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

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

On 7/4/2019 10:23 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> For the record, I'm not exactly sure which hat I'm wearing at the
> moment, but this message does contain a reference to an Internet
> Society policy.
That's fine.
>
> On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 09:20:46AM -0400, Michael StJohns wrote:
>> It's pretty hard to not take the above with a grain of salt. You're not just
>> an ISOC employee, but the president and CEO and as such have a lot of sway
>> over the funding ISOC provides to the IETF.
> Ok.  So, there are two possibilities:
>
> 1.  I continue to participate as an individual sometimes, in which
> case I make the above disclaimer.  (See below for why.)
>
> 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'

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.  
Posting something that makes one side or the other on a discussion 
perceive that you're not an honest broker for a balanced view would tend 
to reduce your moral authority and possibly the legitimacy of some of 
the decisions, or so I would think.  Not saying we're there yet, but 
it's better to avoid the 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.

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.

>
> Are you advocating (2)?  I can see an argument for it, but it's not
> entirely in keeping with the IETF traditions.  (Of course, those
> traditions are not timeless, and there might be good reasons to change
> them.)
>
>> I can't remember Lynn or Cathy making a "not speaking for" statement in the
>> time they were in your job, but this is the third from you in last day or
>> so.
> It was one of the "new rules" we adopted for Internet Society staff.
> I announced them in March:
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/Ugu6O_5tCnNzTUmVzIuhNFKPzbE.
> I'm not surprised that Lynn or Kathy didn't make such statements,
> since they weren't operating under those rules.

Nope - that wasn't it.  I feel confident that Lynn would have tagged 
something she said with this if she needed differentiation, but she 
mostly stayed out of the internals of what we were.  I would assume that 
Cathy, not being brought up in the community, probably didn't say 
anything that would have been inappropriate for the CEO/President to say.

In any event, I've had my say and hopefully you understand the reasons.  
We're in a new era where for the first time the ISOC president was once 
in the trenches of the IETF. That's going to have some growing pains and 
probably some new more explicit boundaries.

Later, Mike


>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>