Re: Posting and disclaimer (was Re: "Early rebid" (was Re: letters from Ted & Alissa))

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Dear colleagues,

I'm writing in my capacity as President and CEO of the Internet
Society.

On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 11:48:49AM -0400, Michael StJohns wrote:
> On 7/4/2019 10:23 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> > 2.  I don't participate as an individual.
> 
> There's sort of a 2' where you can participate as an individual in technical
> matters, but you refrain from posting to the various types of existential
> and behavioral discussion we've had recently, because it's a *lot* easier
> differentiating Andrew the CEO from Andrew the IC in the technical
> situation.   My preference is for 2, but I could live with 2'

Sorry, Mike, for the laggy response, but I thought I'd see whether
there were any more other responses after the US long weekend.

My view is that it is not possible to perform the clean separation you
propose with 2', since it's not clear to me where any expertise I may
ever have had might be more useful.  My most recent relevant
experiences at the IETF seem to me to do with the details of how we
operate as a group as much as with wire details, and since we don't
really have different processes for dealing with one of these or the
other it's not even clear to me when we might jump the track from one
"kind" of issue to the other.  So I think 2' would have to boil down
to 2 anyway.  But I am not convinced that 2 is the right answer:
 
> Basically, you as CEO hold a lot of our purse strings, and also appoint the
> Nomcom chair and manage the ISOC's part of the appeals process.

It is true that I (and I alone) appoint the nomcom chair, and would
appoint the chair of any recall committee if we ever ran that process
through.  I do not hold the purse strings, however: the IETF LLC is
funded in part by allocations that are made by the Internet Society
Board of Trustees, and I do not have a vote in such decisions (though
I cheerfully concede that I likely have some influence).  The only
role I have in any appeal that might make it to the ISOC BoT, as far
as I can tell, is basically secretarial: "The President of the
Internet Society shall acknowledge such an appeal within two weeks,
and shall at the time of acknowledgment advise the petitioner of the
expected duration of the Trustees' review of the appeal."

> moral authority and possibly the legitimacy of some of the decisions, or so
> I would think.

Given the above responsibilities, it's hard for me to know which
legitimacy might be affected.

> problem than have to come up with a cure later.  As of this point you might
> have to recuse yourself from any of the subjects on which you've commented
> if they become part of an appeals process.

Since I cannot vote on any appeal, I also cannot recuse myself from
voting.

> If it were me, I'd assume that for the next two years (or until contract
> termination), posting as an individual is probably not actually posting as
> an individual and constrain my postings appropriately.

Given the other comments I received on this topic, both on- and
off-list, I respectfully thank you for this advice, but have decided
to pursue a policy more in keeping with the one I posted last March.
That is, when I think there is something I have to offer, which I
expect to be rare, then I will offer it as an individual under the
prevailing Internet Society policy on the matter.  If there is a
policy to announce (like this), I will do so in my ISOC role.  I
believe that this explicit attention to which hat someone is wearing
has served our community well historically, and it is something many
of us find we have to do more or less often.  I'd prefer not to create
very different expectations for someone in this or that role.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
[e-mail]
[phone]