Dave, Your proposal presuppose an assumption that the best use of our AD resource is as procedural and process assistant. Certainly we don't select for that in our current nomcom process --- and I would argue that if what we are looking for is more assistance at the working group level for project management and process management, perhaps the answer is that we ought to find some sponsors who are willing to hire some professional staff people to assist working groups that are full-time process and procedural management experts. I would note that people who fill that roll do not necessarily need to be a deep technical expert, and that if we devolve area directors to being nothing but glorified project managers, we may have trouble getting people to volunteer for that job. I personally believe that the job that AD's are best suited for is to provide technical leadership, and this goes far beyond simply providing project and procedural management. Not to say that this isn't important --- I believe that it is critically important to give that kind of resource to engineers trying to get a job done. But I believe that kind of role may be better suited to staff position, and not a volunteer position. (For example, I've noticed that it is generally very hard for open source projects to find people willing to volunteer to be a project manager; usually that role is filled by someone on salary by an interested company.) Regards, - Ted _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf