On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 09:28:31AM -0400, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> Yes, I think 'yes' is the right vote. I do have one major concern,
> but I will vote 'yes' on both issues, regardless.
>
> I really worry about the voter base becoming disjoint from the
> attendee base. I think meeting attendees should get a vote as a
> part of attendance.
I urge you to review my message from earlier this morning, and consider
the realities of numbers and participation. Simple, public stats on
the nanog site show that the vast majority of nanaog attendees don't
participate:
year voter votes voter nanog-futures
pool cast turnout subscribers (EOY)
2005 1800+ 319 <17.7% 182
2006 1800+ 108 <6.0% 226
2007 1700+ 183 <10.7% 289
2008 1878 202 10.7% 356
2009 1790 196 10.9% 379
Certainly one may make a claim that the non-voters are a content silent
majority, but all we know for certain is that *even* in the 2005 evolution
we had what can be best characterized as a "weak" mandate. Since this is
public data, I don't have the capability to correlate the voter pool and
nanog-futures subscribers, but it is clear that there is a disjoint
between those who care enough to be on a list and those who do or can
vote.
> How this is handled is not clear, but I would like to see paying
> attendees all get to vote for any year in which they attend a
> meeting.
I'll say what I've said before; there are many possible mehcanics
of implementation to put a member opportunity in front of people
at meeting registration. The key is to give them the option to
decide if it matters to them and eliminate all the vague handwavey
garbage we have today with voter apathy VS people who don't know
they have a say Vs ... Note that nothing regarding meeting mechanics
are micromanaged in the bylaws. Given that part of the economic
thrust is to move from meeting-by-meeting hand-to-mouth cost
accounting to moving to a forcastable budget, it is trivial to see
many models which couple attendees getting incentives for membership
opportunities (gove members get a meeting discount or always get the
early-bird price or members get a lucnh or many other things). None
of those require continuing to disenfranchise non-attendees, continue
to guess at voter apathy, nor require being put into an organization's
bylaws. Most fee schedules are not in the bylaws of organizations
with which I'm familiar.
> Whatever the details, I strongly feel that the concept that meeting
> attendees must continue to be, as the old T-shirts said, "Official
> Members".
Treating the people with position/time/budget/et al resources able to
attend a meeting as a priviledged class at the expense of just opening
up a level field smacks me as counter any growth, outreach or educational
mission. I do not see anything in the bylaws which preclude your desired
end state and mine.
Cheers!
Joe
--
RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE
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