Hi John,
On Oct 27, 2011, at 6:25 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
(4) I have some basis for believing I can comment on the IAB and
its needs. Perhaps I'm completely wrong, too old and set in my
ways and that my opinions should be dismissed or negatively
weighted -- that is the Nomcom's decision, not mine. But one of
my observations is that the IAB's role is not really very well
defined for Nomcom considerations and that the role and utility
of the IAB is strongly shaped by those who are put on it. In
the interest of full disclosure, if I were [re]inventing the
world, I would significantly reduce the fraction of the IAB that
is appointed by the Nomcom, but that is another discussion.
IMO, the way for me to make useful comments is to explain some
scenarios about what I think the IAB might be like and then tell
the Nomcom which people I would select to advance each of those
scenarios. With a very small number of exceptions, I can't
evaluate people without those scenarios; simply presenting me
with a list of 20 choices creates high odds of the Nomcom's
getting no comments at all.
I mostly agree with John. Instead of saying "the IAB's role is not really very
well defined for Nomcom considerations" I would say that the charter for the
IAB is fairly broad and the number of IAB members is quite small for the type
of job it is asked to do.
Everyone I talk to wants to have the IAB do different things. While for some
the interactions with the ITU-T and the liaison activity overall is the most
important thing in the world others are more interested in the architectural
oversight part and would like to see more activities there.
When the question is "Is X a good candidate for the IAB?" then many have
difficulties to provide a response on the suitability of X for the IAB role
when they do not know what the Nomcom is particularly looking for. The only
response that would be sensible, I believe, is to say "X would do a good (or
bad) job in handling appeals (which is one of the IAB responsibilities) because
....".
This, however, would require a lot of homework on the side of those providing
feedback because they need to know precisely what the responsibilities of the
IAB are (note that the IAB is a body the typical IETF participant rarely gets
to interact with), and they need to have a vision by themselves of what
functions are important for the IETF and the Internet in the longer run that
the IAB is able to provide some useful contributions for. In order to have an
opinion about the latter aspect one really needs to have a lot of experience in
the IETF and the interactions with other organizations.
When I was on the Nomcom a few years ago I worked with a lot of very
experienced IETF participants but I cannot claim that everyone (I use the term
"everyone" here deliberately to phrase it nicely) had spend a lot of thought
about the IAB long term future before their Nomcom job started. We at that time
had spend a lot of our effort in figuring out who to select for the IESG since
picking the wrong persons there could immediately lead to a lot of problems for
the daily work in the IETF.
Ciao
Hannes
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