Theres is, of course, no reason why we can't have areas for information
intended for the general public, in language that is intended to inform
them in a way that is meaningful to them....
I'll address those notions, and parts of your comments below...
Hugh Dierker wrote:
...I own a TLD. I conspire with my techies to do my bidding...
Well then Hugh, might I encourage you to join TLDA then? Membership is
free. It's a simple matter to either take a screen shot or jot down the
required information required on the membership application, and then
you or your proxy can work to make a difference in the world ;)
That's not a rhetorical question, but rather, an open ended invitation.
so anytime you like, you are welcome :)
Even if you don't wish to join, we still represent the interests of the
industry which you are involved in by virtue of your being a TLD Holder.
If you want to contribute a banner in standard form or alert us as to
any press releases, we'll make sure we plug you.
...If the archetect says to the "homeowner" you do not understand
flying buttresses, greenboard and concepts of weight bearing so you
cannot understand the home -- he will be poor and hungry very quickly.
Lawyers do not have Bar Associations to learn how to treat each other
better (well maybe bad example)
You get my point. Please consider my intent and approach as to how to
make the TLDA more accessible to consumers. They may not need to
participate but they do need to understand...
I can relate ;)
>
>> /From reading it, I get the impression this club is only for
brainiacs and sophisticated computer engineering folk./
>>
> That is why a non-technically oriented TLD Holder may, at their
pleasure, designate someone to be the TLDA Member representing their
TLD. It was understood a long time ago that it is often the case that
when an idea is a great idea, a savvy businessperson will employ
someone with the true ability to launch a product, to launch their
product. It is often the case that the savvy businessperson is the
money person, and the brainiac that makes it all work has no
independent command of the resources needed to support the business
infrastructure.
XXXXXXX
But then you got bupkiss for interfacing with the world. You up
there!! Can you hear me from your ivory tower that controls all
internet communications???
Point taken ;) I remember having the fear of God put into me one day at
UCSD - the first day of an O-Chem class.Tthe professor, a Nobel
Laureate, came into the auditorium and began to explain the syllabus to
us 400 or so undergrads. He kinda lost it, and went into some tirade
about his research (Way beyond our comprehension), pausing after a few
minutes of scribbling what appeared to us as gibberish on the black
boards spanning from one side of the auditorium to the other, and then,
he totally freaked out.
I mean, like a panic attack or something. This went on for another few
minutes, and then he stopped again, paused for a long time, looked the
entire body of students in attendance over, let out a primal growl,
turned, and stormed out of the building without another word. And then
we all thought we were going to die.
We all just sat there for a couple of minutes until it was obvious the
professor wasn't coming back. Eventually, one of the T As stepped up and
told us it was all going to be alright, and they would hold our hands
and get us through the course.
Only about 75 or so of us ever went to lecture after that, and it didn't
get much better as the quarter progressed, but we all went to not just
our sections, but sections taught by some of the other T As as well -
and in those sections was where the actual knowledge to pass the class
was imparted to us.
That man had been awarded a Nobel prize, and the Regents of the
University of California wanted research monies so they hired him. All
he had to do was lecture maybe twice a week for an hour - but that
didn't mean he could teach, or better still, impart knowledge to others.
>>
> Network Solutions, as the TLD Holder for .COM, is very welcome to
Join TLDA anytime they choose to. We also accept Sponsoring
memberships from businesses and individuals that support the TLDA mission.
XXXXXX
How can they possibly support that which you cannot help them to
understand??
Well, the staff at Network Solutions is perfectly capable of
understanding the technical aspects of the industry, so that's not
really a good example of a need to make the material easily digested,
although I do get your point.
I am sorry but the kind of engineering folks that you want to limit
yourselves to, do not go around sticking their cash in the hands of do
gooders. You want philanthropy from the individual, institutional or
professional quarters you ain't gonna get it this way. "I can't tell
you what we are doing in plain English but will you donate?" Dream on
brother. And if you want political supportive policies, forget getting
that because you are smart.
Actually, There is a plethora of knowledge based type primers, white
papers, general info topics and other material that has been designed to
be easily digestible for the average person out there. There have been
many different service providers making such efforts in the past, and as
an owner of an ISP I too provided very generalized material on the
public face of some of our facilities when we were actively engaged in
soliciting participation - i.e., money - from the public.
There's no good reason not to have this type of easily digested material
available either - as you can see, TLDA is making great progress toward
rebuilding it's infrastructure and achieving it's initial goals of
almost a decade ago (The TLDA website has existed for many years before
that and was created by Gene Marsh). Those initial goals include
publishing the TapRoot, one of the key ingredients that make up the
reasons for TLDA's existence, among other technical standards, protocol,
and operating practice recommendations.
Beyond that, you are absolutely correct in reaching out to members of
the public with an informative style that actually imparts the basic
knowledge of just what a TLD is and how one is a significant part of
their Internet.
In the meantime, however, we've got a lot more work to do in producing
work that is intended for the technical audience, and since there are
only so many folks here that actually produce more than postulation,
that may need to wait a bit until either some of the primary projects
are complete, or more interested and capable parties chime in.
