I think it's great that we're drawing community members into the IAOC
discussions.
One of the things that I find missing from this invitation is an
indication of the level of commitment required to participate: how much
time investment will be required? Does the position include travel; and,
if so, is it mandatory? What I'm most worried about here is that people
are going to have their own assumptions around these kind of
requirements, which might discourage exactly those most capable of
introducing diversity into the IAOC committees. (To draw a clear and
straight line: the people who can comfortably assume that they can take
on such load without worrying about resources are exactly the same kind
of people who currently comprise the IAOC).
Also, while I understand that it's something of a dead horse, I think
one of the things that the IETF 100 discussions threw into relief is
that the existing committees are quite homogeneous: unless I'm mistaken,
all nine Meetings Committee members are white males from the US or
Western Europe. Adding community volunteers, if done right, may serve to
increase diversity; however, by sheer numbers, adding one or two people
to a group of nine will make, at best, a very small change to its
composition. Has the IAOC considered perhaps replacing existing
committee members rather than adding new members? It seems that this
could broaden the impact of community involvement and strengthen the
impact of improved diversity that may result.
/a
On 7/18/16 15:27, IAOC Chair wrote:
The IAOC has a handful of committees to support its work [1]. The role of an
IAOC Committee is to develop materials and make recommendations for IAOC
decisions. Chair and membership in committees is constituted annually
(typically at the IAOC meeting at the first IETF meeting of a calendar year,
when IAOC membership terms come up).
At this time, the IAOC is interested in broadening non-IAOC member
participation in its committees, if there are one or 2 interested and suitable
community members for each committee. Note that all committees deal in
business sensitive materials, and may require signing a non-disclosure
agreement.
Please see the charters of the individual committees for further detail [1].
Committees for which we are considering additional people are:
. Finance Committee
. Legal Committee
. Meetings Committee
. Technology Management Committee
. RFP Committee
We ask those interested to volunteer by sending a message stating their
committee of interest and relevant experience for that committee to
iaoc(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org, by August 1, 2016. The IAOC will review candidates
with the aim of appointing any new members by the end of August.
Leslie, for the IAOC.
[1] https://iaoc.ietf.org/committees.html