At 06:24 PM 10/7/2014, IETF Chair wrote: > We are committing to coming up with a proposal to the community >for that by May 2015. We believe the end result of that could be to reduce the >number of areas by one. > >In the short term, however, we would like to advise the NomCom to *not* fill >the APP AD vacancy in this NomCom cycle. I've read most of the other responses on this thread and I agree that the APPs area is in need of attention and I applaud the desire to restructure. However, I'm concerned that we are proposing to not follow our own rules. The first issue is that once the IETF ExecDir passes on the vacancies to the Nomcom, there is no provision for the Nomcom not to fill those vacancies, nor is there provision for that vacancy list to change. The IESG could have changed the vacancy slate any time up to the announcement of vacancies (29 Aug according to what I saw), but delayed making the decision for a month past the deadline. That's not insoluble, but it disturbs me that we're attempting to use exception processing rather than what's programmed in. The second issue (related to other comments) is that 3777 has no provision for appointing anyone for a term of a year or less. Again, not insoluble, but begs the question of why we have rules if we don't follow them. Other comments, especially JCK's, have noted that the work will not decrease as there will continue to be some similar number of WGs and questioning on that basis the desire to not appoint a new APPs AD. Instead, let me suggest the IESG put its head together and figure out where a more general AD might be of use for two years. Given the large number of cross area WGs, perhaps re-working the job description into husbanding the transition of some number of as yet to be defined WGs to the different areas might be useful and might actually be a 2 year task. Or other tasks related to the closure of the area that will no doubt occur to the IESG between now and next year. Also, AFAIK, there is no requirement that a WG be owned by one of the area directors of its primary area - stick the APPs AD as the primary owner for the WG, but pick a secondary owner from the gaining area to ease transition. (I would thing that you should be doing this now for the WGs owned by the continuing APPs AD if you expect to close out the area next year ) The AD's have a primary focus for the topics of their areas, but their secondary focus needs to be on the IETF standards process. Having a 2 year AD who can spend some additional time maybe helping the IESG with the workload of the standards process would not be a bad idea. Mike