Subject: [Iasa20] 99 IETF IASA 2.0 bof - raw notes

From: "A. Jean Mahoney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2017 17:30:39 +0200

Hi all,

My notes are below. Things I missed are marked with ...

Thanks!

Jean

IASA 2.0, IETF 99, Prague
Tuesday, July 18, 2017, 15:50-16:50, Grand Hilton Ballroom (1 hour)

Chair: Jon Peterson

Mailing list: [email-masked]

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5m Intro and agenda bash (Chair)

Note takers: Joe Hall and Jean Mahoney

Jabber scribe: Matt Miller

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20m draft-haberman-iasa20dt-recs-00 (Design Team)
35m Discussion
  - Feedback on the set of identified possible paths forward
  - Any potential missed options
  - Implications of options being considered

Brian Haberman presented.

Jordi Martinez: There is a risk of being independent entity that relies 
on sponsors, may not be good for maintaining independence. I sent my 
input to the list - I think we should stay under the ISOC umbrella and 
clarify the relationship.

Jon Peterson: The goal here is - Did we get the options right? Let's not 
pick an option right now.

Bob Hinden: The doc should discuss that some of options will have lots 
of staff that will change how the iETF works a lot. It will become like 
W3C, which is staff driven. Something to consider. Need to examine.

Jon: How would we describe how the IETF may change?

Bob: you talk about having the staff making more decisions. And board 
looking at strategic plans. The decisions are now made by IAOC and 
larger community. The staff executes what the IAOC says to do. And the 
options are proposing that staff makes decisions.

Brian: What are the tradeoffs between operations and strategic decisions 
and what does the oversight look like.

Ted Hardie: We're providing feedback to the design team and we're still 
on the first steps. Just wanted to clarify.

Jon: Yes.

Ted: In a lot of cases these are workable if their training and 
experience helps them with strategic planning. the IAOC has become more 
of an executive committee. Maybe that's because of the pool of people 
we're picking from. Need to look at the recruiting mechanisms for 
pulling in people who act at this level. If you don't have a clear idea 
of how select people, you run on hope. Need to come up with a 
recruitment strategy. The draft needs to cover that.

Brian: If I were to paraphrase: You want to input into factors for 
selecting - like skillset and estimate of this workload.

Ted: It's not just what skillset we're looking for, but how would our 
community recruit that skill set.

Leslie: I was involved in the hiring of the first IAD. Having a clear 
idea of what the job is and where to advertise helps. As an individual, 
we have to be clear on what problem the individual directions solve. The 
fiduciary processes for contracts has been awful at times. If you think 
you need to be independent. Need to stay focused on split of 
responsibilities and clear on oversight. The retrospective tried to 
captured issues we faced. It falls on the IETF chair to take it to the 
community. The chair job gets larger, and the requirements list for the 
IETF chair gets longer. The only reason to make changes is that 
community sees issues.

Jonne Soininen: It doesn't matter how to organize, it can still act like 
the IOAC, have to look at how to change the culture, not just the 
structure. Which of those targets can be done in the current structure, 
and then change procedures and processes. The Linux Foundation has some 
projects underneath it that are incorporated and others that are not, 
they act the same. What is really needed is to change the targets then 
look at the legal setup.

Brian: What I hear you saying echoes what 3 other people are saying on 
the list. Focus on problem statement and goals first.

Jonne: The legal structure might not be a solution. We may want to do it 
regardless. The target that ... By itself it's not a solution. It's just 
hope that things will change when the legal structure is changed. I 
think hope is a strategy.

Eric Rescorla: We are in early stages on working on this. Agree that we 
need the right people. That may bring in people who are not traditional 
IETFers, are people comfortable with that? Bob was concerned about staff 
making decisions. I've been in w3c and our way works better. Volunteers 
may not have time to do everything. What do we not want staff to do? Not 
the standards themselves.

John C Klensin MIC: following up on several recent comments, I think the 
most frequent difficulty with IASA/IAOC so far has lack of transparency 
to the community and the appearance of making strategic decisions _for_ 
the community, rather than focusing on determining and reflecting 
community consensus.  Perhaps others don't care but, if "we" do, we 
should be concentrating on changes that would fix (or improve on) that 
problem and then evaluate proposed solutions on the basis of how they 
would improve or pessimize things.  Some of that reinforces Jonnie's 
comment, of course.

