Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said I don't understand the concern about too many message headers.
Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
From: Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said I don't understand the concern about too many message headers. I don't know about there being a UUCP one, but here: http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/humour/net.header is the ARPANET one. Noel
Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
On Sunday, June 30, 2013, Noel Chiappa wrote: From: Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com javascript:; Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said I don't understand the concern about too many message headers. I don't know about there being a UUCP one, but here: http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/humour/net.header is the ARPANET one. Noel That was it, thanks! I hope it's in the archives.
RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
This message is reply to an author of a new draft under ietf discussion. If this list is not the correct place to discuss such matter, then the list's responsible Chair is required to give details of where to discuss such new work. I have no idea what a list's responsible chair is, but there is an ITEF list dedicated for the discussion of issues related to NomCom. https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-nomcom This mailing list is a relocation of the mailing list used by the (now-concluded)NomCom working group, and reopened for discussion of the cureent proposals for revision of the Nomcom process. Please note that I was told not to post more discuss messages on this list That is an interesting statement, IMHO. Had you said requested, I would have understood. Had you said warned of the consequences if you continued to post in a particular way, I would have known what was going on. But told not to post is, AFAIK only achievable through a posting ban, which you don't seem to have received. Adrian
RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
From: Adrian Farrel adr...@olddog.co.uk told not to post is, AFAIK only achievable through a posting ban, which you don't seem to have received. Yet. Noel
RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Yet. PS: I probably should have added a :-) to that. Sorry, it's early, the brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-) Noel
Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Yet. PS: I probably should have added a :-) to that. Sorry, it's early, the brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-) No.
Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
In article 51cf38eb.3080...@dougbarton.us you write: On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Yet. PS: I probably should have added a :-) to that. Sorry, it's early, the brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-) No. ?
Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
The shortest ietf email was sent at least 20 years ago, consisted of a single ! as the body. Of course the subject went on for two lines. I forget what the subject was. Mike Sent from my iPad On Jun 29, 2013, at 15:43, Doug Barton do...@dougbarton.us wrote: On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Yet. PS: I probably should have added a :-) to that. Sorry, it's early, the brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-) No.
RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
-1 Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/ From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa [j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu] Sent: 29 June 2013 13:28 To: ietf@ietf.org Cc: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu Subject: RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility) From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Yet. PS: I probably should have added a :-) to that. Sorry, it's early, the brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-) Noel
New form of remote attendance [was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility]
On Thu, 2013-06-27 at 12:44 +0100, Arturo Servin (probably did not intend to) wrote: What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to meetings? I attend all meetings psychically so spriritual! Sorry.. couldn't resist. E.
Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)
This message is reply to an author of a new draft under ietf discussion. If this list is not the correct place to discuss such matter, then the list's responsible Chair is required to give details of where to discuss such new work. + Hi Moonesamy, (the Author of draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00) I think the draft still needs more details, for example, the Abstract says to give remote contributors eligible to serve but how many remote, it is not-reasonable/not-practical to have most remote, and it is not fare/diverse to have all not remote. Furthermore, you did not mention diversity in the draft related to members selected. AB I prefer if you refer me, or the discussion list chair can refer me to somewhere we can discuss this new draft. Please note that I was told not to post more discuss messages on this list, so the chair or you are required to respond on this issue related to discussing the draft, because this may be my last post regarding this I-D. AB the update may need an informational draft (or better introduction) like what [1] is doing, so if we know the information on process challenges we will know the best practice. I like the [1] draft I think it needs to be renewed including remote members possibilities. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-crocker-nomcom-process-00.txt AB you need to define *remote contributor* in the draft. When the authors define it then I can amend or edit. You need to mention that most of meeting of IETF per year are in one region which makes some from other regions to contribute remotely. Section 2 The section is not reasonable because you changed with no strong reasons. Why you want to change totally, I recommend to add idea not change. As to give opportunity to additional memebrs that are remote. These additional memebrs will have a special condition. This way you don't change the conditions for the current procedure of selecting f2f memebrs, and you may limit the number of remote contributors maybe 10 % of the total memebrs. AB suggest in Section 2 I suggest not to update the text of the RFC but to add new rule for selecting few remote participants. AB you need to add what are the remote memebrs responsibilities, because they may be similar or different than the other memebrs. my answers to your questions below, On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 1:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hi Abdussalam, Thanks for explaining why you support the draft. I am going to list some questions. Please read them as points to consider. There isn't any obligation to provide comments. You mean the draft should consider, - What is your opinion about helping the pie get larger? No we don't want things to get larger for others to eat, we want things to get smarter for others to use, share, and develop equally. - What would be an acceptable way of determining whether someone has been contributing to the IETF over a period of five meetings? Where are the five meetings (is it a f2f meeting?)and what kind of contributing you are asking? - Dave Cridland suggested that working groups provide a smallish set of volunteers each for the selection process. Is it okay to leave it to the working group chair to make the decision? I will send you discusses/answers offline I really want to focus questions related to the new draft not other issues. Therefore, I think the draft needs to involve what was discussed on the list (feedback). Updating this RFC procedure may need more reasons than what was presented in the draft, I think it is nice if you add more and change info to renew this draft for more further discusses. Thanks. AB
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
SM, I read the draft and although I like the idea I have some concerns. Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. Even, if we had a registration similar to the face to face meetings, it would be difficult to verify that the people attended to a session remotely (even if you correlated registry vs. jabber/webex logs it would be difficult to know if it is really the person registred, somebody else or even a bot). I guess that there would be many ways to game the system. As I said I like the idea and I think that we should try to make it work. I do not know if all the locks and tools to protect the system against some sort of abuse should be in the draft or not, but we should address those (before or in parallel with adopting/working on the draft.) Regards, as On 6/27/13 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi, Section 2 says: RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, Nominating Committee Operation, Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. A few questions: (1) How do you define remote attendance? (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.) Thanks, Lars
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 1:03 PM, Eggert, Lars l...@netapp.com wrote: Hi, Section 2 says: RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, Nominating Committee Operation, Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. A few questions: (1) How do you define remote attendance? (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.) When we started having one day passes, the question was raised about whether attending on a one day pass counts for NomCom eligibility. If I remember correctly the answer was no. So we couldn't let listening in on one session count, right? I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log, but that's not really helpful IMO. Yoav
