Hi -
Way back in almost prehistory, we started using external sources of
pseudo-random values to see our selection process for the Nomcom.
Those were generally things that might be published in the newspaper
(e.g. stock sales in 100s), or government statistics that changed a lot
(e.g. US national debt). Usually there were anywhere from 5-7 sources,
and the sample time for each source was specified as a specific time
(e.g. stock sales for Cisco in 100s as published in the NY Times for 23
January 1998) in the future. To resolve the selection, we needed to wait
until after the sample time for each - sometimes an entire week. (Fun
fact, this was the way used to resolve results in PBM wargames at least
as far back as the 1970's)
Things have changed. We no longer need to put multiple days or even
hours between the need and the fulfillment. Randomness has become a big
thing. A quick search of the internet gave me
https://www.publicrng.com/ and https://avkg.com/ as sites that both
generate random values on a schedule AND publish and retain them.
There's also Random.org with its third party Random Drawing service.
And https://www.cloudflare.com/leagueofentropy/. ; Of these,
www.publicrng.com looks like the simplest to use it produces a number
between 1 and 100 (maybe 1-99) inclusive every 30 seconds.
There's a raffle service on www.publicrng.com that does exactly what we
want (list of N participants, 1 ticket per participant, select 10 or 12)
and saves the results for later retrieval by anyone with the raffle name
(which can be used only once to prevent cheating).
We're so used to eating our own dogfood, that we may not have realized
that the can of dog food is due for replacement.
Maybe we pick one that meets our needs going forward?
Later, Mike
ps - not saying to use this for the current go around - I know that's a
lost cause.
