On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Bart Kus me@bartk.us wrote:
Hi John / K7VE!
From your email: "A lot of people contribute time, we need more that contribute money." Can you share what ARDC uses the money for? Having looked over the financials, I'm not seeing any spending details.
There are legal and some administrative expenses that are required just to keep the ARDC a legal entity. Brian Kantor has written the checks to cover that (e.g. loaned the money to pay immediate expenses) and I am just reminding people a few donations would pay him back and cover future expenses.
Next: "Should the ARDC evolve into a club with members and dues". I'm generally in favor of this model, but the dues should be optional and should only entitle you to voting rights. That forces you to have some skin in the game before affecting the org with your vote. Some other "skin" techniques were also suggested, like having an allocation or running a gateway. These are probably appropriate. I also like the staggering of directorships.
Next: "where it could be formally voted into existence". Voted by who?
Since the ARDC is not now a "club", but rather a non-profit that manages the Net-44 space, if it were to evolve into a "club" then it would be prudent to:
1. Ask the current management if they are open to a new organization taking over management through the formation of a new organization ("club"). 2. If so, then solicit volunteers from this list and the regional coordinators to form a organizing committee to draft/modify a new charter and bylaws 3. Present those to the "community" of Net-44 for review and recommendations. 4. Finalize the charter and bylaws 5. Hold a public meeting (perhaps enhanced by a Google Hangout + YouTube Broadcast), where the assembled parties could vote for or against the proposed charter and bylaws, and if approved the new organization ("club") is created. Present a slate of officers and directors, as developed by a nominating committee and nominations from the floor, and based on the by-laws for membership elect the leadership. (If dues are required to vote, under the bylaws, have a method for people to put dues in escrow prior to the meeting.) 6. The ARDC then is transitioned to the new leadership
The current ARDC leadership is under no obligation to endorse such a process, so item 1 is the key.
What you seem to be proposing would be like the customers of your current employer deciding they wanted to do things differently and simply tried a hostile takeover. If the corporation is tightly held, it's unlikely that such an attempt would be successful.
Next: "I have advocated a model of using BGP and the Internet to sew together regional networks into a complete fabric and that those regional networks could then address "last mile" issues with IPIP or VPN tunnels as appropriate. I'd like to see this formalized and adopted sooner rather than later." You're just describing "using the Internet" here, aren't you? Do you have more details on this proposal? This sounds really similar to the "more Internet gateways" line item of my agenda. Are we talking about the same thing?
Basically, yes. You are free to review list discussions I've had on this topic, including the archives of this list, as well as public presentations that are available on the Internet. (Try a Google of K7VE Net-44 to start)
Next: "As to Bart's "candidacy" for a Director's position. That is premature, based on the current governance and structure of ARDC." ARDC is what exists right now. There's no need to wait for a re-birth to fix some of the problems. We can work with what we have. I don't want Brian replaced by a new org. His service over the last 20+ years shows a tremendous dedication to this network. His continued contributions will no doubt be beneficial. I simply want ARDC to become more open, better governed, and positioned in such a way that it fosters innovation and experimentation. You know, the stuff in the charter! :)
The point is, ARDC is not a club, it is a management entity in the form of
a non-profit corporation, to which the rest of us are "customers", not members. Regardless of goals, in the current configuration, you can present ideas and the ARDC (which incidentally, does have some internal review processes) decides if, when, and how they will be implemented. They have made and continue to make changes based on discussions in this list, after giving lots of time for multiple opinions.
If that doesn't work for your goals, then you are free to go find a different address space and set up a management structure for it.
Next: "Frankly, I think Bart has accomplished a lot in the last couple of years from a technical point of view. I happen to live in the area where HamWan is being developed and the progress seems to be constant. The problem is, Bart, like many driven technology experts, can come off as dismissive and narrow-minded, and that isn't productive." This quote claims that I've both managed to accomplish a lot, and then concludes that I'm not a productive leader. You're gonna have to pick one. I sit in a room day in day out with 35 other people and guide decisions, set goals, and push people beyond their existing limits. All for the shared end goal of providing the best network we can. I've brokered many deals to get us the resources we need to operate, some of them requiring incredible tact. You're not exposed to any of this though, since you don't develop HamWAN. Those who have actually worked with me have voiced their support on this mailing list. I didn't ask any of them to say a thing on my behalf.
They are not mutually exclusive. You have accomplished a lot in the building of HamWan, for which I am acknowledging your role.
The second half is your demeanor and approach, which often comes off as condescending, dismissive, and narrow minded. These personality traits are often found in bright engineers and engineering managers, who whether they intend to or not are off-putting to many people -- that is what is not productive. Since I have been at most of your public presentations over the last couple of years and am following the progress of your team (including advising you that you couldn't make a hybrid Part 97 and Part 15 network and get access to sites you wanted), I've had a lot of exposure. I can tell you a lot of the people you present to go away irritated at your demeanor. There is a difference between team direction (your inner circle) and public relations. One may be successful at the former, while failing at the latter.
I'm not your enemy here, I'm simply reporting observations and perhaps suggesting that you might want to make some adjustments on the public relations side of your project.
I can only speculate you're probably thinking of the HamWAN / HSMM lack of interoperability that was strongly requested during our initial phase. As much as people wish for this, there are several reasons a smooth interop cannot be done. (1) HSMM is Part 15 and we can't carry that traffic on Part 97 frequencies, (2) The use of 10/8 address space makes HSMM non-interoperable -- not just with HamWAN, I mean with almost every other network, and (3) the design of the HSMM organization is decentralized on purpose, so even if we were to offer some interop standard, there's noone there to reach an agreement with. The present situation is this: HSMM folks are free to use HamWAN however they wish. They simply connect to the network using our documented procedures. If they wanna run VPNs over the microwave, that's fine. They're hams and they have a right to do whatever they want on the airwaves as long as it's legal. There are no special provisions on the HamWAN side to provide for end-to-end traffic between HSMM nodes. That's all up to the user.
If you're thinking of some other situations, I don't know what to say. If you're gonna be a man that accomplishes substantial goals, you're gonna invariably piss some people off about something. That's the cost of getting things done.
You will note in many organizations / companies there are the project managers and there are those whose skill set is to interact with "customers" and there are a few people who can pull off both.
------------------------------ John D. Hays K7VE PO Box 1223, Edmonds, WA 98020-1223 http://k7ve.org/blog http://twitter.com/#!/john_hays http://www.facebook.com/john.d.hays