Randy Bush: My first reaction - Change?! oh no. We're trying to 
understand our culture and our shibboleths, like transparency, and 
technical excellence, and also the ability to run a small business. 
We're not very good at it. When you bring in employees and money, it 
changes the game. When you look at the legs we are standing on, the one 
that has the cultural clue is the secretariat. How we go forward, it's a 
tough thing to find that intersection. ISOC doesn't get the culture.

Tobias: regarding the legal structure and behavior - the structure is 
decoupled, you can have different cultures with the same structure. It's 
about the description of the role. and the way you act daily. The 
structure has tiny influence. If you want changes in how we behave, it 
needs to be changed in the interfaces. The question of staff and 
community, John channeled - the concern that the IAOC is taking on too 
much of the decisions. I'm in favor of delegating to the staff. Need to 
recognize that we are more hands off.

Brian Rosen: My initial reaction was not to change structure - improve 
we have. Although it doesn't apply in the current circumstance - we 
can't fire the IAOC. It's not a problem but it could be. The marketing 
problem and generating more income - needs the right person and not 
necessarily the organization. I think we may have to deal with that 
issue directly. Get a real marketing guy that makes lots promises. 
Engineers are really bad at this.

Jon: Do you think we have that kind of confidence. Identifying the right 
person?

Brian: How would we do that? I don't know.

Jari Arkko, as individual: Comments on culture being more important than 
structure. The choice of the tasks they have, is a clarity issue. It's 
not clear what we're trying to do. Fixing that clarity will help with 
getting better structures in place. We need to look at the current 
structure, do we have the people that have the time to do it properly? 
And board members don't have time to deal with the ops issues.

Gonzalo Camarillo, chair ISOC board: I want to restate a comment Kathy 
made last time - Kathy signs and has responsibility, but she doesn't 
understand. She thought it was weird that the responsibility fell on 
her. Talk to her. Clarify that.

Ray Pelletier, outgoing IAD: The IETF can hire and fire the IAD. 
Whatever the oversight structure is, it needs the cultural clue. Things 
the IAD may not know. The IAD should hire the marketing people. If you 
are going to build a structure. The IAD is responsible for hire and fire 
those people. The IAOC should handle ...

Brian: Would that ...

Ray: IAOC should meet quarterly, not once an month. And take up 
contract... and not other much. ...

Jason Livingood, member of design team: on the funding, based on 
membership and sponsorship fees - the IETF is not financially 
sustainable. ISOC shores it up. That money comes from .org. Thinking 
about revenue streams is important.

Jon: we have 15 minutes left, does the set in the document seem correct? 
I've heard people express preferences. Anything missed. No takers. Can 
we say that the design team has identified a path forward?

Ted: There's a lot of options that we didn't cover - pessimissive - 
merger for instance. I'm fine with that. If someone thinks that, they 
should bring the bride or groom to us. This is the right class of 
options? Yes. I want to be careful with how far this gets us. it s start 
of a journey not the end of it.

Jonne: Yes these are viable ways forward in terms of legal entity, but 
not a solution to the problems in the target. That work is to be done. 
There is potential to hit the targets under all of these. None of those 
three things really impacts this picture.

Jon: Some of these options would radically change the structure.

Jonne: You would change the name of the IAOC to Executive Board and it 
will not solve anything. You have to find to solution for those.

Jon: Anyone think that, if we made the IAOC more consultive and 
transparent, would it solve it?  (Silence)

Leslie: How are you going to implement any of those structures? Start 
with the problems and how they might be solved with the options. I don't 
think we can discuss the tradeoffs. Flip vertical and horizontal axis.

Jon: ...

Jonne: My point was exactly what she said.

Lucy Lynch: There's prep work before one of these structures is cleared. 
There's clarifying work, to know if we even have options there.

Jon: anything else? What the properties are and what were trying to 
drive toward is good for the Design Team to hear.