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RE: Nomcom feedback to appointees not up for renewal

2015-03-26 09:28:39
While this is an interesting idea, I worry about yet more work for the Nomcom 
and its affect on the nomcom timeline.  And then there's the whole 
confidentiality model the Nomcom and CBs are currently tied to and how that 
would need to be morphed to enable this.  And finally, there's the problem that 
the Nomcom is 10+ people who might not have direct knowledge of how the AD (or 
IAB or IAOC member) is doing - its difficult to come up with a coordinated and 
useful and agreed upon set of feedback with that many folk involved.  (This is 
substantially different than taking a vote for whether or not to send someone 
forward for confirmation).

Several other possible approaches:

1) This isn't a nomcom problem, but a organization problem.  Once a year have 
the AD or IAB member sit down with the IETF chair or IAB chair and get feedback 
on the chair's perception.

2) Have the nomcom do a straw poll:  For AD or IAB member X, given what you 
know currently would you continue them in office if they were up for 
reappointment.  What's reported is for/against/abstentions.

3) Have the IETF as a whole do a straw poll (same question as above) but allow 
individuals to provide anonymous feedback through a tool.

4) During the area meetings during the face to face meeting specifically ask 
the questions:  How am I doing? How can I do things better?  What's broken with 
the area?  What's working with the area?  Point to (3) as a way of providing 
more detailed feedback.


So - not a big fan of involving the Nomcom until other venues have been tried 
and have failed.

Mike




At 10:09 AM 3/26/2015, Adrian Farrel wrote:
Way back when I was on the IESG I was always asking NomCom for feedback 
(especially negative issues, but in a constructive way).

I think it is crucial for ADs to know what issues they are causing and what 
they are doing well.

Getting this feedback through any channel, anonymized or otherwise, would be 
brilliant.

Of course, the ideal is that the feedback is delivered promptly and direct, 
but that requires a certain amount of resilience on the part of back-feeder. 
It also does not benefit from aggregation. So feedback from NomCom or another 
"progress review" body would be very helpful.

Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Dave 
Crocker
Sent: 26 March 2015 12:41
To: IETF Discussion
Cc: Michael Richardson
Subject: Nomcom feedback to appointees not up for renewal

Howdy,

During yesterday's plenary, this year's Nomcom chair, Michael
Richardson, made a comment that I responded to at the mic.  I'd like to
see whether there is interest in pursuing it:

Michael noted that the two-year cycle for appointees means that those
/not/ up for renewal go at least 18 months without feedback.  He put
forward the need for feedback to them sooner than that, but asserted
that having Nomcom do it would not be appropriate.

As a natural consequence of its interviewing process, Nomcoms always get
quite a bit of information about /all/ appointees, not just the ones
currently up for renewal.  No one else acquires this kind of information
regularly and reliably.

Of the 4 nomcoms I've been on, at least two acted on this feedback,
having a directed conversation with at least one such appointee each time.

So I suggest that providing explicit feedback to all appointees not up
for renewal become a regular part of nomcom's deliverables.

d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net