Re: Connections, and timing (was: IETF chair)

[Amelia Andersdotter <[e-mail]>]

On 2020-10-14 17:20, Keith Moore wrote:
>
> On 10/14/20 10:14 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>> Historically, the people who have the right connections win.
>
> Connections help, and timing helps too.   If you propose something at
> a time when the technology is just about ready, and there's an
> emerging awareness of the problem, and there's enough energy to
> overcome the inertia imposed by the status quo, it's a lot more likely
> to succeed than if you propose the same thing either too soon or too
> late.    There's a strong bias against "old" ideas even if their time
> has now come; people would rather consider a new proposal than an old one.
>
+1

The IETF can use procedures to make it more obvious who is exercising
what influence (and in other organisations it's common with such
procedures) but it's unlikely that connections/timing/politics will be
eradicated.

There's a very famous feminist text from the 1970s on specifically the
use of procedure to mitigate power imbalances:
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm although Adam Curtis'
criticism of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes basically also
illustrate the same problem with structurelessness.

best regards,

-- 
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Amelia Andersdotter
IETF SHMOO WG Co-Chair
https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/shmoo/about/

Director of Strategic Initiatives, CENTR
www.centr.org
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