Subject: [newtrk] Maybe a next step outside NEWTRK

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:03:08 -0600

There's always a tension between having people go into a working group 
to talk about something and trying to explain outside the working 
group what we decided in the working group, and this fact isn't news.

But I am wondering (based on some of the Old Standards discussion) if 
the Rest of the IETF really believes that

- it is a problem that people new to the IETF, or even outside the 
IETF, can't figure out what specifications we think we STILL have (re: 
Cruft),

- it is a problem that people new to a technology can't figure out 
what a standard actually contains (re: ISD),

- it is a problem that our process says we do one thing, but we do 
another, and we haven't changed our process to match what we actually 
do in more than a decade (re: maturity levels).

I think we have at least rough consensus inside NEWTRK that these are 
problems, and maybe even that they are not small problems, and I'm 
thinking about how we achieve the same degree of consensus outside 
NEWTRK.

I guess I'm asking if we need to be periodically reporting what we're 
doing outside NEWTRK, before (for instance) the Crufting work pops up 
on the IETF mailing list and the foodfight begins?

I'm glad that the first idea to pop out of NEWTRK was the crufting 
work, because this seems to be low-impact, and gives people the idea 
that changes may be coming, but only shows a small change, not coupled 
to the rest of NEWTRK work (as Eliot says, if we decide that there are 
NO PS specifications that should be moeved to Historic, we write this 
up and move on).

Spencer 

.
newtrk resources:_____________________________________________________
web user interface: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/newtrk.html
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From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 06:17:15 -0800

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Spencer Dawkins

> the Rest of the IETF really believes that

The role of leadership is to realize when an entirely inward looking
organization needs to stop talking to itself and become something else.

There are plenty of folk who are quite happy for the IETF to be nothing more
than a surrogate social life and they are going to be entirely happy talking
to each other about how important it is to preserve the ancient trade guild
customs.

If you want to have some influence on the future of the Internet however the
IETF is going to have to get with the program and have a media strategy that
is at least as effective as the slick operations at W3C and OASIS and the
media outreach efforts of the big six Internets.

There are some big changes about to happen and it would be nice if the IETF
could help enable some of those changes rather than only being mentioned in
the context of how it is to be managed as if it was some slightly demented
elderly relative living in the attic that you really would rather did not
attend the familly celebration but need to be prepared in case it does.
.
newtrk resources:_____________________________________________________
web user interface: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/newtrk.html
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