Park your egos at the door

We have a job to do.

The opening plenary at TNC2011 was something I can't get enough of hearing - an actual scientist doing actual groundbreaking work that both a)expands the boundary of human knowledge and b)can stop people needlessly dying (commercial conspiracy theories notwithstanding).

Making sure people like him can do their job is *our* job.

Our industry is celebrating a rolling series of 25th birthdays. Back when NRENs started, we effectively were scientists, primarily physicists and mathematicians. Our networks and services grew out of solving particular problems. Over time, they have become useful for other needs that really would not have been predicted and increasingly our users take them in directions we have no control over. This last is GREAT.

 In the context of this history, although I have been working for NRENs since 2000ish, I'm a newbie and an anomaly. Although I deeply care about the advancement of science for humanity, I am no kind of scientist. However, I don't think I should be. The scientists can do the science, the humanities researchers can do their analysis. I however am in the unique and privileged position of being able to make sure that can happen. But only if we do it right.

Actually being physicists etc. in the early days gave us an edge - an insight into what the user really needs, because we were the user. Well, those needs have evolved in the last 2-point-mumble decades and so have the technologies and business methods needed to serve them. I believe that in order to meet them now, it will be a *disadvantage* if we don't look across discliplinary boundaries and learn the value of specialisation. It will be a long, cold death if we dare to think "we are the user, we know what the user wants". In the latter case we run the risk of misdirected service. In the former, we may compromise our ability to deliver.

So, am I proposing a Brave New Future, full of programmers, MBAs and fully industry certified specialists? Of course not - that would leave us no different to anything else. We need to find a way to translate that early edge to current reality. And that means.....scientists. We need scientists on our side so that we provide empathy, sensitivity to requirements and the ability to interpret them such that it is not just us taking our favourite technology fetish, putting a ribbon on it and calling it a service. To actually follow what are the implications of the *science* on the network and higher layer services and adapt our engineering to that.  Scientific fact will not rearrange itself for our engineering convenience.

So remember, we exist for them. Not the other way around.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of writing this during session 2A, instead of paying proper attention.