--On Saturday, 28 July, 2018 12:55 -0400 Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John, have you never had a consulting job? When you have had > one, were you required to not do other work as a condition of > employment? I have no employment other than consulting since early 2002, had periods of consulting-only work before that, and had consulting privileges during most of the circa 25 years I had an MIT appointment. I don't believe I've ever been in an exclusive, nominally full time, consulting role for a single company, but I have certainly had clients and potential who had strong opinions about who I should be spending my time with and on what when I was not working on their tasks, combinations that have led to some rather complex negotiations. I've also had clients who don't want what I'm doing for them, or that I'm doing anything at all for them. made public and a few where I've restricted their rights to make the relationship public. I've been through a few situations where someone has wanted to pay for only a few hours a week but wants me to drop all of my other clients and have no responsibilities except to them or where they have wanted to know about and pre-approve any other possible clients and the work I propose to do for them, but those discussions have either led to their adjusting their expectations or my walking away without a contract with them. So, yes, I've had consulting jobs and I don't quite understand your point. > I agree that some of the issues you've brought > up are real obstacles, but it's not as if there aren't real > obstacles as it is, and I think it is definitely true that > there are completely insurmountable obstacles for a lot of IETF > participants—being at a company that can afford to have you > on the IESG is a fairly privileged situation. Indeed. And there is no question that is a problem for the potential pool of candidates nor that, as the list of companies willing to lend talented people to the IETF for at least two or four years (and support extensive travel, etc.) gets smaller (due to consolidation and economic ebb and flow) the risks of an IESG (or IAB) dominated by a small number of companies increases. So does the risk, with some companies, of our having volunteers to serve who are either second-rate of whose job specialties are other than engineering design, implementations, or operations because the time of the people whose talents lie in those areas is just too valuable to the company. I think we should be worried about those issues, indeed very worried. I think there are some things we should be doing to mitigate the problems and risks although it is not clear to me that many of them are compatible with our pretending that everyone is participating as an individual nor with the Nomcom model as currently practiced. I just don't think that having the IETF employ and pay ADs is any part of a plausible fix (or even improvement). > Christian, what prevents the IETF from being captured by the > ADs now? Is it the case that any organization that pays its > workers is hopeless, that there is no feedback mechanism that > can prevent the kind of capture you describe? My answer to the first question is that very little prevents such capture, other than the different organizations and perspectives of the ADs, and that it would be wise for us to think more about what precautions are appropriate. As to the latter, if you have a way to prevent a collection of IETF-paid ADs, especially ones who also control IETF administrative strategy and include people who sit on the IAOC, etc., from turning into a long-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracy (noting, e.g., that the IAD and Secretariat are paid out of the same pocket and are likely to have mutual interests), maybe there is a way to prevent the problems to which Christian (and others) have referred. History in other organizations suggests there is not, even with much stronger firewalls between bodies than we have chosen to create. john
