On Jul 9, 2013, at 3:58 PM, Spencer Dawkins <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 7/9/2013 8:59 AM, Scott Brim wrote: >> The sample is better at 140 if individuals represent themselves, but not if they are swayed by their organizational affiliation, and organization is now a significant factor in what we can expect from volunteers -- not all, but even some of those from organizations where the volunteers are long time participants. I support this idea. I think the gain is greater than the loss, and it even fosters diversity. > > I don't have a lot of time to chat about this, but > > - I agree with Scott that it matters what voting members are guided by (organization, personal experience, intuition, flipping coins ...) > - I suspect that it's not possible to predict what any 10 voting members chosen at random will be guided by > - I'm not sure we can even know what the 10 voting members *were* guided by, unless the behavior is so bad that the advisor freaks out or the chair tells us in the plenary Nomcom report > > If people want to think about the Nomcom volunteer pool, it may be useful to wonder about whether the perspective of voting members from more organizations would help the Nomcom make better choices. > > Of course, I'm not sure we can predict that, either :-) Dear Spencer, Precisely because it is impossible to judge motivations, the only way to ensure fairness is to ensure broad participation. It seems unfortunate an organization dedicated to developing the Internet has not done more to ensure those obtaining remote access are not treated as second class participants. This should greatly increase the available talent. The larger pool could be coupled with a meeting subscription to offset the loss of fees collected at meeting venues. To improve the experience, a flash based netbook coupled with the projector and PA could improve remote access into being much closer to a face-to-face experience worthy of fees requested. Importantly, both face-to-face and remote participants should be able to obtain equal roles. If the Internet is down, so is the meeting. That may make venue selection more dependent upon the quality of the Internet availability. Imagine real time translations made possible actually enhancing regional understanding. Regards, Douglas Otis