Hi, (I'm responding to the IESG's proposal -- and to Nico's mail in particular -- as an individual only, even though I mention some IAB activities below.) On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 02:14:06PM -0600, Nico Williams wrote: > - and operations (the sorts of people who can tell you that you're > using DNS incorrectly). On this particular bullet, I'll just observe that, if you ask 10 DNS people, you will get a list of at least 11 reasons why you're Doing It Wrong. Nevertheless, > All other specializations should be selected for (or against) on the > basis of what is needed more of at the time. I think this is the key point. I like Nico's suggestion primarily because I think the proposal the IESG has made has the disadvantages of both the existing, ADs-per-area structure, and of the little-structure Nico is proposing. That is, the IESG-proposed structure still has tight coupling of ADs to areas, though some areas would be better-supplied than others. That means that there's still a need for the Nomcom to match candidates to an individual area, and there will be the occasional AD who "guards" his or her area too zealously or pays too little attention to things outside the area. At the same time, both the areas that are large in this new proposal, and the cross-area management assignment suggestion, have all the issues of Nico's proposal: the nomcom has a much harder time figuring out exactly what skills are needed, and the IESG will have to spend the operational/managerial overhead of aligning WG assignments with inidviduals instead of allowing the area co-ADs to split up the work equitably. Nico's suggestion does have the strength that, if one is going to tear things up and try something new anyway, there seems little benefit in going half-way. Part of the issue here may in fact be that the areas, while clear in the middle, are often indistinct at their edges. This turns out to match what has been happening to the Internet architecure too, as the ITAT workshop and the IAB's IP Stack Evolution program both suggest. It could be that over time we will find more natural boundaries for areas, but I rather like the idea that the next nomcom gets from the IESG a list of general characteristics and specific expertise that the IESG needs, and gets a pool of people that don't fit in a single slot. The Nomcom already needs to do this sort of thing for the IAB, so it won't be a different work style. (This does, of course, raise the question of whether we need two bodies that are selected more or less the same way. I know some people have contemplated whether the IAB ought to be altered dramatically or else eliminated. I don't have an opinion about that right now, but we might get another bit of evidence from following Nico's suggestion.) Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx