no way to guess how many there actually are in the registrant or participant communities. But, if one were to look only at present and past WG Chairs, document authors, and IAB and IESG members, I wouldn't be surprised to find that people in those ambiguous situations were somewhat overrepresented. I think it is all very well to ask for affiliations in principle and, also in principle, I agree that it is a good idea. But, in practice, I think there are a lot of clarifications and other changes that would be required and that might or might not be practical. best, john