FWIW, I do believe that noncoms may decide for themselves what the final requirements are for specific positions. This is true in this case as well. The IESG has a role to send the starting point for these requirements, the desired expertise. (But it is possible that the nomcom does not see a need to change what the input said, which may help explain what Dave has seen.) I am sorry that I was unclear in my e-mail, and the note that we sent also did not clearly point this out. Thank you Sam for bringing that up. Nothing we said should be interpreted as taking away from the tasks that the nomcom process has. Or as an attempt to affect this year's process in any way, unless the nomcom asks us to revise our requirements. However, I still believe that if there is a problem in the requirements, it was originated in the desired expertise list from the IESG. Also, while the nomcom decides the requirements for specific positions, other changes (e.g., some change in the setup of areas) are within IESG's role to make, if necessary. For these reasons I believe a community discussion is very useful. Obviously, whatever results we may come up with would be subject to (current or future) nomcom's process of evaluating the input it gets from the IESG. Jari