----- Original Message ----- From: John C Klensin john-ietf@xxxxxxx Sent: 13/03/2020 14:45:56 --On Friday, March 13, 2020 09:43 -0400 Barry Leiba <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The cancellation of the in-person IETF 107 meeting raises the > issue of how that meeting affects NomCom (Nominating > Committee) eligibility. This is especially important because a > new NomCom will be formed between now and IETF 108, giving us > all a fairly short time to figure out what to do. Barry, Forking the thread in the hope of not cluttering up your NomCom eligibility discussion, but... We seem to be making strong assumptions that we will be able to hold IETF 108 as planned, with f2f meetings in Madrid in late July. I suggest that the IESG (and the rest of us) think about that and so sooner rather than later. Our implicit assumption is that things will settle down enough that IETF 108 can be held normally and that we do not need to worry about a "new normal". <tp> I fear that that assumption will turn out to be optimistic. UK government advice is that the peak will come in 10 to 14 weeks and that the UK is four weeks behind Italy. Assuming Spain is somewhere between the two then IETF108 must be at risk and it would be sound engineering to explore the consequences of IETF108 not happening in person. One post up-thread suggested that IETF109 would not happen either. Again up-thread a post suggested that this virus spreads more in the dry so the spread in Spain may be faster or greater than in the wetter UK. Tom Petch </tp> --- New Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail replacement - get it here: https://www.oeclassic.com/ The infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists among my colleagues is this novel coronavirus really is new in several ways and, consequently, that we really cannot predict how quickly the period of maximal spread and risks will wind down by July. That may be likely, but it is by no means certain. So, it seems to me that we should be sorting out possible issues and making contingency plans about the conditions under which IETF 108 would need to be virtual too, including both things tied to the first or second meeting of the year and to how we do things. The circumstances that came upon us in the last six weeks gave us little choice other than making quick decisions. I personally think that, on balance, the IESG made reasonable decisions and handled things about as well as they could be handled, including the short-notice cancellation/ virtual conversion and reformed agenda. But we'd best not have that "whoops, big surprise" situation followed by a scramble again, if only because of the damage that the loss of the cross-area review that has occurred at f2f meetings since the IETF started could do to the quality of our work. So, let us -- soon, even if not in the next two weeks -- ask ourselves such questions as to how the Nomcom will function if it cannot meet f2f at IETF 108 (or 109), whether the possible need for the Nomcom to do much more of its work remotely might affect whatever advice is given to the ISOC President/CEO about candidates for Nomcom Chair, and so on. And then let's repeat that with a review of all of the other issues tied to the "second meeting" and how IETF 108 could be made maximally effective if we were forced to hold it virtually... including, of course, how that decision would be made and by whom. We could still view that as short-term with longer-term analysis and solutions to follow. But July isn't that far away and, if things don't get better, we should not have to deal with any plausibly-foreseeable situations by being surprised and improvising. best, john
