Diane,
> The question of determining
> consensus based on random physical and virtual participation is,
> IMHO, one of the most compelling issues facing the Internet.
I entirely agree with you, and one of the severest criticisms of
ICANN is that it has resolutely ignored this issue, both in the
context of legitimating its own Board procedures and in defining
how the 'membership' is to participate.
> Again, you have taken my comments about Working Committees and
> applied them to the Interim Board. I specifically referred to what
> I believed worked best for the development of complex proposals.
> In many cases the committee knows very little about what the end
> result should be...that's the purpose of the working group (to
> gather information, evaluate it and perhaps make recommendations).
> I think the purpose of the Board meetings, on the other hand,
> *should* be to hear complaints and suggestions from the community
> as well as to attempt to assess consensus on all issues.
>
I appreciate your first hand experience in working with both email
and f2f groups on similar issues. The origin of the thread however
was Ben's rationalization of the limits placed on remote
participation at an open Board meeting, so I supposed you
considered the MAC situation relevant. Nevertheless, the
distinction you are now making is entirely germane: there is a
difference between an exploratory, info-gathering process and a
decision-making one -- and this distinction (some call it 'horizontal'
vs 'vertical' communication) should be clearly understood in any
administrative structure.
What we seem to have here is an appointed board which is
exploring, and committees which are making decisions. Then,
every 3 months, the board comes together to make its decisions
with a veneer of open participation -- by a public which thinks there
are still issues to be explored. (Thus my rubber-stamp allusion; did
you think I was suggesting that input from the floor was likely to be
adopted then and there?)
On the other hand, the subject of all the toing and froing is the
Internet, which as Richard pointed out, has been managing/
managed very largely by email. Is it that the EEs didnt understand
the difference between exploring and decisionmaking when a new
device or revised protocol might be available the next day? Is
everything really so cut-and-dried now that its 'technical' governors
can aspire to 'vertical' communicative patterns alone, and leave the
horizontal messiness to the SOs and interest groups whose voices
arent very loud anyhow? Is the announcement imminent that IPv6
(or 8!) has been adopted by *this board?
===
The e-mail versus eyeball-to-eyball thread has been very helpful in
getting some of the pros and cons spelled out, even granting the
clear bias (of familiarity?) towards the latter. Isnt it a pity there isnt
a venue (working group?) in which their implications for Net
governance could be elaborated -- and from which some sort of
position statement could emerge? But obviously, we shouldnt
expect to do it entirely by email! What say we meet in Havana?
kerry