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log as much of the acculturation happens outside of wgs, we can have the nsa install jabber spies in the hallway. and they log everything! randy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 06/27/2013 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? I think physically attending 1 meeting might not be enough esp. if a nomcom were selected that had a lot of folks on who'd only ever been to one meeting. But I'm sympathetic to the goal and am sure some qualification rule (*) could be worked out. (Probably after about 1000 messages;-) However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely outcome.) S. (*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom selection process could also require that the voting members collectively have been to N meetings, with each voting member able to contribute at most M to that total. Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the random selection until you get 10 voting members that satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index3 or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-) Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy SM, I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal but I think the threshold issue should be clarified. What does one of the last five mean during an IETF meeting? I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I would relax the rule to say something like this: must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the last 5. 15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will allow people that that have been involved for a long time but have limited resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes. Q: do you want to limit how many infrequent attendees can be on Nomcom just like the number of people from a single organization can sign a recall ? Olafur
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi Arturo, At 03:00 27-06-2013, Arturo Servin wrote: I read the draft and although I like the idea I have some concerns. Thanks for taking the time to read the draft. I'll comment below. Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. I am aware of a case where the person attending the IETF meeting is not the one who's name is on the badge. I don't think that there was any malice or that it is a problem as that person will not game the system. Even, if we had a registration similar to the face to face meetings, it would be difficult to verify that the people attended to a session remotely (even if you correlated registry vs. jabber/webex logs it would be difficult to know if it is really the person registred, somebody else or even a bot). I guess that there would be many ways to game the system. I do not wish to suggest having registration. The IETF does not require registration to participate in working group discussions. I agree that there can be many ways to game the system. I will quote the second paragraph of the Introduction section of the draft: The IETF Trust considers any submission to the IETF intended by the Contributor for publication as all or part of an Internet-Draft or RFC and any statement made within the context of an IETF activity [RFC5378]. Such statements include oral statements in IETF sessions as well as written and electronic communications, made through a Jabber room. It would be a serious issue, in my opinion, if the IETF cannot identify its contributors. There are people who currently contribute through Jabber. It has never been considered as a problem. As I said I like the idea and I think that we should try to make it work. I do not know if all the locks and tools to protect the system against some sort of abuse should be in the draft or not, but we should address those (before or in parallel with adopting/working on the draft.) I agree that you and I should try to make it work. One of the problems of putting all the details in a document is that we lose the flexibility to, for example, address some sort of abuse that we did not specify clearly at the time the document was written. I would not look for locks and tools to protect the system; I would look for something else. Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
I have a general question. What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to meetings? - That nomcom participants know the IETF - That nomcom participant know in person people appointed to IESG, IAB, etc - To avoid game/abuse the system by an organization? etc. I think that something that the draft need to say is why we need to change the requirement, is it obsolete? why? Regards, as On 6/27/13 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 7:44 AM, Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to meetings? Acculturation: the opportunity over time to absorb the IETF culture and become a part of it. The other points you raised are valid, but this is the main thing. I think acculturation is possible for remote attendees in theory, but not with the current level of support for off-site participation—while what we have is great for helping people to participate in selected working group meetings, it doesn't provide anything like the experience of an on-site participant.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Ted, Thanks. Perhaps then Olafur recommendation: must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the last 5. may be a good compromise. Also, I would suggest one of the last 6 (instead of 5). I guess in two years the IETF does not change too much. Regards, as On 6/27/13 12:59 PM, Ted Lemon wrote: On Jun 27, 2013, at 7:44 AM, Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to meetings? Acculturation: the opportunity over time to absorb the IETF culture and become a part of it. The other points you raised are valid, but this is the main thing. I think acculturation is possible for remote attendees in theory, but not with the current level of support for off-site participation—while what we have is great for helping people to participate in selected working group meetings, it doesn't provide anything like the experience of an on-site participant.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 8:06 AM, Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the last 5. may be a good compromise. Also, I would suggest one of the last 6 (instead of 5). I guess in two years the IETF does not change too much. I think Olafur's suggestion is a good one, and I tend to support it, but bear in mind that the problem is not the IETF changing: it's the former attendee changing. We want them to return to the well from time to time to take another deep draught, so that they do not lose the unique flavor that the waters bear.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? SM - I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to serve on the NomCom in the right direction. Long-term, it would be ideal if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation. Noting agreement in the direction, the reality of remote participation today is somewhat different. In recent years, I have been a frequent remote participant and occasional on-site participant, and while it is possible to effectively contribute to working group efforts remotely, such success is predicated on knowing quite a bit about IETF processes and workflow, and it not clear to me that a remote participant picks up the necessary background at anywhere near the same rate as on-site participants. As a result, I am concerned that the proposed language in draft wouldn't necessarily provide for experienced IETF participants in the NomCom, and/or those who have well-informed insight into what makes for good IAB/IESG/IAOC members. Note also that the proposed language also increases the possibility of capture (i.e. the ability of an single organization to inappropriately skew the outcome of the process) in that a relatively large pool of remote participants could quickly be made NomCom-eligible by having them attend the very next IETF meeting, and then all volunteered to serve on the NomCom. While this is not a particularly likely course for a party not happy with the IETF, it is an aspect to be considered in the NomCom processes. With an view towards finding a middle ground, would it be possible to change your proposed text from: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. to this: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least _2_ of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. The change from 1 to 2 meetings being in-person significantly reduces the potential risk of capture while also increasing the exposure level of NomCom volunteers to dynamics that occur in the hallways and between the formal IETF working group sessions. The net result recognizes the value of remote participation, moves in the right direction, but does so at a more moderate pace than you originally propose. Thoughts? /John Disclaimers: My views alone. NomCom '95 Chair (back before any NomCom procedures existed... :-)
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi, First, as a comment, I guess there is people who follow more IETF remotely than other in place. Second, I like this idea of changing the threshold. Third, In the other hand, since there are several positions that are fill using this RFC maybe we can place a testbed. 50% can be fill using the current way and 50% using the proposed way, sounds crazy but it might be a good beginning. Thanks, Alejandro, Este mensaje ha sido enviado gracias al servicio BlackBerry de Movilnet -Original Message- From: Olafur Gudmundsson o...@ogud.com Sender: ietf-boun...@ietf.org Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:06:36 To: S Moonesamysm+i...@elandsys.com Cc: Internet Whining TFietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy SM, I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal but I think the threshold issue should be clarified. What does one of the last five mean during an IETF meeting? I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I would relax the rule to say something like this: must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the last 5. 15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will allow people that that have been involved for a long time but have limited resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes. Q: do you want to limit how many infrequent attendees can be on Nomcom just like the number of people from a single organization can sign a recall ? Olafur
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
