[governance] 2008 NomCom Report

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Michael Gurstein [15/05/08 10:39 -0700]:
>In a very interesting side conversation Milton (and I believe Wolfgang) both
>agreed to the proposition that CS was a "category" (think about the age

[...]

>That is, CS in the IGF is about the pursuit of the public good (in the
>context of the Internet) or it is about nothing at all.

There is a devil lurking in this level of detail.. varying definitions of
"the public good" depending what branch of CS a particular person or org
comes from. Those would lead to personal preferences alone (not necessarily
a conflict of interest situation over different CS group's agendas, as
McTim suggest in his email) being sufficient to pull CS in different
directions, and impede consensus.

And the other devil lurking here is that there appear to be widely varying
definitions of the CS - at least some of which specifically exclude private
sector technical community members from participating. And I do note
there's a lack of consensus here too, with fiercely argued and polarized
positions.

You aren't going to get CS move from "category" to "stakeholder community"
till there is at least some effort made to bridge these gaps. And
alienating the technical community (or drawing artificial dividing lines
based on whether the person is a technician for a non profit like CPSR, or
whether he has a day job in the private sector) doesnt just widen this
particular bridge, it effectively prevents CS from having a meaningful
stake in this process, driven by the broad lack of understanding of the
underlying technical issues involved, or the current processes (often
consensus based and member driven) that govern these issues.
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