[governance] RE: organizational orientation

[Adam Peake]

>Comments below,
>


<snip>


>>  which no one here or on the Arin PPML is discussing. IETF and the 
>>institutions that have emerged out of it have at their core a group 
>>of predominantly American and European white males, all computer 
>>scientists, who have known each other and worked together 
>>intensively for 30 years. They form a tightly-knit social network. 
>>They have their own culture. The treatment you will receive from 
>>this group depends on who you know in that group and what they say 
>>about you.
>
>My evidence is contrary to this, and not only from my own point of 
>view.  The best example I can think of is one of a lawyer from a 
>rights advocacy group who started an IETF process to look at the 
>privacy implications of the standards that were in the process of 
>development.  He was welcomed and respected.


I know the same person (and won't name them as I haven't permission 
to quote or paraphrase, but George can check easily enough.)  He was 
welcomed and respected and was able to influence the direction of a 
couple of essential (in my view) standards.  But he also told me it 
took a couple of meetings and a record of contribution on working 
group mailing lists to be accepted and essentially become a 
functioning part of the group. You need to speak their language, and 
make clear that you are there to see it through. Once you are able to 
show you are serious, know your stuff, you're in.

I think this is important --  for one thing I think to shows probably 
George and Milton are correct.  My experience with RIRs has been more 
welcoming/speedy, at least in the early days of APNIC, perhaps things 
have changed.

As one of our interests is capacity building and enabling 
participation of new people (developing countries) to governance 
processes then the story of our lawyer and the IETF (lawyer also with 
computing background, so he wasn't like a legal bambi wandering among 
geek hunters) is worrying.

For the future of the IETF it's worrying (Jeanette knows much more 
about this), the reason I spoke to this person was as part of a 
project looking at governance processes for standards making around 
NGN/Internet. Head of standards of a large EU telco said one reason 
they'd reduced the numbers they sent to the IETF was that it took new 
people so long to be accepted.  And in large teams the same person 
may not go each time (even in small teams.) ETSI, ITU and some new 
forums they set up specifically because of such problems are more 
welcoming, if you have the right name badge and say something that 
makes sense people listen.  If you come from the same department as 
someone who made sense at the previous meeting, people listen.  If 
you talk rubbish, you get ignored whatever your name badge (except in 
the more political ITU WG where you're made chair :-)  ... that's my 
guess, not what the telco guy said.)

And of course I expect the telco guy was spinning his own story in 
favor of an NGN that was more to his telco liking.  And I am not 
trying to imply the IETF does bad work and ETSI good (what would I 
know...), but if the carriers aren't there, there are problems.


>>  Full stop. Once you get on the bad side of one or two of these 
>>people, it doesn't matter what you say or how much you know about 
>>relevant issues, you will not be listened to. You are marked as an 
>>outsider and an enemy and that's that.
>
>I believe that this is an incorrect representation of the truth.


It's whether you read this as black/white.  With shades of grey I can 
think of a number of very smart people who speak at ICANN. 
Successful, thoughtful people who spend a lot of personal time on the 
organization, not just to make money (partly) or for self-promotion, 
and who are ignored more often than they should be.  They are not 
outsiders, just not insiders.

Adam


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