John, I agree with everything you wrote. I especially applaud SM for getting out there with new ideas, and I like the idea of opening up eligibility a bit more. John's proposed change would reduce risk of capture. I do think that risk is also mitigated through other mechanisms (like limiting the number of people with the same affiliation from joining the NOMCOM), but Ted's point is also important, that people have some feel for how the IETF operates, both in person and on mailing list. John's proposal seems to strike a good balance. Eliot On 6/27/13 2:36 PM, John Curran wrote: On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? SM - I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to serve on the NomCom in the right direction. Long-term, it would be ideal if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation. Noting agreement in the direction, the reality of remote participation today is somewhat different. In recent years, I have been a frequent remote participant and occasional on-site participant, and while it is possible to effectively contribute to working group efforts remotely, such success is predicated on knowing quite a bit about IETF processes and workflow, and it not clear to me that a remote participant picks up the necessary background at anywhere near the same rate as on-site participants. As a result, I am concerned that the proposed language in draft wouldn't necessarily provide for experienced IETF participants in the NomCom, and/or those who have well-informed insight into what makes for good IAB/IESG/IAOC members. Note also that the proposed language also increases the possibility of capture (i.e. the ability of an single organization to inappropriately skew the outcome of the process) in that a relatively large pool of remote participants could quickly be made NomCom-eligible by having them attend the very next IETF meeting, and then all volunteered to serve on the NomCom. While this is not a particularly likely course for a party not happy with the IETF, it is an aspect to be considered in the NomCom processes. With an view towards finding a middle ground, would it be possible to change your proposed text from: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. to this: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least _2_ of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. The change from 1 to 2 meetings being in-person significantly reduces the potential risk of capture while also increasing the exposure level of NomCom volunteers to dynamics that occur in the hallways and between the formal IETF working group sessions. The net result recognizes the value of remote participation, moves in the right direction, but does so at a more moderate pace than you originally propose. Thoughts? /John Disclaimers: My views alone. NomCom '95 Chair (back before any NomCom procedures existed... :-)
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
I have attended some IETF meetings remotely and I am not in favor of this change. On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
I have not read the thread yet, on purpose. As a person who has done significant remote participation myself, and has also observed the difficulty new people have in understanding how things fit together, I can not support your specific proposal, but I support the idea. I would suggest: 2. Updated Text from RFC 3777 RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, Nominating Committee Operation, Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows: Members of the IETF community become eligible for the NomCom by having attended at least 3 of the last 7 IETF meetings in person. Once a person has become eligible for NomCom, they retain their elibility to NomCom by attending at least 1 of the last 4 IETF meetings in person, and at least 3 of the last 5 meetings in person or remotely. Should a person lose eligibility for NomCom, they return to not-eligible. (We could, true to form, describe this as a state machine with three states, or even a simpler to write in Verilog one with 7-8 states) === I have raised the bar slightly over your requirements in the form of still requiring 3 meetings to be attended, but lengthening the time to 7 meetings, such that a person who attends one meeting/year, if they do it right, can become eligible easily. I feel perhaps that in the becoming eligible process, that some of the 4 meetings not-attended should be clearly attended remotely, but I'm sure how to specify that. I have lowered the bar to remain eligible such that a person who not travel for 12 months (such as someone on maternity/paternity leave. Civilized countries get at least 1 year..) could remain eligible. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails[ -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works pgpKWjiu0jsRB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge zero. I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself. I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should be mandatory We also need to permit judgement calls. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails[ -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works pgp5KQcvMoVWO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely outcome.) Please note two things: 1) under the original proposal and my revised one, you have attend in person somewhat regularly. 2) for the November meeting, the nomcom *itself* must be present. I think it unrealistic to think that the nomcom itself could be remote for that meeting. For the summer and march meeting, the nomcom could be anywhere. so, even if you are eligible, don't volunteer for the nomcom if you can't attend the november meeting. -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works pgpytJwwtOhBM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 06/27/2013 02:24 PM, Michael Richardson wrote: Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely outcome.) Please note two things: 1) under the original proposal and my revised one, you have attend in person somewhat regularly. 2) for the November meeting, the nomcom *itself* must be present. Tend to agree. I think it unrealistic to think that the nomcom itself could be remote for that meeting. For the summer and march meeting, the nomcom could be anywhere. Not this year:-) so, even if you are eligible, don't volunteer for the nomcom if you can't attend the november meeting. But doesn't that run counter to one aspect of SM's otherwise reasonable goal? (And if getting randomly picked for nomcom implied some I* thing has to pay your way to the Nov meeting, then this is IMO a *much* larger change proposal.) S. -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
From: John Curran jcur...@istaff.org the proposed language also increases the possibility of capture (i.e. the ability of an single organization to inappropriately skew the outcome of the process) Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). Noel
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Just a quick aside, but having run an interim WG meeting where we did not charge a meeting fee and knowing how significantly attendance diverged, I would strongly support at least some meeting fee for remote attendance. There's also the key fact that the IETF is funded by IETF meeting fees and ISOC. Maybe the remote fee is scaled by region of attendee or such if there is concern that it is burdensome. I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing at all like being at IETF. I can see modifying NomCom eligibility constraints slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have the necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a number of IETFs in person. Having served on a NomCom a long time ago, I'd say that an inexperienced volunteer set gives substantially more strength and bias to the non-voting members, who are definitionally very familiar with the IETF and the candidates for office. I am not convinced the trade-off is worth it - but I can see the benefit of modifying eligibility constraints to keep people eligible for longer. I'd like to see a way to include active and experienced remote attendees, but am quite cautious on that. Alia On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.cawrote: Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge zero. I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself. I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should be mandatory We also need to permit judgement calls. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails [ -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.cawrote: Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge zero. I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself. We could require room registration for the XMPP (Jabber) chatrooms, and have remote participants fill in an equivalent of the blue sheet in order to join the room. I'm not sure if the current XMPP implementation supports this, but it will work in principle with a number of existing deployed implementations. (And, note, we no longer have to care about Google Talk interop, which makes things easier). Dave.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). It's already in RFC 3777. No more than 2 per company.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi Alejandro, At 05:42 27-06-2013, alejandroacostaal...@gmail.com wrote: First, as a comment, I guess there is people who follow more IETF remotely than other in place. Yes. Here's is an extract from a Jabber log: I don't think I've seen a WG chatroom this full before Well the future of the free world is at stake here :-) Second, I like this idea of changing the threshold. Thanks for reading the draft and providing feedback. Third, In the other hand, since there are several positions that are fill using this RFC maybe we can place a testbed. 50% can be fill using the current way and 50% using the proposed way, sounds crazy but it might be a good beginning. I don't think that it sounds crazy. A good beginning is when people make suggestions like you did. I don't know yet whether I will say okay to the idea. I would like to read all the suggestions, including yours, and then decide. Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 11:50 +0100 Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: ... (*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom selection process could also require that the voting members collectively have been to N meetings, with each voting member able to contribute at most M to that total. Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the random selection until you get 10 voting members that satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index3 or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-) While it risks taking us into a statistical rathole, I think that notions like the above may be the sort of thing we should look at. More broadly, I think we may need to try to figure out what we really want and need on or from the Nomcom in this decade (remembering that the system was designed for the rather different times and IETF composition of the early 1990s and has been tuned in minor ways but not carefully and openly reviewed since) and then try to devise criteria to match. It seems to me that may require looking at separate aspects of things rather than trying to come up with a single surrogate for everything. For example, as the above suggests, there are some purposes for which we probably need to look at overall Nomcom composition rather that just individual qualifications. Measures to avoid capture fall into that category. Whether the existing rules are adequate in that regard or not, they represent on case where we do look at total composition already. We might want to look at whether some collections of participants should be guaranteed representation or weighted more heavily in the selection calculations (whether voting or otherwise). That raises the risk that SM identifies of pushing us toward a Nomcom as a representative body of constituencies demanding slots, but the advantages seem very strong for Dave Crocker's proposal to guarantee a certain level of expertise and some ideas to be sure that the perspective of remote participants or other underrepresented populations are heard. The question is how to find the right balance and then reach sufficient consensus around the justification that we can hold the line. Not easy, but, at least IMO, probably worth the investment it would take. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that groks the IETF [1] is an important and useful criterion. I don't think 3 of last 5 is a valid exclusive surrogate. Perhaps what is needed is a list of alternatives, any of which could demonstrate sufficient familiarity with the culture. If we separated the IETF culture requirement, I still think that some level of participation, even face to face participation is important. I don't think that 3 face to face meetings in 5 is needed for people who already understand the culture; maybe some combination of remote participation and less frequent attendance should be equally acceptable. Participation is similar. If we think it is important, then someone who is actively contributing to mailing lists and document reviews and who is showing up in meeting Jabber logs with useful comments is, IMO, a more appropriate Nomcom member than someone whose company pays registration fees and travel expenses and who then shows up at meetings and either goes to the beach or sits in a few WG meetings reading email. I don't know how to eliminate the second (perhaps others have ideas) but I can think of ways to identify the former as long as they are not the exclusive minimum participation admission criteria. I would just hope that we don't fall into the trap of focusing on what is easy to measure and quantify rather than what is important and a good measure of what we are looking for. It is always tempting but, at least IMO, this issue is important enough to the community in the long term that we ought to be willing to invest some resources in it. 3 of 5 may represent an instance of that trap however well-intentioned it was when it was instituted. john [1] I wonder, its introduction into the OED notwithstanding, if the use of that term marks some of us as being either from a particular, increasingly-ancient, generation or is more culturally idiosyncratic than is appropriate.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). It's already in RFC 3777. No more than 2 per company. BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?) that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at the IETF. In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi, I am strongly opposed to a remote meeting registration process and remote meeting fees. This increases the financial bias towards large corporate control of IETF standards. I like the IETF because anybody can comment on a draft or write a draft without paying fees. I think there could be several ways to prove one has been recently involved in the IETF. IMO I-D or RFC authorship shows more involvement than just showing up at an IETF. People who never read, write or comment on any drafts can be more nomcom-qualified (by attendance metrics) than somebody who worked on 10 drafts over the same time span. Andy On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:36 AM, Dave Cridland d...@cridland.net wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca wrote: Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge zero. I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself. We could require room registration for the XMPP (Jabber) chatrooms, and have remote participants fill in an equivalent of the blue sheet in order to join the room. I'm not sure if the current XMPP implementation supports this, but it will work in principle with a number of existing deployed implementations. (And, note, we no longer have to care about Google Talk interop, which makes things easier). Dave.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 9:34 AM, Noel Chiappa j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). There are already controls for that, but folks who engage in games such as this generally make use of consultants/proxies/etc. which are not at all apparent. I'm not citing this as a huge risk, but one which could occur if the in-person requirement drops to a single meeting. (i.e. due to the large pool of remote participants that one could enlist and fund a single on-site attendance if the goal was to seat an particular IAB or IESG member.) FYI, /John Disclaimers: My views alone ( not part of any group seeking NomCom capture... :-)
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 09:35 -0400 Alia Atlas akat...@gmail.com wrote: Just a quick aside, but having run an interim WG meeting where we did not charge a meeting fee and knowing how significantly attendance diverged, I would strongly support at least some meeting fee for remote attendance. There's also the key fact that the IETF is funded by IETF meeting fees and ISOC. FWIW, so would I, if only because a large fraction of where that fee goes (at least given some assumptions about disposition of registration fee and ISOC money) is to support activities that have little or nothing to do with actual meeting costs. That makes a fee for remote participates a matter of fairness, even though I would hope that we could keep it low enough to avoid discouraging participation (and maybe differentiate between a lurker fee and an active remote participant fee). Again, creative thinking is called for, IMO. Maybe the remote fee is scaled by region of attendee or such if there is concern that it is burdensome. We already have a fee waiver mechanism. It may need to be more widely publicized and/or modified to reduce the load on the IETF Chair if the number of requests rises, but I'd hope we could avoid region-based formulae (if the reasons aren't clear, I can elaborate). I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing at all like being at IETF. I can see modifying NomCom eligibility constraints slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have the necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a number of IETFs in person. See several previous notes on this list and the Nomcom one about acculturation. But, as to the difference in experience, I fully agree that it is very different. There is, however, a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: while I think the IESG and other leadership bodies have good intentions toward remote (including mailing-list-only) participants, having those bodies be more accountable to remote folks is probably key to making that experience better. I have doubts as to whether it will every be good enough that the average remote-only participant will every fully understand the culture and actors, but maybe we don't need that as a criterion for success. john Having served on a NomCom a long time ago, I'd say that an inexperienced volunteer set gives substantially more strength and bias to the non-voting members, who are definitionally very familiar with the IETF and the candidates for office. I am not convinced the trade-off is worth it - but I can see the benefit of modifying eligibility constraints to keep people eligible for longer. I'd like to see a way to include active and experienced remote attendees, but am quite cautious on that. Alia On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.cawrote: Arturo Servin arturo.ser...@gmail.com wrote: Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody attended to a session. We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge zero. I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself. I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should be mandatory We also need to permit judgement calls. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails [ -- Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.ca, Sandelman Software Works