I've spent a large portion of my career teaching IT related courses in
engineering, and SCUBA diving too. I consistently received high rankings
from my student evals, not because I was easy, but because I developed
ways which were natural to me with which to impart the topic knowledge
to others. Caring had a lot to do with it too I might add ;)
Sure, I prefer blowing through the material with a class of seasoned
network admins, but I prided myself on my ability to bring it home to
the uninitiated classes of say, vocational rehab students as well.
You are in an enviable position yourself though Hugh, as you understand
the gap between the two targets, and can empathize more intimately (than
most folks here) with the everyday, common person with no background in
Information Technologies.
Hell, whenever my attorneys start legal babbling me I ask him or her if
they would like me to teach them how to divide or multiply in
hexadecimal. They dumb it down for me when I do that ;).
Not being able to understand something at the drop of a hat is
definately not a determination of someone's level of intelligence.
Further, and provided of course that all prerequisites have been met, I
agree with you that the inability to grasp a concept is indeed a failing
of the instructor, and NOT usually the student.
so again, I'll mention to you that membership is always open to
qualified entities such as yourself. That doesn't mean you have to be a
member to serve your community, however, and please know that you have
graciously contributed already ;)
>
> Remember, it is the business products (whether commercial or
non-commercial - it is still a business product if registrations are
offered to the public or implemented on an a companies corporate
Intranet) of our members and other TLD Holders that affect millions of
dotcommers - in this case, if you are referring to dotcommers who have
registered SLDs under the .COM TLD, then it is Network Solutions'
business product that is affecting millions of dotcommers ;)
>
> The business products of our members and non-member TLD Holders
alike; to wit: TLDs, do affect millions of ISP subscribers who access
the Internet via their subscriptions with their respective ISPs,
however. For that reason, we have both flexible and non-flexible
standards for membership in the TLDA, to ensure that our members, at
the very least, are capable of actually operating a TLD and providing
a stable and permanent name space for those Internet subscribers, as
well as their respective ISPs, who themselves subscribe to the
Internet via their upstream providers of Internet service or via
peering arrangements with other service providers.
>
>> // It is my hope that you can accept me and my expertise as I
wholly rely on you and yours.
>>
>
> Oh, you are VERY welcome Hugh :) We value your input and observations.
>
>> It is my belief that you want to do the right thing, but I know you
do not know how to express it -- legalese aside. Technical
engineering expertise is not something that is innate. You must work
hard and study to be good at it. Likewise, thinking abstractly and in
a manner that is logical and inclusive is not innate, you must work
and work and study to become even satisfactory at it. Why do we accept
this in the engineering but assume anyone can do it in the logical
thinking arena?
One of the first things we learn in Systems Analysis is - Don't fricking
code! Any programmer can glean what is needed and begin to make a mess
of a potential solution in a few hours or weeks, finding out after it's
too late that it (the product they produce) either won't meet the needs
of the client, or is so non-structured and monolithic in nature that no
other programmer will ever be able to be hired and maintain that code.
Go out, sit down with the user (In our case here, I'm not talking about
the folks at the ISPs or DNS admins or especially not even politicians).
As them how they do their work, which pile they pick up a piece of paper
from, what they do to that piece of paper before putting it into one of
several other piles of paper, why they do it that way, and don't even
bother to suggest that they could do it another way, just record all of
the motions they go through, their difficulties, how THEY THEMSELVES
would improve the system (whatever it is that they do), etc...
From there, you have a diagram of what the user does, what the user
wants, and what the user would like to accomplish, without ever having
to erase anything. Once you have that, you can organize it into a set of
procedures and sub procedures that you can explain to the programmer and
sysadmins.
In effect, you need to speak both the language of the payroll clerk who
doesn't begin producing meaningful work until 09:45hrs after she eats
her bagels, swills her coffee and is finished with her chats, as well as
the techies, who don't want to listen, but instead just sit down and
code until 04:30hrs.
If you delegate modular assignments to your 'team', seemingly unrelated
tasks, they can't help but produce exactly what it is that was really
needed, since they've been provided with a set of requirements in small
blocks, and not an entire system.
At PacRoot, what we did was first to start of with a FAQ, based on
questions that we kept having to answer over and over. Then, key points
began to appear that the average person had dificulties with, so we
addressed those in primers, Then there was the marketing language - not
really significant from an educational standpoint, but effective in
delivering the big ideas to the masses. And finally compendiums of
voluminous material, inverted pyramid style, so the average person could
read until they understood, but could skip to the next item of interest
once they had delved deep enough into the digest for their own curiosity.
I'll reiterate. you're in a position Hugh, to perhaps not try and tackle
the answers, but ask the questions, and force the answers into little
compartments of easily digestible information for the regular jane out
there ;)
uh... Yeah dude, I'm trying to recruit you here LOL!
Regardless of whether you are comfortable with, or prepared to
officially join the TLDA at this time ;)
I've got to get back to work now, but we'll talk again real soon I am
sure :)
Kindest regards,
--
Bradley D. Thornton
Manager Network Services
NorthTech Computer
TEL: +1.949.544.1931
http://NorthTech.US
_______________________________________________
Public mailing list
[email protected]
http://tldainc.org/mailman/listinfo/public_tldainc.org
