[governance] 2008 NomCom Report

[Michael Gurstein]

Here I agree with you Suresh, the way in which one gets around the issue of
who is (or is not CS) is by identifying what values/norms are being
articulated by CS and then seeing who "rallies round that particular
flag"... With this approach, many techie folks would be quite legitimately
within the tent and a lot of say "academics" might not...

MG

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net] 
Sent: May 15, 2008 5:53 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein
Subject: Re: [governance] 2008 NomCom Report


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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