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Michael, I think what you're getting at is that there are different types of remote participation. If one wants to listen in, that should only require the appropriate software and a network connection. If one actually wants to participate, then one either has to get onto a WeBex or Meetecho system. The point of this is that there has should be some demonstration that someone substantially participated in an IETF event. Speaking of which, let me also raise another issue. As those of you who will be there in person will see in Berlin, we have a *vast* number of BoFs planned, and this could lead to a vast number of additional new working groups. We won't have room for them all. In addition, I myself am co-chair of a working group who is not intended to meet – *ever*. Linked to the issue of NOMCOM is the idea that working groups actually meet at IETFs. Some certainly will continue to do so. Others, on the other hand, require more bandwidth. Case and point: the httpbis working group has held two interim meetings and two more are planned. All off site. Should these people be counted? If so, how? And yes, it is possible to make this so complex that nobody would be able to figure out who is eligible. And so, as I said, I'm fine with SM's idea, modulo John's suggested edit. But I also think it would be useful to look beyond that change as well. Eliot
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
At 09:42 AM 6/27/2013, Eliot Lear wrote: On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). It's already in RFC 3777. No more than 2 per company. But that's still problematic. The current rules basically give any company who provides = 30% of the Nomcom volunteer pool an ~85.1% chance of having 2 members (sum of all percentages from 2-10 members), a 12.1% chance of having 1 and a 2.8% chance of having 0. I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that problem - not for a given company, but for pretty much locking small companies and individuals out of the Nomcom. Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5. So instead of the potential of say 30 volunteers from one company, we now suddenly have 150. And me with my single person consultancy - still only has 1 slot to volunteer. While it would be good to have more people involved, it would be bad in the ways in which larger companies could game the system. So - I'm not a big fan of the proposal without a lot more analysis of the unintended consequences - and there WILL be unintended consequences. Mike
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: I think what you're getting at is that there are different types of remote participation. If one wants to listen in, that should only require the appropriate software and a network connection. If one actually wants to participate, then one either has to get onto a WeBex or Meetecho system. The point of this is that there has should be some demonstration that someone substantially participated in an IETF event. I find that jabber+streamed mp3 is sufficient for a lot of things. I do not think that one has to actively contribute as much as be available to object to bad ideas. So, we mostly need to register for that remotely controlled hum generator. to do so. Others, on the other hand, require more bandwidth. Case and point: the httpbis working group has held two interim meetings and two more are planned. All off site. Should these people be counted? If so, how? I think that once we have a mechanism to count remote participation, we will use it. I think that an interim meeting is just part of the in-person meeting that follows it. That makes it simple and direct. An in-person interim meeting may provide substantially more indoctrination to a new person than a full blown meeting. And so, as I said, I'm fine with SM's idea, modulo John's suggested edit. But I also think it would be useful to look beyond that change as well. +1 -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails[ pgp5QPDQW3Gzv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5. Some already do.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
At 11:13 AM 6/27/2013, Scott Brim wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5. Some already do. But those 5 are not Nomcom eligible at this time. (And that was the benign intention I mentioned before...) Mike
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
At 09:51 AM 6/27/2013, David Meyer wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). It's already in RFC 3777. No more than 2 per company. BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?) that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at the IETF. This is where acculturation comes in. You and I are old hands - we've been doing this almost too long to remember. This is built into our personal perception of the IETF. Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less prevalent, both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer people. Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by throwing people at it. Given the current buy-in for the nomcom is about $6K per year per person (based on about a $4K per person direct cost - I don't know how to reasonably estimate the indirect costs of lost production because of travel if any), that provides at least a small barrier to entry to that type of manipulation, as does the acculturation that actually happens if they attend 3/5 meetings. I really wish the IETF were a group of individuals, but I don't think that's ever been completely true, and I have then impression its getting to the point where its not even mostly true. Mike In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: At 09:51 AM 6/27/2013, David Meyer wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Why not just say directly that 'to prevent capture, no more than X% of the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control). It's already in RFC 3777. No more than 2 per company. BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?) that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at the IETF. This is where acculturation comes in. You and I are old hands - we've been doing this almost too long to remember. This is built into our personal perception of the IETF. Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less prevalent, both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer people. Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by throwing people at it. Given the current buy-in for the nomcom is about $6K per year per person (based on about a $4K per person direct cost - I don't know how to reasonably estimate the indirect costs of lost production because of travel if any), that provides at least a small barrier to entry to that type of manipulation, as does the acculturation that actually happens if they attend 3/5 meetings. I really wish the IETF were a group of individuals, but I don't think that's ever been completely true, and I have then impression its getting to the point where its not even mostly true. Agree with all of your points Mike. --dmm Mike In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hello, I'll reply to several messages below to reduce ietf@ mail traffic. At 03:03 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote: Section 2 says: RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, Nominating Committee Operation, Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows: Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer. A few questions: (1) How do you define remote attendance? (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.) I prefer not to get into a definition of remote attendance for now. For what it is worth the current system only tells us that a person has paid the registration fee. That person could have gone shopping, fallen asleep during the WG sessions, or sitting in a corner as he or she does not have a dot and is not considered as important. Question (2) is based on the assumption that the IETF Secretariat has to make that determination. I am leaving question (1) open as I would like to listen to what you and everyone else has to say first. Question (2) could be addressed after that. At 03:33 27-06-2013, Yoav Nir wrote: When we started having one day passes, the question was raised about whether attending on a one day pass counts for NomCom eligibility. If I remember correctly the answer was no. So we couldn't let listening in on one session count, right? Yes. I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log, but that's not really helpful IMO. Agreed. At 03:50 27-06-2013, Stephen Farrell wrote: I think physically attending 1 meeting might not be enough esp. if a nomcom were selected that had a lot of folks on who'd only ever been to one meeting. But I'm sympathetic to the goal and am sure some qualification rule (*) could be worked out. (Probably after about 1000 messages;-) The MySQL field reserved only has two characters for the message count. As such the limit is 99 messages. :-) Please note that I am not ignoring the view expressed above. However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely outcome.) I'll leave to folks who have been on NomCom to comment. (*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom selection process could also require that the voting members collectively have been to N meetings, with each voting member able to contribute at most M to that total. Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the random selection until you get 10 voting members that satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index3 or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-) My first response to the above would be no. However, there is something in the above which is interesting. Once I get a sense of the high level picture I may get back to it. At 04:06 27-06-2013, Olafur Gudmundsson wrote: I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal but I think the threshold issue should be clarified. Ok. What does one of the last five mean during an IETF meeting? The 5 meetings are the five most recent meetings that ended prior to the date on which the solicitation for nominating committee volunteers was submitted for distribution to the IETF community. It's any one meeting out of that. I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I would relax the rule to say something like this: must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the last 5. 15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will allow people that that have been involved for a long time but have limited resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes. I tried that in another draft. I dropped the proposal because of other NomCom-related issues. Q: do you want to limit how many infrequent attendees can be on Nomcom just like the number of people from a single organization can sign a recall ? The quick answer is yes. One of the issues is the assumption behind attended meetings. There is also the question of fairness. I will have to reconsider my answer based on the views that are expressed. At 05:36 27-06-2013, John Curran wrote: I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to serve on the NomCom in the right direction. Long-term, it would be ideal if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation. My preference is to look for
