There is one easy tool that I think we should use more in appointing WG
chairs.
ADs could publicly ask for volunteers.
I was very pleasantly surprised a number of years ago when I and another
IAB member had to appoint a person to a position. We knew who we
wanted. We decided we should put out a public call anyway. And got a
volunteer we had not thought of who was even better.
Yours,
Joel
PS: As mentioned by others, I think the practice of pairing experienced
chairs with new chairs is both a good idea and very effective.
On 1/26/2021 2:03 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
On 1/26/21 1:26 PM, STARK, BARBARA H wrote:
IIRC, all the nominees were WG Chairs. This is generally considered an
intermediary step towards the NomCom-appointed leadership positions. I
strongly suspect (but don't feel incented to get real statistics) that
the nominee pool diversity reasonably resembled WG Chair diversity,
but that WG Chair diversity does not reflect attendee diversity.
If WG chairs tend to be people who have attended many in-person meetings
and/or have actively participated in IETF for a few years, I wonder how
much the diversity of WG chairs is affected by attendee churn which
seems to be larger today than in the past. It's hardly surprising if ADs
who appoint chairs want people experienced with IETF process (and
consensus-based decision making in particular, since we rely on chairs
to gauge consensus and sometimes to help build consensus within their
WGs). It would also not be surprising if participants would like to
experience IETF before taking on the responsibility of chair.
So one thing I'm curious about is: how does IETF encourage more
participants to be engaged in IETF in general, instead of only in the
context of specific WGs?
Or to put it another way: how does IETF encourage more participation by
people with broad and/or long-term interests in the Internet?
I wonder if the fee waivers can continue indefinitely even for in-person
attendance, or if there can be fee reductions for f2f meetings. Even
if it's not feasible to reduce fees for everyone who cannot pay for
in-person meetings, perhaps there could be reductions in fees from
under-represented parts of the world? Perhaps other means of lowering
the cost of attendance can be found?
Keith
