I will respond only to one part of Jari's email, specifically the part about
the potential expertise requirement for part of the nomcom.
In the past there have been cases where some specific IESG members have been
perceived by some members of the community as being a problem. There have also
been some cases of perceived friction between areas of the IETF (the issues
which I have been aware of in the past have been fixed as of several years
ago). There are also of course many cases where various problems (big ones and
little ones) in the operation of the IETF have been fixed by various
combinations of IETF participants. I would strongly prefer to avoid details.
It seems to me that having some personal knowledge of at least some of these
cases would be helpful in the task of picking future members of the IETF
leadership. Of course experience in the IETF operation is not a guarantee of
knowledge of (some of) these cases, and knowledge of past cases is not a
guarantee of making perfect selections of candidates in the future (and none of
us are perfect, which implies that there is no chance of selecting perfect
candidates). However, some experience among some of the nomcom voting members
does, in my opinion, significant improve the chances that such past experience
will be taken into consideration in the difficult task of choosing between
multiple good but imperfect choices for our leadership.
I also think that having personal knowledge and experience with how the IETF
works is very useful in making choices among the people who have volunteered
for IETF leadership positions.
I have never been a voting member of nomcom, but was a liaison to nomcom once.
The particular nomcom to which I was liaison happened to have some very
experienced members, as well as some less experienced members. This was very
helpful IMHO.
To me Jari's argument of wanting to bring new blood into the process is an
argument for why some, and in fact the majority, of nomcom voting members
should be chosen without the additional experience requirement proposed in the
draft IETF leadership document. This if of course precisely what has been
proposed (with only 3 of the 10 voting members requiring this additional
experience).
Thus I support the expertise requirement proposed in
draft-crocker-ietf-nomcom-process.
Ross
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Jari Arkko
Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2010 4:25 AM
To: dcrocker(_at_)bbiw(_dot_)net
Cc: IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: Nomcom Enhancements: Improving the IETF leadership selection
process
Dave,
I have read your proposal. Here's some initial feedback. But I might change my
opinion upon further reflection :-) For background, I have never participated
in nomcom work, so my experience on that aspect is limited.
My comments are structured around your specific recommendations:
RECOMMENDATION -- Nomcom Operations Guide
Agree
RECOMMENDATION -- Nomcom Discussion Management
Agree.
RECOMMENDATION -- Selective Exclusion
I agree in principle that we need this -- for conflict of interest and for
verified breach of rules, for instance. But I fear that implementation is very
difficult and itself prone to generating new problems. Obviously verification
of a breach of rules might be very difficult. Also, you have not stated the
precise rules for conflicts of interest.
More worryingly, you wrote later in the text "Reasons for exclusion include,
..., potential for violation of confidentiality, ...". Are you saying that we
should exclude nomcom members not merely based on violation of confidentiality
rules, but also based on predicted, potential future violations? I hope the
text was just sloppily written and that you are not suggesting this, for
obvious reasons.
RECOMMENDATION -- Nomcom Tutorials
Agree, though I don't see a big need for keeping them closed.
RECOMMENDATION -- Nomcom Expertise Requirement
I have very mixed feelings about this. On one hand I believe that such
expertise is very useful, but I am also afraid of too much self-selection and
conservatism as a result. The IETF has many problems, but one issue that I have
been personally worried about is having a sufficient influx of new people. We
have some, but in my opinion we should have more. More young people, more new
things, more new ways to work. Without this we will all age, not reconsider
enough if improvements are needed in our way of working, become stale and
gradually lose relevance. Now, nomcom expertise requirements may not have a big
impact on these general trends anyway. But I still believe it is important to
think outside the box when selecting leaders, and sometimes change and a fresh
viewpoint is a good thing (even at the expense of losing some experience). This
applies to both nomcom members and, say, IESG members.
Do we have evidence that more experienced nomcom works better than an
inexperienced one? Are there any downsides to choosing experienced members
(fixed opinions on way to do things that might possibly affect candidate
selection, for instance)?
Unlike almost all other recommendations in the draft, this one does not address
a current problem. We are solving a problem that might occur in theory. Maybe
that helps us make a decision on what to do here.
* RECOMMENDATION -- Confidentiality Agreement
Agree.
* RECOMMENDATION -- Anonymous Input
Agree.
* RECOMMENDATION -- Liaison Disclosures
Agree.
RECOMMENDATION -- Interview Monitoring
I would prefer to see a weaker rule, such as allowing liaisons to ask to be
present in some interviews but not all.
* RECOMMENDATION -- Etiquette Guide
Agree.
RECOMMENDATION -- Politicking
For the reasons already stated on the list by others, I think this
recommendation is problematic.
Some more detailed comments:
Many participants still are deeply involved in the IETF, but many others are
more narrowly focused, with limited IETF involvement. Often they track only one
working group and contribute to none of its discussion, writing or leadership.
I would like to ask for clarification. Did you mean participants who contribute
none to *general IETF discussion* or participants who are in listen-only mode
in their only working group?
This results in volunteers with potentially less IETF experience, less
understanding of IETF culture and less appreciation of the specific strengths
(and weaknesses) of the IETF approach to standards development. Instead, they
bring their own norms, often including a stronger sense of loyalty to other
groups.
This is written in a bit of an us-vs-them style. I think the reality is more
complicated. We might want a particular outsider group to bring their work to
the IETF, for instance. And experience on how well the IETF enables these
people to do it would be very valuable in the nomcom.
Jari
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