[governance] COMMENTS SOUGHT: draft letter to ISOC on selection of T&A nominees for CSTD WG on EC

[William Drake]

Hi

On Mar 16, 2013, at 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:

> That brings up an interesting question.
> 
> How many technical people in civil society do we currently have here? [never mind wider and narrower ranges of experience]
> 
> Nick Ashton-Hart, McTim, Jeremy, me .. I can think of maybe a handful more.  Add people with a dual technical / policy background (Bill Drake, George Sadowsky ..).

FWIW I've contributed nothing to 'technically building the net', and my having been an ISOC member since the 90s or being involved in ICANN now probably translates into a 0% likelihood that I'd ever be considered for a TC 'slot' either.  On the other hand, the former is true of many folks that'd be considered TC for this and other purposes.

It'd be great if each SG had clear and principles-based definitions and boundaries, but instead we're dealing with self-defined tribes.  Conflating the 'technical' and the 'academic' communities into one category just triples down on the problem.  This is utter nonsense and and inevitably a bit insulting to academics who are deemed (usually by non-academics, as it happens) to be not worthy.  If we wanted to write a letter to someone, I'd send it to the UN and ask them to kindly cease and desist from using the fabricated term, "technical and academic community," anywhere.

In contrast, I agree with those who don't see what is to be gained by sending this particular letter.   Constance and other ISOCers are on this list and will have already seen it, so spending cycles tweaking the words seems a bit pointless.  Dialogue that starts on an adversarial note is unlikely to go far.  Potentially more useful would be cross-SG discussion on baseline coordination/information sharing expectations in those situations where we have to work together.  Right now inter-species communication tends to be based on personal relationships and trust among subsets of each group.  Years of people chatting at dinners and saying 'gee, we really ought to work together more effectively' have never led to real efforts to make that happen.  I don't know if this can change, but I doubt that this letter would put us on that path.

Best,

Bill




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