Re: Nomcom Enhancements: Improving the IETF leadership selection process

"Joel M. Halpern" <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:12:33 -0400

Looking at the numbers, and trying to estimate (because there are not 
clear records to make it easy to verify whether person X has ever been a 
WG chair, what I found was that typically, about 40% of the pool was 
"experienced by the conditions we were using.  Assuming 100 volunteers 
(which has been about the rate recently), while this gives an expected 
value of 4 experienced members, it gave a significant probability of 1 
or 2 experienced members.

Conversely, with that same base, if one had a minimum of 4 experience 
members, since that removed only 4 people from the pool, it meant that 
the expected value would become about 6.4 experienced members, with a 
very high probability of getting 7 experienced members.  I at least, and 
I believe others, felt this was too close to packing the committee.  The 
goal is not to give experienced people control, but to make sure that 
there are enough experienced participants to inform the process.

Hence, after debating, we settled on 3 for the first draw.  This gives 
obviously a minimum of 3, and an expected value of almost 5.8, with a 
corresponding reduction in the odds of getting 7 or more experienced 
members.  In some ways this still seemed to me to be uncomfortably high. 
 But the other concern was that if we ever actually got a good turnout 
for the pool, such that experienced volunteers made up only 15 or 20 
percent of the pool, the three minimum would still ensure that there 
were 3 experienced people on the committee.  (The most inexperienced 
committee on record, as far as we could tell, occurred when we had a 
very good turnout for the nomcom volunteer pool, something I at least 
really appreciate, and not an especially high turnout of experienced 
people.)

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

PS: When we updated the nomcom eligibility for 2 out of 3 to 34 out of 
5, there was much discussion of what the right balance was.  The concern 
at the time, which I share, is that if we increase the window too much, 
folks who are not currently involved, but are coming back, would be 
eligible.  And it seemed to the working group that it was important that 
folks experience be relatively recent.  If the attendance condition has 
any meaning, someone who has skipped the last 5 meetings would seem to 
be lacking in currency.  (It can be argued that the attendance condition 
doesn't work, but that is a very different debate.)

Lixia Zhang wrote:
On Jul 18, 2010, at 2:06 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

Lixia,

On 7/18/2010 1:14 PM, Lixia Zhang wrote:
The comment: I support the idea of having a second 'expertise' pool of
volunteers, but I wonder where comes this suggestion of selecting *3* members
from this pool.  A few random questions:

- Do we know what is this number for the last several NOMCOMs?
The last two Nomcom Chairs were part of the design team for the proposal.  As I recall, Joel actually ran some of these kinds of numbers.  I don't remember the details he produced, but they were part of our consideration and we definitely all haggled quite a bit about the number to recommend.

If Joel already got the numbers, it seems useful to know.

What about my other question, what percentage of volunteers over the last few years that would fall into this second pool?
This would help understand the feasibility of the idea (i.e. the 2nd pool still needs to be large enough)

There was a remarkable amount of support for 3, bordering on unanimity. (Exercise to the reader:  take a guess who was the odd one out...)

The reason for preferring 3 was balancing a desire to ensure a /minimum/ level of knowledge but also to limit the amouont of /dominance/ of old-timers.

So the feeling was that two was not enough to meet the minimum, but requiring four would start feeling like dominance among the voting members.

four is still less than half of voting members, not "dominance"?

Take into account the fact that many people probably do not attend all IETF
meetings, as a strawman for a longer IETF experience, what about attending 5
of the last 8 or 10 meetings?
Speaking only for myself, I'll say that it's quite easy to go to many IETF meetings, but never learn anything about IETF process.

the above statement applies in general, independent from the NOMCOM eligibility criteria.

When someone has the responsibility for choosing the people who manage the process, we ought to focus on ensuring that level of knowledge.  Hence the second pool.

and I support the second pool idea

I've been on 3 Nomcoms.  Some of the folk who did not know much IETF process were nonetheless very strong contributors.  Some weren't.  The key argument for retaining this "less experienced" criterion is that it tends to add some fresh perspective (along with the naivete... so it's a mixed benefit.)

- definitely people can all be strong contributors, with or without much IETF knowledge.
- I think an effective NOMCOM does require some minimal IETF knowledge from its members.
- fresh blood is always important.
Even 5 out of last 8 meetings allows one with just 2-year IETF experience.

Lixia
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