--On Sunday, October 23, 2022 13:10 +0000 Francesca Palombini
<francesca.palombini=40ericsson.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> You might have noticed I have been MIA the last 3 months - As
> some of you know, I have been taking some time off to welcome
> the birth of my first son Leonardo, who was born on July 29th.
> We both are well and have been enjoying this time getting to
> know each other. I am sharing a recent picture in attachment.
>
> I wanted to let you know that starting next week I am back at
> work at 50%, and that I plan to attend IETF 115 remotely. I
> know I have some catching up to do. If I have missed any
> important email during this period, please find me during the
> IETF week, or write me again in the next 2 weeks.
> I also was surprised to see that no one else has accepted
> nomination for ART AD for the next term - please do think
> carefully and bring your name forward if you can, or nominate
> other people that you believe would do a good job: the NomCom
> needs a good pool of candidates to work its magic, and I am
> sure there is many of you who would do a great job for the
> IETF. I personally have accepted nomination but expect to have
> reduced available time and more parental leave coming next
> year (which I will discuss with the NomCom). I look forward to
> seeing more names - there is time until Wednesday - and please
> do reach out if there is anything you'd like to discuss
> about the AD role.
With the understanding that this is horribly late in the cycle
of things, I'd like to make a suggestion: in addition to
Francesca's suggestion of the need for more candidates for her
ART AD slot, we add a third ART AD slot and add it as close to
Right Now as possible. By the numbers alone and just dividing
the number of WGs in the area by two, the ART ADs are
responsible for more WGs than ADs in any other area. We added
a third AD to Routing which today has "only" 24 WGs for the
three ADs; ART has 34 for two. In addition, ART is probably the
most diverse of the Areas in terms of work it takes on. That
was even the case before we recombined Applications and
Real-time (fwiw, it was even the case when I was Apps AD nearly
30 years ago). That diversity requires extra effort by the ADs
and always has.
I have been told that the IESG discussed the possibility of a
third ART AD in June or July and concluded it wasn't necessary.
I think there is now new data: In addition to the WGs per AD
numbers above, I've seen very considerable traffic in the last
few weeks in which the work and draft specifications of one WG
in the Area intersects that of another. Conflicting
specifications for doing the same thing are bad news when they
occur in different SDOs; they are far worse when they occur, not
only within the IETF but within the same Area. Procedurally,
having conflicting versions of parts of specifications from
different WGs and having one go into IETF Last Call well ahead
of the other creates a situation for which our processes were
not designed. The solution to such problems is (and always has
been) active AD involvement, either to facilitate discussions
between the WGs involved or, if needed, to work out guidelines
about conditions for IETF Last Call. Murray has, in my opinion,
been doing a superhuman job under the circumstances (including
the added stresses and constraints of hybrid meetings), but
there are not two (much less three) of him and the IETF has not
yet devised Murray-cloning technology.
A third AD is the solution, even if the Nomcom were to not
return Francesca and leave Murray and the rest of the IESG
having to break in two IESG newcomers at the same time. Again,
from the numbers (assuming no increase after the upcoming
DISPATCH meeting), our choice (and the Nomcom's) is between 1
1/2 active ADs for parts of next year (or at least "reduced
available time" for the one of them)l one experienced AD and one
newcomer (and the community has been told several times that it
takes a new AD many months to really come up to speed) -- and
hence a different version of 1 1/2; or either two experienced
ADs (even with one on partial availability) and a new one or two
ones (with, I assume, Francesca, willing to help a bit from the
sidelines). Just numerically, that answer also seems clear.
Let's get more nominations for the slot (as Francisca suggests)
but then let's convince the IESG to create a third ADs position
(ideally on Thursday but certainly not later than IETF 115) and
then let the Nomcom fill two open slots from those nominees, not
just one.
If necessary, treat this as an experiment and plan to explicitly
review in two years whether AET really needs three ADs. Or, at
the risk of making the Nomcom job a bit more difficult, make the
new slot a one-year appointment and do the review next year.
But let's do it rather than leaving ourselves with an Area that
almost certain to not function as well as it could.
thanks for at least considering this,
john
