On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 6:27 PM Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 7/28/18 1:56 PM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> First of all, just because the IETF pays support doesn't meant
> the person becomes an employee of the IETF. This should rather be
> handled as it is for politicians (and hopefully the amount of time
> in an AD role is short enough that there will be no entrenchment
> to the financing body).
You might want to chat with someone from the US about money
and politicians. Anyway, it's not at all clear to me that
a funded position is necessarily funded by the IETF or ISOC -
there may be opportunities to get support funding from an
outside charitable organization/foundation as a way to broaden
IETF leadership (I believe that the narrowness and homogeneity
of the candidate pool for I* positions narrows the scope and
effectiveness of the IETF, as well).
Has anyone tried writing up basically a business case (possibly per area)
to help candidates convince their management - possibly with relatively
well-known folks willing to talk to them or provide feedback on perceived
value?
I do think the consolidation & industry changes are a real problem - but I
also think that when large companies aren't willing to fund, it is from not
being convinced of the value (including opportunity cost) and not from
actual lack of money. Where money for such a role is may be quite different
than in the development part of a company, where candidates may be located.
I now I don't have all the details right for how to do this, but it seems a relatively
low-cost mechanism to work on broadening the pool. An informal broker who
knows about options for consulting folks looking for support, might also be useful.
Or we can continue to fret & see no change - or hear better ideas & act on them.
Regards,
Alia
That said, I suspect that this is another problem space in
which the law of unintended consequences will tend to dominate
and I would guess that adding a professional technical staff to
the IETF will change the character of the organization, and
not for the better. I am rather certain that there are a number
of other ways in which the problem of a shallow candidate pool
can be addressed, many of which will not carry the same
risks (say, for example, reducing our dependence on meetings,
changing the document review and publication process, improving
the technical chops in some of the directorates, etc.).
Melinda
