[arin-discuss] Legacy RSA

>-----Original Message-----
>From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net
>[mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of Hutchison, Tine
>Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 10:20 AM
>To: arin-discuss at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] Legacy RSA
>
>
>I think there's an underlying issue that you're failing to address (in
>the specific case of the expanded travel and outreach budget.)  The
>issue is "is VON contrary to the stated purpose of ARIN?"
>
>Two of ARIN's purposes, as stated in their articles of incorporation
>(http://www.arin.net/about_us/corp_docs/artic_incorp.html) are:
>
>1) to increase and diffuse knowledge to the general public about the
>Internet in its broadest sense;
>
>2) to educate industry and the Internet community in order to further
>their technical understanding of the Internet;
>
>These two lines - which are so critical as to warrant being the first
>purposes listed - seem to indicate that ARIN is justified in spending
>money to go to nearly any event where "the Internet community" or even
>"the general public" might attend.
>
>While this would justify ARIN going to pretty much any event, they seem
>to be restricting themselves to events relevant to people who operate
>the Internet.
>
>Your presence at VON proves that VON is in the range of relevant events.
>Other people on the lest chiming in that they were also there reinforces
>that.
>


I have to disagree with this.

Attendance at a tradeshow to further the technical understanding of the
Internet is fine.  However, if no "furthering of the technical
understanding"
is taking place, then attendance at such a show is a waste of time and
money.

The effacy of ARIN's attendance at any of these trade shows - like VON - is
a
metric that is EASILY measured.  I already suggested some of the ways to do
it
- such as taking down names, or taking business cards, etc. AT THE SHOW.

If the metrics for attendance at a particular show do NOT bear out the
requirement of the charter that education of the Internet community is
taking place, then ARIN should not continue attending the show in the
future.
There are plenty of other shows out there to attend.

Dean is arguing about ARIN's attendance at a specific show - VON.  Too
many responders on this list seem to be responding to an assertion that
ALL tradeshow attendance by ARIN is bad.  This was not the assertion that
Dean made.

As I already mentioned, management review at ARIN should have occurred
after attendance at VON, to determine if the show was money well spent.
If such review has NOT occurred then I would encourage ARIN's board members
to request that ARIN's managers do it.  If such review DID occur then
perhaps we could have the conclusion of the management team posted here
as to whether the VON show attendance was worthwhile or not.

Ted