On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 11:00:35AM -0700, Steve Gibbard wrote:
[snip]
> Here's my problem with this line of reasoning:
>
> We've got a serious volunteer shortage.
>
> In our upcoming board election, we have four candidates for four
> open seats. As one of those candidates, I'd like to think that
> this is because everybody really wants to vote for us, but the most
> I can really hope for is that being on the board sounds like a lot
> of work and nobody objects to us strongly enough to want to volunteer.
I humbly suggest that the folks "in office" should take a
strong hand in drumming up candidates. Especially as they
will know what sort of skills will be needed for what's on
the horizon. I presume it is still similar, but when I was
SC Chair, homework during the election period for all
committee members was recruiting volunteers and participating
in a schedule & rotation of notices to mail to get different
names in the nanog-announce mail stream. I'm sure there are
better methods of spreading the load.
> For the Program Committee, which makes NANOG conferences what
> they are, the shortage is far worse. We have seven open seats and
> four candidates.
...and the nomination period is still open. ISTR that many
nominations roll in during the meeting, when the drumbeating
continues.
> It seems pretty clear that the incentive structures we have now
> aren't working. Those arguing here that they'd be volunteering
> without any further incentives are not currently volunteering, and
> neither are very many other people.
See previous paragraphs. How much outreach to new blood, or
to people who ran before, has occured? Simply contacting
those who ran before, but hadn't served and still had and
interest built up a nice slate of solid candidates in years
past. I did notice that in the change to AMS, we no longer
have the membership list published, so it is hard for us
"on the outside" to know who is eligible to be nominated.
> There are many likely causes of this.
> Partly, I think we have some volunteer fatigue. There's been a
> whole lot of work, done by a whole lot of people, over the last
> couple of years to get the new organization off the ground and to
> keep the old one running, and a lot of those people would be quite
> justified in being burned out. But if NANOG is going to go on, we
> need to get people to
>
> So, what do we do?
>
> I'm not convinced that allowing people to do large amounts of
> work towards putting on the conference in lieu of paying meeting
> fees would create a "privileged class of participants." If anything,
> getting to simply pay meeting fees and show up seems like a relative
> bargain, and charging people to attend an event they've helped to
> produce seems tacky. But, given that a lot of peoples' employers
> pay their meeting fees anyway, and might value their employees'
> time more than they'd value the savings on meeting fees, I'm not
> sure how many new people it would get us.
Observations:
- encoding in the bylaws is micromanagement we've sought to
avoid previously
- blanket 'perks' regardless of level of participation are
eventually abused
- SC chair [and PC chair?] have had some discretion in
doling out at least one comp registration per meeting
- hardship and reward [as you suggest] from the chairs is
a logical extension of such discretion
...so if anything must be codified, IMO it should be that the
Chairs have the ability to waive registration fees for committee
members as they see fit. Then no only do you incentive to volunteer,
but ongoing incentive to actually produce.
> Ideally, we'll get a flood of volunteers in the next few days,
> and this issue will become moot. I started asking around yesterday
> for a volunteer to replace me as Membership Chair, and within minutes
> had found somebody bursting with ideas and eager to take on the
> role. I'd love to see some people who would show that level of
> excitement towards the NANOG program.
Excellent way to demonstrate that outreach is key.
> But if that doesn't happen, I'm looking for ideas. Are free or
> discounted conference fees for volunteers the right answer? Is
> there some other incentive that would work better? Are there people
> we should be reaching out to and trying to recruit who we haven't?
>
> Ideas, please.
See above for a minor adjustment that might meet this need. Also:
- At least the membership should see the member list to
know who to poke (behind a member portal is there is
paranoia about publishing member names).
- While that is presently out of reach, more visible outreach by
those on the inside who *do* know.
- What plans/campaigns have the Board generated/received from our
staff (if any) and why were they rejected.
Cheers!
Joe
--
RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE / NewNOG
_______________________________________________
Nanog-futures mailing list
Nanog-futures@nanog.org
https://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures
