On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 12:46:29AM -0400, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> I don't think paying ADs works. And if you remember, I had a position as a
> paid AD at W3C.
>
> Why don't people think they are equivalent? Well, its because the people
> you can afford pay to do that job are going to be folk starting out in
> their careers. And it is the person, not just the position that gives the
> position authority.
Is this a recommendation to NomCom ? If the candidate can't show
that he/she is drawing top dollars from a big industry player, he/she is
not going to have the authority for the job ?
I think exactly this is the problem, not the solution, but this
whole discussion is a mood secondary point. The initial proof point IMHO
is for NomCom to have a discussion with candidates stepping away from
nominations or worse from acceptance of a section due to funding. And
figure out from such discussions if any actual evidence could be
collected that additional funding options would widen the pool of
_relevant_ candidates.
> Once you have paid staff, the relationship becomes very different.
There where several memos in this thread that nobody is talking about
paid staff but the same independent/, unaccountable individual
contributors OVERSEEING IETF operations, just with additional
funding options - but no ties attached.
> I thought we were going to create something like the MIT media lab. Having
> made billions for Microsoft et. al., they could give us a few million to do
> whacky stuff with little expectation of success. Ask for $50K from
> Microsoft and it will come from a middle manager with a budget and the need
> to show they are spending it wisely. Ask for $2 million and they know they
> are never going to see it back.
At best the IRTF has a chance at such risky money since the IETF
stepped away from most technology innovation that is any further away
than what product manager in the big players can foresee to make money
from without a lot of risk. Also Media Labs works on solutions/applications,
which is much easier to sell to venture capital than a lot of strange
alterations to the network infra without any clear linkage to easy money.
> Of course in the proto-IETF, the AD positions were paid, they were
> the ARPA program managers. I can't see going back to that model.
Sure. Its reverted. ADs are now more likely the IETF program
advisor if not manager in their big industry player employer.
> Once you have staff you need reporting structures and accountability. The
> AD selection process is intentionally designed to avoid accountability.
See memos.
Cheers
Toerless
> If the IETF was going to have paid staff, it would be a different
> organization and the staff would be in support roles rather than
> quasi-managerial and they would be looking at the needs of Internet users
> generally. If the IETF was going to do that then it would really need
> another name like the Internet Society, say.
>
>
> The IETF could do things that would allow the IESG to avoid doing quite as
> much makework but I don't know if a reduction in work is possible because
> even if all the vanity crypto and RFCs that are only needed to issue code
> points in registries are stripped away, work will expand to fill the
> available time.
