Re: RFC 3929 on Alternative Decision Making Processes for Consensus-Blocked Decisions in the IETF (fwd)

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Andrew Newton wrote:

> > This scheme would put excessive power in the hands of the few: the 
> > Chairs, who are appointed (indirectly) by the elite few who can pay 
> > non-trivial sums of money to attend lots of IETF meetings, such sums 
> > generally provided by large corporations with entrenched interests.
> 
> Do you attend the IETF meetings on a regular basis?  I ask this because 
> at the IETF meetings I attend I have met a non-trivial number of people 
> who work for non-profits, government agencies, academic institutions, 
> and one-man consulting shops.  I am good friends with several 
> individuals who paid their own way to IETF meetings while unemployed, 
> including trips abroad.  While funding trips to the IETF requires real 
> money, characterizing those who do as the "elite few" is a 
> mischaracterization.

I'm one of those who pays for conferenses out of my own money and its hard 
thing and I always try to shave off as much of expense as possible (staying 
in smaller $50/day hotels if possible, driving my car to the conference if 
its nearby, etc). The conference itself is also expensive for those of
us not working under large corporation - especailly if we have to attend
it 3 times a year. Its good thing for me lately that my main clients are 
all doing ok (.bust seems to have stabilized into slow growth).

Still Mathew is right that elite that come to every meeting are the one
that make most of the decisions. Those others of us there can advise them 
and show support or lock of it and hope the do the right thing but if you 
do not attent the meeting you can't even vote the person out of IESG - do 
remember being able to part of selection commitee that decides on area 
director posts, you  need to have attended 3 out of 5 meetings in person.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[email protected]