Subject: [Eligibility-discuss] Suggestions for nomcom chair selection?

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 15:21:45 -0400

Dear colleagues,

I'm the President and CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC), and I'm writing with that hat on; but this account is where my IETF mail subscriptions generally are so it's more convenient to use this address.

One of the things that I have been reflecting on in the discussions about nomcom eligibility is that it would also affect the pool for nomcom chair availability.  As you probably know, I'm responsible to appoint the nomcom from year to year as part of my job.  When I am replaced, that person will take over the responsibility.

My job pulls me ever more away from the IETF, and I found it challenging to recruit and appoint the last two chairs.  I am grateful that, in my estimation, I was able to get two people to volunteer that I thought were well-qualified and likely to do a good job, but I'm also aware that my familiarity with the IETF community is decreasing over time.  This is in part due to the way the LLC has been designed, which I always understood as intending to create a little more distance between the Internet Society and the IETF.  In keeping with that institutional design, I have been limiting my own participation; and ISOC has adopted a number of policies to ensure that it is not possible for others to mistake staff participation as ISOC control or dominance of the IETF.  But, this means that the informal networks of connections that have historically bound the IETF and ISOC are perhaps not as strong as they once were.  In any case, an IETF with very different nomcom eligibility criteria will mean different criteria for nomcom chairs, too, so this seems like a good time to try to describe some sort of community mechanism to inform the nomcom chair selection.  I could try it out for the next year, to see whether it might be practical.

The trouble I have is that I don't really know where to start except with the approaches I have, which are mostly informal and depend upon the social-professional networks I have as well as those of others.  That seems like a poor foundation on which to build, so I thought I'd ask to see whether people here have other suggestions for a starting point.

Thanks and best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 16:05:14 -0400

Andrew,

Just to start the ball rolling, here's a bit of a suggestion, just my two
cents.

As nomcom nominates the I*, there's the possible appearance of
impropriety for you to receive advice on the nomcom chair selection from
the I* members or chairs - there's a possibility that the suggestion could
be self-serving if the person decides to re-up (unless that person isn't up
for re-nomination in that cycle).

However, it occurs to me that you could send an annual email to the WG
chairs email list asking for private suggestions and/or volunteers. Who
collectively knows what's going on in the trenches better than the WG
chairs?

Cheers,
Andy (in the spirit of full disclosure - I'm a WG chair :-).

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 3:21 PM Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> I'm the President and CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC), and I'm writing
> with that hat on; but this account is where my IETF mail subscriptions
> generally are so it's more convenient to use this address.
>
> One of the things that I have been reflecting on in the discussions about
> nomcom eligibility is that it would also affect the pool for nomcom chair
> availability.  As you probably know, I'm responsible to appoint the nomcom
> from year to year as part of my job.  When I am replaced, that person will
> take over the responsibility.
>
> My job pulls me ever more away from the IETF, and I found it challenging
> to recruit and appoint the last two chairs.  I am grateful that, in my
> estimation, I was able to get two people to volunteer that I thought were
> well-qualified and likely to do a good job, but I'm also aware that my
> familiarity with the IETF community is decreasing over time.  This is in
> part due to the way the LLC has been designed, which I always understood as
> intending to create a little more distance between the Internet Society and
> the IETF.  In keeping with that institutional design, I have been limiting
> my own participation; and ISOC has adopted a number of policies to ensure
> that it is not possible for others to mistake staff participation as ISOC
> control or dominance of the IETF.  But, this means that the informal
> networks of connections that have historically bound the IETF and ISOC are
> perhaps not as strong as they once were.  In any case, an IETF with very
> different nomcom eligibility criteria will m
>  ean different criteria for nomcom chairs, too, so this seems like a good
> time to try to describe some sort of community mechanism to inform the
> nomcom chair selection.  I could try it out for the next year, to see
> whether it might be practical.
>
> The trouble I have is that I don't really know where to start except with
> the approaches I have, which are mostly informal and depend upon the
> social-professional networks I have as well as those of others.  That seems
> like a poor foundation on which to build, so I thought I'd ask to see
> whether people here have other suggestions for a starting point.
>
> Thanks and best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> [email-masked]
>
> --
> Eligibility-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/eligibility-discuss
>

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 19:10:28 -0400

Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > I'm the President and CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC), and I'm
    > writing with that hat on; but this account is where my IETF mail
    > subscriptions generally are so it's more convenient to use this
    > address.

    > One of the things that I have been reflecting on in the discussions
    > about nomcom eligibility is that it would also affect the pool for
    > nomcom chair availability.  As you probably know, I'm responsible to
    > appoint the nomcom from year to year as part of my job.  When I am
    > replaced, that person will take over the responsibility.

Appointing nomcom chair is I think, a rather difficult job.
Expanding the pool would not really change who would be willing to chair in
my opinion.

Allison and I tried to change the process slightly so that nomcom chairs were
appointed in mid-October the year before in order that they could be invited
to sit through the November nomcom process as "nomcom-chair-elect".

While many nomcom chairs have previously been nomcom selecting members, even
if they have things change, and providing a smoother introduction/training is
important.

