Dale,
On Nov 1, 2012, at 9:38 AM, Dale R. Worley wrote:
There seems to me to be a "constitutional" issue that has not been
addressed, and may well bedevil us in the future: In any collective
body, there is a concept of a quorum, which is set high enough to
ensure that the actions of any meeting represent the opinions of the
body as a whole, and which is set low enough that the expected level
of absences will not prevent business from being done.
The current crisis is (apparently) due to the chronic absence of *one*
member causing *chronic* failures of the IAOC to achieve a quorum.
This suggests to me that the quorum of the IAOC is too high to allow
it to reliably conduct business -- after all, any of a thousand
accidents can cause one member to be absent for a long period of time.
What are the quorum rules of the IAOC? Should they be revised?
The rules for a quorum are defined in the IAOC administrative procedures. They
can be found in Section 3 at:
http://iaoc.ietf.org/docs/IAOC-Administrative-Procedures-9-16-2010.pdf
The issue with a quorum is not if a single member can not attend a meeting, it
is what happens if there are also a few members who for reasons like travel can
not attend. This has happened once since the last IETF meeting. Having one
person missing over a long period of time makes it harder to obtain a quorum,
it doesn't make it impossible. It would be a bigger problem if another member
could not make a number of meetings (for whatever reason).
There are a number of other reasons why a missing member is a problem. They
may have specific responsibilities they are not performing (in this case, IAOC
liaison to the NomCom and IETF Trust chair), membership on subcommittees, and,
of course, one less voice in discussions in the IAOC and IETF trust. Having
fewer people increases the work load on everyone else and creates less
diversity in views and expertise.
Bob Hinden
IAOC Chair
Dale