Andrew Sullivan wrote: > To begin with, I have doubts that people who really haven't learned > _anything_ about IETF process are going to be the ones who volunteer > for Nomcom. I have no doubts about that. A NomCom position is often considered a "leadership position" by one's sponsor or manager -- it is, after all, an HR job. To get into other leadership positions in the IETF, one has to build up reputation over time, and then be selected for it. To get a NomCom position, one need only volunteer, and -- these days, with 100 volunteers -- one has a 10% chance, more or less, of getting it. If one is in an organization that considers it a feather in one's cap to be on the NomCom, you'd better believe that one will volunteer, whether or not you think that's a bad thing. And to be clear, here, again: none of us think it's a bad thing to have some inexperienced people on the NomCom. We just think it's a good thing to ensure some critical mass of experienced ones, and we had a desire to be restrained about pushing the level of that critical mass. > Second, let us suppose that we do eventually get a Nomcom that is in > fact completely ignorant [...] Why is that a disaster? It's not like > the entire leadership of the IETF is replaced by a given Nomcom. Without trying to define "disaster", I'll remind you that, while the NomCom is not replacing the *entire* leadership, it is selecting *half* the leadership (and the overall char, in alternate years). That's a lot. And each of those appointees is in for two years, barring such severe problems as to cause a recall -- a very expensive and disruptive process that we'd like to avoid. It would certainly be, if not a "disaster", decidedly difficult and disruptive to have one of the two ADs from each of, say, three or four area... be poorly suited to the job. The same goes for the IETF general chair. There's no guarantee that a NomCom with "enough" experienced people will not choose some poorly suited persons for leadership roles, but we think it's unlikely for such a NomCom to go *too* far wrong with too many of their selections. > Despite the claim in the > draft that there are "serious problems" affecting the operation of > Nomcoms, I'm not seeing what they are. The report from the 2009 chair > suggested that there were some things that happened that made some > people uncomfortable (and that's the only citation for the "serious > problems" claim), but every one of them seemed to be addressable by > action by the chair. The selection process is, of course, not controlled by the NomCom chair, so the part above is not addressable by the chair. Some of the "uncomfortable" bits apparently involved people being unwilling to be candid because one particular liaison or other was in the room. That's addressed by another of our recommendations, which gives the chair a way to address that, which s/he doesn't have now. In general, the document suggests a combination of minor process changes and suggestions that can be implemented at the will of the NomCom. Remember that the chair can't decide what the NomCom as a whole will do. The chair runs the *process*, and facilitates the meetings. The voting members are who make the decisions. Lots of people have lots of ideas about how we ought to change the NomCom process, putting more rules in or fewer. This document represents the consensus of a relatively small but significant and experienced group of people... about a minimal set of changes that we think are important. We're not proposing vast changes and cumbersome new processes. We're going for simplicity, in order to address some of the points of most concern. Barry Leiba _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf