On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 02:26:51PM -0800, Melinda Shore 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.
I was thinking which of the problems with politician payments would
similarily occur with ADs if we'd offer payment through IETF/ISOC, but
i could not come up with one. Maybe i don't have enough imagination.
> 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
Definitely.
> (I believe that the narrowness and homogeneity
> of the candidate pool for I* positions narrows the scope and
> effectiveness of the IETF, as well).
>
> 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.
Opening up funding options for AD candidates does not mean that
they would become more professional. Maybe even rather the opposite,
but i think that cold be fixed by providing more training options.
> 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.).
Given how a lot of those options have also been discussed, i don't
think we will make progress if we just try to argue option stack
ranking instead of trying to figure out what the best approach to
ech individual option would be.
In any case, i think it would be great if NomCom could collect any
insight into whether the candidate pool would have increased if there
where more funding options. E.g.: if nominees decline due to funding
have a NomCom talk with them and ask if such funding option would have
made a difference. Otherwise it's all theory anyhow.
Cheers
Toerless
> Melinda
