Yup - "Subject matter expert" doesn't mean that an AD knows *everything* about *everything* in their area, but they should know enough to be able to grok what's happening in all of their WGs, understand the documents that they are progressing, and detect bad smells when something isn't right. In addition, they should be able to understand enough technology in *other* areas to be able to say "Oi! This document says that the cross beams MAY go askew on the treddle, but that will break the usage of treddles in the MILL WG in my area. MILL assumes that treddles are always straight…".
Obviously ADs are human (although I am somewhat irked at John's implication that I'm not actually omniscient), and so there will be areas where they are more or less experty - for example, no matter how much I try, I simply cannot become deeply interested in benchmarking, and it's hard to be an expert in something that holds little personal interest. However, by 1: trusting my chairs[0], 2: listening to the discussions in the WG, 3: listening to the last call comments, 4: relying on directorates, and 5: doing the best that I can, I think that I'm doing an acceptable job with BMWG. Of course, I'm exceptionally lucky that BMWG is low drama, friendly, and generally doesn't conflict with other work.
Yes. Although, a surprisingly large amount of an ADs role *is* administrative / process. Actually, perhaps "leadership" is a better word, but that's not quite right either… When I initially took on the role, I'd assumed that it was almost entirely technical, but a surprising amount turns out to be mixture of "Yes, I understand that she said that your protocol was bloated and ugly, but in all fairness, last week you *did* call her document turgid and unreadable. Let's all just take a breath and remember why we are here… K, friends? Now shake on it…", chasing chairs to get agendas (and minutes!) posted on time, helping authors navigate the process, helping newcomers navigate the intricacies of draft naming[1], dealing with session conflicts, dealing with various liaison roles, etc.
Obviously you also have to be a SME in your area, but I suspect that, for many IETF people, that's the "easy" part. This other part turns out to actually be quite fun, and, for me at least, has been a good learning opportunity….
Hrmph. I generally like ending my mail with snark, but in this case I simply agree with you…
W
[0]: I'm incredibly lucky that I've had such awesome chairs, especially in BMWG.
[1]: "No, no, no, it's really quite simple see? Now, pay attention. It's draft-<something vaguely like the concatenation of your names, but, em, shorter>-<the WG that you intend it for…. oh, you don't know which WG?! Well that's a problem…>-<a description of the proposal in two or three words, separated by dashes>-<the version number. This must be 2 digits, and it starts at 0. Well, actually 00>.xml… What? You don't write XML? Weird, but we have many alternatives which can be converted to XML…"
