Subject: Re: [edu-team] Knowledge and suggestions

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 08:24:51 -0500

--On Thursday, February 27, 2014 08:21 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Took this to the EDU team list.
> 
> John, I haven't been tracking every twist of this thread, but:
> 
> On 27/02/2014 03:52, John C Klensin wrote:
>> 
>> --On Wednesday, February 26, 2014 09:13 -0500 Thomas Narten
>> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>>> I've advocated making the mailing list or its archives
>>>> available on a read-only basis to the broader community
>>>> and/or broadcasting the training sessions on an
>>>> informational, listen-only, basis. 
> 
> Does this mean the WG Chair lunches?

yes, plus any WG Chair-oriented training sessions that might
occur, e.g., in Sunday.

> Obviously they are not secret, but they are pretty informal
> and often last-minute. I'm not sure that streaming them or
> recording a video would be very effective.

I'm not either but that is almost irrelevant; see below.

> There is a record, of sorts, at
> https://www.ietf.org/edu/wg-and-bof-chair-presentations.html

Yes, "of sorts".  This link is not publicized,  the quality is
highly variable, and it doesn't capture the discussion.

I see two problems in all of this that might be worth at least
thinking about:

(1) One of our goals ought to be to give people the skills so
that they can be selected as WG Chairs and do a good job at it.
Any activity we run that is limited to sitting WG Chairs may
improve the skills of those who are already in WG Chair
positions, but don't do a thing to grow the pool.  And
"congratulations, you now have this no position which you are
expected to start performing on now but for which training may
be available only in some months" works about as well in the
IETF as it does in industry and government.  Mostly the
alternative of appointing people who have no basis for knowing
how to do the job reinforces the tendency of ADs to keep reusing
the same people over and over again.  That, in turn, creates
"private club" impressions.

(2) One of the drivers and consequences of an increased focus on
geographical diversity is that we are accumulating an increased
population of newcomers, some very aggressive about how they
participate and some very shy about their ideas.  I think the
general trend is good and that both groups are inevitable.  But
any sign of what has been referred to on the list as "private
club" is bad news if only because of how it can be
misinterpreted.   I think we can comfortably explain why a WG
Chair lunch has to be limited to current WG chairs and some
specific invitees, but keeping its training content and
discussion private raises suspicions.  I think it is harder to
justify things like WG Chair beer evenings and
invite-by-word-of-mouth Scotch BOFs and that it would be wise of
us to pay attention and make some extra outreach efforts before
the noise starts.

best,
   john