Hi John,
At 12:33 27-06-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
I'm not sure I agree and want to come back to an earlier point
-- we should figure out what we really need and want and then
see if we can work out the details to make it work. If we
The definition of "attend" is and has been people who pay the
attendance fee for the three out of the last five meetings.
I'll quote a part of Paul Hoffman's message:
"-1. Those choosing the leadership of an organization should
understand more than the leadership of the one WG they have
participated in."
Currently, the people choosing IAB and IESG members do not even have
to understand as much as the leadership of the working group they
have participated in. I'll quote an extract from Scott Brim's message:
"I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough
experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that
are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really
deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles
for contributing to the NomCom process."
And part of a reply from Michael Richardson:
"The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a
tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small
children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child).
Since people tend to pick people who look like them, that means that nomcom
will pick people who are less diverse."
I'll go back to what is said to be oral tradition:
"The strength of the IAB is found in part in the balance of the demographics
of its members (e.g., national distribution, years of experience, gender,
etc.), the combined skill set of its members, and the combined sectors
(e.g., industry, academia, etc.) represented by its members."
In my opinion the IETF has solved the problem on paper. If I take,
for example, gender, there is only one woman on the IAB. Had the IAB
been able to address the gender problem over the last 10 years? I
would say no (I am using "no" as it is easier for people for which
English is not their native language to easily understand my response).
Is there balance in the national distribution of IAB members? I
would say no (see above for explanation of the "no"). Is there
balance in industry and academia affiliations? I would say no.
Those issues have been discussed during the diversity debate and even
before that. I am reluctant to make a suggestion that makes the IETF
an oligarchy. I took at quick look at this thread. Most of the
participants are from North America. There are two women who have
commented. If Adrian Farrel asks me why we do not see participation
from South America and Africa, my answer is:
If you entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and
hard-earned wisdom the end result is that the rest of the world
will not believe
that it is worthwhile to participate unless they have money to gain from that
participation.
I'll quote an extract from Michael StJohns:
"Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less prevalent,
both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer
people. Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly
like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by
throwing people at it."
The fact is that there has been NomCom lobbying. That fact was
reported a few years ago. Is there a link between that and what
Michael StJohns said? I don't know.
The "open list" approach was adopted a few years back. Two NomComs
had different interpretations of the RFC. I don't think that it
matters much. The point here is that definitions are subject to
interpretation. For example, there was a previous NomCom discussion
about the affiliation of an IETF participant.
This is a side note, I'll use Ted Lemon as an example. I see that he
is affiliated with nominum.com. It is easy for anyone to determine
that. I'll compare him with Olafur Gudmundsson. I see that he is
ogud.com. Let's say that they are both chairs of a DNS-related
working group. Would the average working group participant be
comfortable to ask about affiliation if he or she is not happy with a
decision these working group chairs have taken? Would NomCom members
be aware of a questionable decision they have taken and how they
handled the situation? Would people who do not have the opportunity
to be physically present at a meeting be comfortable providing
negative feedback about them if the person does not personally know
one of the NomCom members?
The IETF had to wait until Olafur stepped forward with a Recall
petition before doing anything about an ex-IETF Trust Chair who
likely understood IETF culture.
I agree that it would be good to figure out what is really needed and
desired and then work out the details.
conclude --as I think some have suggested-- that we don't want
often-remote volunteers on the Nomcom no matter what, or that we
don't want people who cannot just about guarantee physical
attendance at all relevant meetings to serve on the Nomcom, or
that we are unwilling to consider relaxing the current 3 of 5
rule for other reasons, then I'd argue that putting energy into
defining appropriate criteria for being a remote attendee is
pretty much a waste of time. If we do decide we want to open
the door to remote attendees on the Nomcom and later discover
that we can't agree on criteria, that is just how it goes.
Yes.
In principle, one could consider the "do we want this" and "what
would the criteria be" questions in either order. In practice,
I think the former question is the more important and should be
considered first because it informs how we really feel about
diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of
f2f meetings. I also believe that, while I might be very
difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote
participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a
definite that would be at least as good at discriminating
between actual remote participants and contributors and other
sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating
between those who understand the IETF culture and those who
don't.
In my opinion the easier path is to focus on contributors. The IETF
culture angle is controversial because it is like saying that the
person has to adopt North America culture.
Well, I agree with all of that in principle. In practice, I
don't think the combination of a heavy Nomcom workload and long
period of commitment with the 3 of 5 rule has served us very
well in recent years, especially in terms of guaranteeing that
the criteria you think are important are met. I think we would
be better off with requirements that made it more feasible for
people like you to volunteer to serve on the Nomcom on the basis
of long-term understanding of the culture, a history of
participating in a diverse collection of WGs, a few less f2f
meetings, and some remote participation. Instead, the 3 of 5
The above does not require any process changes.
rule and those other factors have brought us Nomcoms with a
large fraction of the volunteer pool being folks with far less
experience and perspective and a need to rely almost completely
on questionnaires and interviews rather than knowledge. I don't
Yes.
It is certainly possible that considering and making some
changes could make things worse. But they could also make
things better. And, IMO, merely having a serious conversation
about what we would like our criteria to be and what we are
trying to optimize is useful. If nothing else, some relative
newcomers might learn something useful about the culture from
the conversation and how we carry it out.
A side-effect of the discussion could be about enabling new people to
learn something useful. If the only way to learn something useful
about the culture is to have a meeting near your home or to have
extensive travel resources to get to a meeting the IETF is
restricting itself to people who work for large vendors. I leave it
to the reader to determine whether it leads to large corporate
control of IETF standards.
I'll quote an extract of a message from the IETF Chair (presently IAB
Chair) and IAOC Chair:
"The IETF has always used the Internet to do its work, and remote
participation is no exception."
Is that correct or is the definition of the IETF everything except
the IAB, IESG, IAOC, IETF Trust and NomCom?
The IETF mentioned that:
"Currently, the IETF meets in North America, Europe, and Asia. The intention
is to meet once a year in each region, although due to scheduling issues
there are often more meetings in North America and fewer in Asia
and Europe."
The intention is commendable. In my opinion it is what happens in
practice that matters. I'll quote Olaf (I forgot the actual words):
the IAB publishes its minutes so that anybody who cares can see what
the IAB is doing. If there is a scheduling issue people might
understand it. If there are two or three of four scheduling issues
some people might still be understand it. If there are systematic
scheduling issues people will no longer believe what Olaf is saying.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy