[ih] This Review is for Everyone

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Craig Partridge 

    > (and recognizing that Dave and Noel were both on the initial IESG with
    > me), figuring out how to get the IETF to work was a tortuous effort

Speaking of the IESG, it should be recognized that creating the IESG was a
stroke of genius _and_ humility (an even rarer personal quality in this day
and age than genius, it seems - apparently the observation that "There is no
limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit",
Ralph Waldo Emerson, has been lost track of) on the part of Phill Gross.

I know it's a truism that committees are worse than useless ("If you want to
kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it." - Charles
F. Kettering), but I think Phill calling in a group to help him run the show
was (perhaps unforseeingly) a big part of what made the early IETF so
effective.

In a group which consists of sharp members, and is prepared to work together,
without squabbling for power (as I think the early IESG was - we, like the
IETF in general, could see the magnitude of the opportunty that was before
us, so, like them, we set to it), together they will produce better thinking
than any one person alone. (This is, after all, how scholarship works -
debate among like-minded people.)

I have no idea whether Phill's selection of the members was pure chance
(there's a quotation from an earlyish American military person hovering at
the edge of my brain, to the effect of 'pick any one, they are all the same',
but I can't locate it), or whether he had an idea of how they would work
together. I _suspect_ he just picked people who were smart, and had expertise
in the area they were to oversee.

	Noel