There was various amounts of push back, one of which was to point out that
this makes the nomcom chair 2.5 years, rather than 2.   This is a bit
inaccurate as the nomcom-past-chair duties are essentially over by January,
and I also think it would spread the information transfer from nomcom chair N
to nomcom chair N+1 over twice as many months.

How can we make the nomcom chair role more rewarding?

    > but I'm also aware that my familiarity with the IETF community is
    > decreasing over time.

Yes, but started with a connection to the IETF community that was perhaps two
orders of magnitude stronger than some ISOC presidents.

    > The trouble I have is that I don't really know where to start except
    > with the approaches I have, which are mostly informal and depend upon
    > the social-professional networks I have as well as those of others.
    > That seems like a poor foundation on which to build, so I thought I'd
    > ask to see whether people here have other suggestions for a starting
    > point.

The set of previous nomcom chairs started to meet a few times about various
things.   I think Montreal (105) was the last time.  I think that this group
of people is a good place to start this discussion.
Perhaps making this group slightly more formal in some way.
If we started from scratch, I think that the appointment of the nomcom chair
would have been assigned to the LLC.  Should the LLC be more involved?

As Andrew Malis said, people are always worried about process/regulatory
capture.  But, one has to acknowledge that you can't appoint strangers to do
this job.   While the group of WG chairs is a good place to include, it is
also the place in which the overwhelming majority of AD candidates are going
to be taken.

I imagine you have already collected the list of all the previous nomcom
voting volunteers already.  I'd have them in a file with some notes and I'd keep
coming back to them a dozen or so a quarter.

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

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 16:43:13 +1200

Andy,

Polling the WG Chairs is a reasonable idea, but I think that consulting with recent NomCom chairs would also be a good idea.

Related to this, a defect in BCP10 is that its timeline begins at the moment the NomCom chair is announced:
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc8713.html#section-appendix.d
The reality is that the timeline starts a month or two before then, when the ISOC President starts looking for the chair.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 15-Aug-20 08:05, Andrew G. Malis wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
> Just to start the ball rolling, here's a bit of a suggestion, just my two cents.
> 
> As nomcom nominates the I*, there's the possible appearance of impropriety for you to receive advice on the nomcom chair selection from the I* members or chairs - there's a possibility that the suggestion could be self-serving if the person decides to re-up (unless that person isn't up for re-nomination in that cycle).
> 
> However, it occurs to me that you could send an annual email to the WG chairs email list asking for private suggestions and/or volunteers. Who collectively knows what's going on in the trenches better than the WG chairs?
> 
> Cheers,
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 3:21 PM Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     Dear colleagues,
> 
>     My job pulls me ever more away from the IETF, and I found it challenging to recruit and appoint the last two chairs.  I am grateful that, in my estimation, I was able to get two people to volunteer that I thought were well-qualified and likely to do a good job, but I'm also aware that my familiarity with the IETF community is decreasing over time.  This is in part due to the way the LLC has been designed, which I always understood as intending to create a little more distance between the Internet Society and the IETF.  In keeping with that institutional design, I have been limiting my own participation; and ISOC has adopted a number of policies to ensure that it is not possible for others to mistake staff participation as ISOC control or dominance of the IETF.  But, this means that the informal networks of connections that have historically bound the IETF and ISOC are perhaps not as strong as they once were.  In any case, an IETF with very different nomcom eligibility
>     criteria will m
>      ean different criteria for nomcom chairs, too, so this seems like a good time to try to describe some sort of community mechanism to inform the nomcom chair selection.  I could try it out for the next year, to see whether it might be practical.
> 
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> 
>     -- 
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 09:51:11 +0100

Andrew,

Thanks first for raising this subject, and more importantly for taking
extremely seriously the job of selecting NomCom chairs.

As I read your mail there are two questions that arise:
1. How can the ISOC President continue to select quality NomCom chairs
2. Should we consider a transition to some other way of selecting the NomCom
chair

The first point will, I think, be the subject of a number of suggestions,
and you've already seen emails on the topic. It might help the discussion if
we could hear from you a brief list of qualities you are looking for. I
could suggest a number such as: history of involvement with the IETF;
familiarity with people and task management; a bit of a process wonk;
personally willing to make the commitment; funded to do the work. But it
might be better to have your thoughts rather than my second-guesses. This
list will, I believe, not be used to judge how you make the selection, but
will be helpful to the community in suggesting where you might find
candidates.

The second issue should be approached with great care. You and the past ISOC
Presidents have served us well in this respect and we should be slow to
throw that away. In addition, as others have pointed out, some degree of
separation between those appointed by NomCom and the appointment of the
NomCom chair is highly desirable. But your point that you are gradually
becoming less familiar with the IETF community is important and I can
imagine that a things develop it could get harder and harder so that even
with a list of volunteers or recommendations, it would be hard for the ISOC
President to make a reliable appointment.

Thanks again for starting this thread in good time before it is an
insurmountable issue.

Best,
Adrian
-----Original Message-----
From: Eligibility-discuss <[email-masked]> On Behalf
Of Andrew Sullivan
Sent: 14 August 2020 20:22
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Eligibility-discuss] Suggestions for nomcom chair selection?

Dear colleagues,

My job pulls me ever more away from the IETF, and I found it challenging to
recruit and appoint the last two chairs.  I am grateful that, in my
different nomcom eligibility criter!
 ia will m

Thanks and best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]