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Michael Richardson mcr+i...@sandelman.cawrote: Alia Atlas akat...@gmail.com wrote: I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing at all like being at IETF. I can see modifying NomCom eligibility constraints slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have the necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a number of IETFs in person. That's why, I am not in favour of significantly changing the criteria to *become* nomcom eligible. I really don't think anyone thinks that one can become clueful about IETF culture without being there in person a few times. That's possibly true. That said, I have been to two meetings, none in the past five, and I certainly don't think I'm automatically less clueful than all those who've attended three of the past five. In my favour, I've a few RFCs, including working group output, and I'm co-chairing a working group. Perhaps the volunteer selection process ought to be that working groups provide a smallish set of volunteers each, and get rid of artificial eligibility criteria which attempt to obliquely address real - and important - criteria. I'd perhaps suggest that working group chairs cannot be volunteered by their own working groups. I suspect that doing things that way would both reflect participation better, and produce a lot more engagement into the nomination process. Dave.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi, On Jun 27, 2013, at 18:26, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: (1) How do you define remote attendance? (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.) I prefer not to get into a definition of remote attendance for now. sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote attendees be permitted to volunteer for NomCom without defining what defines a remote attendee. For what it is worth the current system only tells us that a person has paid the registration fee. That person could have gone shopping, fallen asleep during the WG sessions, or sitting in a corner as he or she does not have a dot and is not considered as important. The issue you are raising - that limiting the NomCom pool to recent attendees of physical IETF meetings may have downsides - is valid. But at least the requirements the current policy sets are clearly defined. Until you nail down what exactly defines a remote attendee, I can't really form an opinion on whether allowing them into the NomCom pool is a good idea or not. Lars
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 9:26 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: I prefer not to get into a definition of remote attendance for now. Then maybe we should wait for you to do so. This discussion is kind of pointless if we don't have shared definitions. --Paul Hoffman
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 6/27/13 5:08 AM, Cullen Jennings wrote: I have attended some IETF meetings remotely and I am not in favor of this change. To be honest, I'm skeptical, myself. I have attended a lot of meetings remotely and I don't think that it provides enough context to be able to provide the background for critical decisions about leadership. I'm also not sure what problem it's trying to solve. Melinda
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 11:07 -0400 Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: ... But that's still problematic. The current rules basically give any company who provides = 30% of the Nomcom volunteer pool an ~85.1% chance of having 2 members (sum of all percentages from 2-10 members), a 12.1% chance of having 1 and a 2.8% chance of having 0. And, of course, a few related companies or one with subsidiaries that it claims are independent and a desire to game the system can easily do so today to produce a highly-likely larger number of members, perhaps even a majority. We are clearly vunerable in that area but, perhaps inevitably, have gone down multiple ratholes as soon as we try to tighten the specifically anti-capture rules further. In particular, trying to second-guess a company's assertions about what entities are independent of it is just fraught with problems even thought such assertions can be used to subvert any, or almost any, no more than X from one company/interest rule. I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that problem - not for a given company, but for pretty much locking small companies and individuals out of the Nomcom. Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5. So instead of the potential of say 30 volunteers from one company, we now suddenly have 150. And me with my single person consultancy - still only has 1 slot to volunteer. Yes, but... (i) Some reasonable set of demonstrate clue provisions, if adopted along with the demonstrate participation ones, would tend to counter that, and might even reduce the available 30 (or whatever number one picks). (ii) A notion of some remote participation is ok if you can demonstrate clue/ groking the IETF in some other way actually helps to protect your ability to volunteer if you suddenly missed a few consecutive meetings and that of other one-person consultancies (including, in the interest of full disclosure, me) and academics like Brian) who have discovered that, as in-person attendance rises, they need to be selective about face to face attendance. If one (and, equivalently, one's one-person consultancy) can't volunteer, the likelihood of being selected are zero (and really easy to calculate). (iii) Unless all of those 150 people were actually participating actively and contributing to IETF work, the company's actual ability to influence the standards process would go down. While it would be good to have more people involved, it would be bad in the ways in which larger companies could game the system. While I agree, I think it would be really unfortunate if we discarded opportunities to get a broader spectrum of people involved because of fears that come company or companies might misbehave. I think at least two things work in our favor in the latter regard. We can try to educate participants and their organizations about how little marginal commercial advantage they would gain by, e.g., getting an extra person on the IETF and be sure that our other procedures and safeguards reinforce that. For example, the reputational harm a company, to say nothing of the individuals involved, would suffer from a few recalls based on collusion in support of company positions would far exceed any possible advantages from having more people in leadership positions. I think there is also evidence of courts and competitiveness/ antitrust authorities being _very_ unsympathetic to organizations who try to subvert open standards processes. They, of course, also have the resources and authority to untangle relationships that we do not. best, john
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Yes, but instead of 150 volunteers from other organizations we could have 500. So the probabilities are back to the same. /as On 6/27/13 4:07 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that problem - not for a given company, but for pretty much locking small companies and individuals out of the Nomcom. Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5. So instead of the potential of say 30 volunteers from one company, we now suddenly have 150. And me with my single person consultancy - still only has 1 slot to volunteer.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
At 09:44 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote: sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote attendees be permitted to volunteer for NomCom without defining what defines a remote attendee. Agreed. The issue you are raising - that limiting the NomCom pool to recent attendees of physical IETF meetings may have downsides - is valid. But at least the requirements the current policy sets are clearly defined. Until you nail down what exactly defines a remote attendee, I can't really form an opinion on whether allowing them into the NomCom pool is a good idea or not. What I did in the initial draft is to work from the text already in RFC 3777. It has been mentioned by several people that participation is a way for somebody to get IETF experience. The question is how that participation can be defined. At 10:00 27-06-2013, Paul Hoffman wrote: Then maybe we should wait for you to do so. This discussion is kind of pointless if we don't have shared definitions. I think that the NomCom eligibility criteria should not discriminate between any contributor to the IETF Standard Process. The view I got from a previous discussion of the draft is that people from emerging regions are disenfranchised; that's how IETF culture works. Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
These days I don't contribute much to the IETF, so I hesitate to say much, but I care about it a lot and may contribute again someday. IMHO ... Once I lived in Japan for a year and got to think I understood Japanese culture, but finally realized I had hardly scratched the surface. Once, in Germany, I thought Germans were a lot like Americans, but finally realized I had no idea how different they were. And so on. Likewise, people may think they understand how the IETF works, and deduce from that what IETF culture means, when they have just begun to grasp it. The IETF mission is already vulnerable. Most of the time we can hold the culture together, although it takes a lot of work as unanimity has already begun falling apart. If we want to change the mission and culture, that's okay but we should do so consciously and explicitly. The NomCom is pivotal for the IETF being able to do its work, to fulfill its mission, in the future. People who know how the IETF works but do not have enough experience in the culture will not know how to express it well, in difficult and subtle situations. I'm not talking about knowledge of information, I'm talking about mastery of a trade -- something that comes with a lot of experience practicing it. Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree on what they should become. I supported the proposal to require a few old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago. I'm quite against the idea of lowering requirements now. I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process. Scott
