[governance] Norbert's hat

[Norbert Bollow]

Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

> In message <20130127170101.4c2cfce2 at quill.bollow.ch>, at 17:01:01 on 
> Sun, 27 Jan 2013, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> writes
> 
> >[with IGC Coordinator hat on]
> 
> Perhaps it would help if everyone you assumed you had your hat on at
> all times, unless you specifically say something is a personal
> comment. I think that's been the understanding re co-ordinators in
> the past.

Perhaps I should have explained the history behind my habit of
using bracketed headings to formally differentiate between roles in
contexts where I have different roles with different responsibilities.
This goes back to when in the Swiss mirror committee for ISO/IEC JTC1
SC34 (which covers in particular the standardization of document
formats) I was elected as Convenor (that's how the chairperson gets
called in that context). Microsoft was very concerned about that
because since I had previously made some impact as a critic of their
OOXML document format and of the way in which the approval as an
ISO standard of the description of that format had been pursued. So
they requested that I be very careful to distinguish between my role as
representative of an open source organization and the role of Convenor.
This worked out really well, and helped reduce the tension to a minimum
so that constructive work became possible after it was clearly seen
that in the Convenor role I was treating them very fairly.

Here in the Caucus the tensions have never been as strong as they had
been in that mirror committee, but some tensions exist also. For
example, Bill Drake hinted in a recent message about a risk of someone
pursuing personal interests like security topics or the IETF while
neglecting the needs of the Caucus in relation to the IGF. Very
obviously that was a dig directed at me personally.

In any case I'd like the default to be that if something is not
explicitly marked as being part of the Coordinator role, I'd like it
to be taken as not more than a personal opinion that (beyond what
whatever arguments I may have presented to support it) does not
claim to have any more weight than the opinion of any other member of
the Caucus.

I wouldn't mind exchanging the "coordinator hat" for "coordinator
socks" or "coordinator sandals" though :-)

Greetings,
Norbert

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