Subject: [Eligibility-discuss] what it means to know the IETF

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2020 18:00:23 -0400

John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > Hi.  I just read most of this thread-- an activity which given
    > the relatively small number of participants who seem to be
    > repeating themselves (possibly because of a possibly accurate

I've also just perused a long thread.

    > surrogate for that.   That is actually fairly easy to
    > demonstrate if not to quantify by looking at the reliance on
    > ever longer and more complex candidate questionnaires that
    > mostly ask for information that would have been first-hand
    > Nomcom knowledge a quarter-century ago.

That's an interesting perception.

Having been on three nomcoms as a voting member, and chair and past chair, I
can't contradict what you are saying, but I don't think the nomcom feels this
way.   I was involved in the IETF a "quarter-century ago", and yet there are
many people I've known for 25 years, but I couldn't say much about their
abilities to mediate a dispute, or manage a team of 15 people.

As a nomcom member, I was generally happy to read people's resumes, but
people do not generally write about their opinion about, for instance, "The
IANA Transition" in their resume.

My experience in the nomcom membership is that are generally two
people in the nomcom who know everyone.
And two people who know only the four people in the one WG they do work in.
Plus six people who many people, but not everyone.
Many people go on to do big things in the IETF.

Generally, I dispute your "Once upon a time" tale.  Maybe it was true in
October 1988, in Ann Arbor, but it was not true in 1996 when I started.
Sure, there remained silos of cliques, but that's what they were.

    > (3) I'm also a little concerned about participants, even active
    > participants, who are only involved in a single WG.    People
    > who come to the IETF to participate in a narrowly-focused
    > activity, especially one dominated by small number of companies

I look at this differently.
Yes, there are active participants who have only managed to get themselves
involved in a single WG... so far.

Yes, some of them are culturally useless to the nomcom.
But.. they also don't volunteer for it.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-