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 6/27/2013 3:50 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote: However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely outcome.) I've been a voting member on 3 and liaison on 1. I can't imagine a nomcom process succeeding without a significant amount of face-to-face time. There are two reasons. One is creating basic working relationships for this type of personnel selection topic -- especially when few of the members have much experience with such an exercise. Much of nomcom is about haggling. Trade-offs about and among candidates. Debating what's true. Debating what matters. Debating combinatorials for slates. All of that is made fundamentally easier -- and easier does not mean easy -- when each member has a sense of knowing the other members. (As I recall, there are /many/ research studies about this sort of thing.) The second reason is interviewing nomination candidates. There is a 'feel' for a candidate that one can get from f2f that is much harder to obtain with only a voice call. That said, recent nomcoms seem to have de-valued f2f interviews. So, yes, much of nomcom is thru voice conferencing. But I believe the nature of the decision-making nomcom does requires the group to have had significant face-time. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com wrote: Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree on what they should become. I supported the proposal to require a few old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago. I'm quite against the idea of lowering requirements now. I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process. Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the nomcom itself. The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child). Since people tend to pick people who look like them, that means that nomcom will pick people who are less diverse. -- ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect [ ] m...@sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/| ruby on rails[
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Jun 27, 2013, at 10:29 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: I think that the NomCom eligibility criteria should not discriminate between any contributor to the IETF Standard Process. -1. Those choosing the leadership of an organization should understand more than the leadership of the one WG they have participated in. The view I got from a previous discussion of the draft is that people from emerging regions are disenfranchised; that's how IETF culture works. That's one view; another is we need to be more creative on how to increase diversity. Creative doesn't mean ignoring all obvious security and stability issues. --Paul Hoffman
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Thanks Moonesamy, I support the draft, it will give all participants from all the world equal opputunity. I made input related to this on the list because I found that I am remote participant and there was limits and conditions which I don't want. However, there may be some reasons that IETF done it that way which the draft may need to clarify and solve, AB On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-**eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/** draft-moonesamy-nomcom-**eligibility-00http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00). Could you please read the draft and comment? Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Michael Richardson m...@sandelman.ca wrote: Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the nomcom itself. Yes, we need to cultivate more talent and more viewpoints while simultaneously using hard-earned wisdom and encouraging growth of that wisdom in the less experienced. I'm looking for the proposal from a few years ago for a balance like that in the NomCom, but haven't found it yet.
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:29 -0700 S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: At 09:44 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote: sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote attendees be permitted to volunteer for NomCom without defining what defines a remote attendee. Agreed. I'm not sure I agree and want to come back to an earlier point -- we should figure out what we really need and want and then see if we can work out the details to make it work. If we conclude --as I think some have suggested-- that we don't want often-remote volunteers on the Nomcom no matter what, or that we don't want people who cannot just about guarantee physical attendance at all relevant meetings to serve on the Nomcom, or that we are unwilling to consider relaxing the current 3 of 5 rule for other reasons, then I'd argue that putting energy into defining appropriate criteria for being a remote attendee is pretty much a waste of time. If we do decide we want to open the door to remote attendees on the Nomcom and later discover that we can't agree on criteria, that is just how it goes. In principle, one could consider the do we want this and what would the criteria be questions in either order. In practice, I think the former question is the more important and should be considered first because it informs how we really feel about diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of f2f meetings. I also believe that, while I might be very difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a definite that would be at least as good at discriminating between actual remote participants and contributors and other sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating between those who understand the IETF culture and those who don't. ... --On Thursday, June 27, 2013 13:50 -0400 Scott Brim scott.b...@gmail.com wrote: Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree on what they should become. I supported the proposal to require a few old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago. I'm quite against the idea of lowering requirements now. I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process. Well, I agree with all of that in principle. In practice, I don't think the combination of a heavy Nomcom workload and long period of commitment with the 3 of 5 rule has served us very well in recent years, especially in terms of guaranteeing that the criteria you think are important are met. I think we would be better off with requirements that made it more feasible for people like you to volunteer to serve on the Nomcom on the basis of long-term understanding of the culture, a history of participating in a diverse collection of WGs, a few less f2f meetings, and some remote participation. Instead, the 3 of 5 rule and those other factors have brought us Nomcoms with a large fraction of the volunteer pool being folks with far less experience and perspective and a need to rely almost completely on questionnaires and interviews rather than knowledge. I don't think those relative newcomers should be excluded either, but I'm concerned when they appear to be dominating the volunteer pool because they are the ones with company support, time on their hands, and no expectations about getting selected for the IESG, IAN, or IAOC if they don't volunteer for the Nomcom. It is certainly possible that considering and making some changes could make things worse. But they could also make things better. And, IMO, merely having a serious conversation about what we would like our criteria to be and what we are trying to optimize is useful. If nothing else, some relative newcomers might learn something useful about the culture from the conversation and how we carry it out. best, john
RE: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree on what they should become. I supported the proposal to require a few old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago. I'm quite against the idea of lowering requirements now. I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process. Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the nomcom itself. The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child). I can support what Scott says if (and only if) we divide up the composition of NomCom. Taken to its extreme, what Scott says might return a NomCom made up only of people over 65 who have previously served on the IAB/IESG. But the same applies to SM's draft. Taken to its extreme, SM's draft might return a NomCom made up only of people who have absolutely no idea how the IETF functions today, and (more importantly) why. I think you can rely on each person actually on NomCom to speak their mind and deliver from their experience (and we can rely on the NomCom chair to tease that out). So surely we can say something like: 2 old-timers chosen randomly from a list of old-timers 4 people who have been around the IETF a lot (e.g. 3 out of last 5 meetings) 3 people who have worked in the IETF quite a bit (e.g. front page of 2 RFCs) 3 people who have evidence of participation in technical work on mailing lists. Each person is only allowed to be placed in one pool before selection. I would like to see SM reconsider his Section 2 along these lines (although not with these precise definitions). Adrian
