The question to my mind is which tasks are you looking to off-load.
ADs already can ask for assistance in many ways. Most use directorates.
Some use them a lot. Some use them only a little.
[Yes, I have an opinion about how to handle an area directorate that
tells the AD "no, we will not do more reviews for you." But even that
is not as easy as one would like.]
Assuming we don't want to change the basic functioning and review, the
ADs themselves need to be sufficiently informed of issues to engage in
discussion with the other ADs about issues. That requires a fair amount
of work.
Yours,
Joel
On 10/20/13 10:31 AM, Tim Chown wrote:
On 20 Oct 2013, at 12:52, Scott Brim <scott.brim@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:scott.brim@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Adding more certainly doesn't help. Reducing the number could help if
we have a concomitant increase in the usefulness of directorates. But
it doesn't solve the problem. If we learn to adjust to having fewer
ADs, and the trend toward a smaller more homogeneous candidate pool
continues, we end up with just a Chair and maybe 1-2 ADs, plus a lot
of (appointed) "assistants". That could work, but let's decide
explicitly if that's the trajectory we want to be on.
I suspect we may find that more people would be able to find the time
and resource to do AD-like tasks for a handful of hours per week, rather
than having to find support to commit for 40 hours per week. Helping on
a directorate is, for example, not an onerous task, but it (I hope)
helps the ADs.
As it stands, WG chairs have the option to appoint a secretary, for some
level of help. The question I asked in the original email was whether
ADs should have the option to appoint one or more assistants to help
them. It seems that there's a lot to be said for such a model.
Potential future ADs could contribute the time they do have, and in
doing so get a better feel for what the full AD role would be like,
while the ADs would get some extra resource/help, which could reduce the
amount of time they need to spend, making the role more
attractive/feasible to them.
The question is how we answer Scott's last sentence above. It could be
a good topic to put on the admin plenary agenda in Vancouver.
Tim