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On 06/27/2013 02:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote: Hello, RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled. draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ). Could you please read the draft and comment? FWIW, all opinions my own, etc. :) I have attended several meetings in person, and several remotely. Unfortunately I do not support the concept of allowing remote attendance to qualify a person for Nomcom. As others have pointed out, the acculturation that happens during in person attendance is a significant part of this issue. Included in that is the chance to have at least some exposure to potential candidates as people outside of what is seen in e-mail and on line during meetings. Those who participate remotely don't have that opportunity, and IMO the Nomcom would be the poorer because of that. I am definitely sympathetic to the argument that meeting attendance places a high burden on the participants, and being able to attend enough meetings to become Nomcom eligible is a substantial investment. However I don't see a practical way to change that without a significant changes in IETF structure. (Arguably such changes may be desirable, but it would have to come wholesale, not piecemeal.) Doug
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi John, At 12:33 27-06-2013, John C Klensin wrote: I'm not sure I agree and want to come back to an earlier point -- we should figure out what we really need and want and then see if we can work out the details to make it work. If we The definition of attend is and has been people who pay the attendance fee for the three out of the last five meetings. I'll quote a part of Paul Hoffman's message: -1. Those choosing the leadership of an organization should understand more than the leadership of the one WG they have participated in. Currently, the people choosing IAB and IESG members do not even have to understand as much as the leadership of the working group they have participated in. I'll quote an extract from Scott Brim's message: I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required. Those who participate in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process. And part of a reply from Michael Richardson: The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child). Since people tend to pick people who look like them, that means that nomcom will pick people who are less diverse. I'll go back to what is said to be oral tradition: The strength of the IAB is found in part in the balance of the demographics of its members (e.g., national distribution, years of experience, gender, etc.), the combined skill set of its members, and the combined sectors (e.g., industry, academia, etc.) represented by its members. In my opinion the IETF has solved the problem on paper. If I take, for example, gender, there is only one woman on the IAB. Had the IAB been able to address the gender problem over the last 10 years? I would say no (I am using no as it is easier for people for which English is not their native language to easily understand my response). Is there balance in the national distribution of IAB members? I would say no (see above for explanation of the no). Is there balance in industry and academia affiliations? I would say no. Those issues have been discussed during the diversity debate and even before that. I am reluctant to make a suggestion that makes the IETF an oligarchy. I took at quick look at this thread. Most of the participants are from North America. There are two women who have commented. If Adrian Farrel asks me why we do not see participation from South America and Africa, my answer is: If you entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom the end result is that the rest of the world will not believe that it is worthwhile to participate unless they have money to gain from that participation. I'll quote an extract from Michael StJohns: Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less prevalent, both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer people. Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by throwing people at it. The fact is that there has been NomCom lobbying. That fact was reported a few years ago. Is there a link between that and what Michael StJohns said? I don't know. The open list approach was adopted a few years back. Two NomComs had different interpretations of the RFC. I don't think that it matters much. The point here is that definitions are subject to interpretation. For example, there was a previous NomCom discussion about the affiliation of an IETF participant. This is a side note, I'll use Ted Lemon as an example. I see that he is affiliated with nominum.com. It is easy for anyone to determine that. I'll compare him with Olafur Gudmundsson. I see that he is ogud.com. Let's say that they are both chairs of a DNS-related working group. Would the average working group participant be comfortable to ask about affiliation if he or she is not happy with a decision these working group chairs have taken? Would NomCom members be aware of a questionable decision they have taken and how they handled the situation? Would people who do not have the opportunity to be physically present at a meeting be comfortable providing negative feedback about them if the person does not personally know one of the NomCom members? The IETF had to wait until Olafur stepped forward with a Recall petition before doing anything about an ex-IETF Trust Chair who likely understood IETF culture. I agree that it would be good to figure out what is really needed and desired and then work out the details. conclude --as I think some have suggested-- that we don't want
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
[I have significantly cut down the thread to respond to a couple points.] On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:54 PM, S Moonesamy sm+i...@elandsys.com wrote: In principle, one could consider the do we want this and what would the criteria be questions in either order. In practice, I think the former question is the more important and should be considered first because it informs how we really feel about diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of f2f meetings. I also believe that, while I might be very difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a definite that would be at least as good at discriminating between actual remote participants and contributors and other sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating between those who understand the IETF culture and those who don't. In my opinion the easier path is to focus on contributors. The IETF culture angle is controversial because it is like saying that the person has to adopt North America culture. The IETF is the protector of what I'd describe as a public good. When I talk about IETF culture, part of what I mean is having people understand this and have the desire to protect, preserve, and grow it - rather than loot it for their (or their company's) profit. It might be viewed as helping the pie get larger instead of thinking of it as zero-sum game. Knowing what is important to preserve and protect is also important, but can be learned. Alia
RE: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
At 12:38 27-06-2013, Adrian Farrel wrote: I think you can rely on each person actually on NomCom to speak their mind and deliver from their experience (and we can rely on the NomCom chair to tease that out). So surely we can say something like: 2 old-timers chosen randomly from a list of old-timers 4 people who have been around the IETF a lot (e.g. 3 out of last 5 meetings) 3 people who have worked in the IETF quite a bit (e.g. front page of 2 RFCs) 3 people who have evidence of participation in technical work on mailing lists. Each person is only allowed to be placed in one pool before selection. I'll comment on the above. I have seen the request about reconsidering Section 2 of the draft and I am not ignoring it. Someone would have to create a list of old-timers. I think I understand what you mean by around the IETF a lot. I'll skip that for now. The front page of more than two RFCs can create an incentive to: (a) generate more RFCs (b) add more names to the author list There are a few ideas (including the above quoted text) which could be combined to figure out one or more workable alternatives. Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
Hi Abdussalam, At 12:16 27-06-2013, Abdussalam Baryun wrote: I support the draft, it will give all participants from all the world equal opputunity. I made input related to this on the list because I found that I am remote participant and there was limits and conditions which I don't want. However, there may be some reasons that IETF done it that way which the draft may need to clarify and solve, Thanks for explaining why you support the draft. I am going to list some questions. Please read them as points to consider. There isn't any obligation to provide comments. - What is your opinion about helping the pie get larger? - What would be an acceptable way of determining whether someone has been contributing to the IETF over a period of five meetings? - Dave Cridland suggested that working groups provide a smallish set of volunteers each for the selection process. Is it okay to leave it to the working group chair to make the decision? Regards, S. Moonesamy
Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility
On Thursday, June 27, 2013, Scott Brim wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Michael Richardson m...@sandelman.cajavascript:; wrote: Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the nomcom itself. Yes, we need to cultivate more talent and more viewpoints while simultaneously using hard-earned wisdom and encouraging growth of that wisdom in the less experienced. I'm looking for the proposal from a few years ago for a balance like that in the NomCom, but haven't found it yet. Here it is: http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-crocker-nomcom-process-00.txt I was particularly thinking of section 3, but reading it all might be worth your while. Yes we need to cultivate new leadership but that must not override the more important need for experience and wisdom in the vital functions of the IETF. Finding that balance is not a new concern, anywhere in the IETF -- 25 years ago I was told that the best working groups have six young turks and six old farts. John Klensin pointed out that there are other problems with the current NomCom selection rules. True. I'm not defending the current rules, just the principle of what the NomCom should be able to represent. I have no issues with changes to the NomCom process as long as they make the NomCom better at what it is supposed to do. Cheers ... Scott
