Subject: [Manycouches] leadership bodily presence requirements (was: Re: Want to be on the IESG?)

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2021 19:37:30 +0200

Just my 2c on one aspect for the discussion about the lacking amount of
accepted nominations to leadership position on this years Nomcom process:

Maybe i am not reading the right mailing lists, but:

I am not aware of any public mailing list discussion as to whether the pre-covid
leadership bodily presence requirements should indeed be the requirements going forward.

I can observe that at jobs thats delivering a paycheck (aka: not IETF), certain
roles where never considered appropriate for full-remote workers and that has changed
due to covid.

I can also easily see how existing IETF leadership body members themselves would
really prefer to return to the old normal, but i am a lot more uncertain if those
body members past-experience based preferences should really
be the sole leading guidance for our NomCom preferences. Right now they are,
aka: NomCom would not accept candidates who would only be able to participate
remotely based on those existing body members prescribed preferences.

Personally i think that if we do not try even a single-term experiment
full-time-telecommuting leadership body member NOW, when it is likely that
a lot of normal-in-person-meetings will be remote anyhow, then i am certain
that we will not do it EVER - unless we really are forced to continue operate
fully remotely much much longer.

Of course, the inability to attend sometimes in person may not make much of
a difference for a job like IESG where arguably the time commitment is the
much more difficult requirement to meet, but IMHO it would be perfectly
valid to experiment with full-time-remote IAB membership for example. And
outside of NomCom leadership equally for WG chairs.

Of course, i am quite biased towards thinking that remote participationship
is not a problem if just tooling is good enough; and we have a 30 year
history of building protocols, networks, tools an recommendations for it.

Do i prefer in-person attendance ? Very much so. But for leadership i would
also like to see more diversity, and especially for possible candidates
from academia and a more diverse part of the industry that where the
candidate but not the sponsor is valuing the IETF engagement, IMHO 
air travel will become more and more an issue than it was 30..20 years
ago, when i think we had more diverse participation (e.g.: more from
universities for example). 

Cheers
    Toerless

---

From: Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2021 12:48:15 +0200

Le 07/10/2021 à 19:37, Toerless Eckert a écrit :> Just my 2c on one
aspect for the discussion about the lacking amount
> of accepted nominations to leadership position on this years Nomcom 
> process:
> 
> I am not aware of any public mailing list discussion as to whether 
> the pre-covid leadership bodily presence requirements should indeed 
> be the requirements going forward.
> 
> I can observe that at jobs thats delivering a paycheck (aka: not 
> IETF), certain roles where never considered appropriate for 
> full-remote workers and that has changed due to covid.
> 
> I can also easily see how existing IETF leadership body members 
> themselves would really prefer to return to the old normal, but i am 
> a lot more uncertain if those body members past-experience based 
> preferences should really be the sole leading guidance for our NomCom
> preferences. Right now they are, aka: NomCom would not accept 
> candidates who would only be able to participate remotely based on 
> those existing body members prescribed preferences.
> 
> Personally i think that if we do not try even a single-term 
> experiment full-time-telecommuting leadership body member NOW, when 
> it is likely that a lot of normal-in-person-meetings will be remote 
> anyhow, then i am certain that we will not do it EVER - unless we 
> really are forced to continue operate fully remotely much much 
> longer.
> 
> Of course, the inability to attend sometimes in person

I might be well wrong, because of all the recent restarting of very many
activities including large scale travel at least for tourism - they
illustrate we are on a fast track to back to normal.

But some times I think like this: attending in-person as we did in 
pre-covid times is something one would forget. I some times think that being
mobile on such a large geographical scale is a luxury only a few can
afford. In a sense, it is like in pre-Magellan times. Magellan toured
the world, but they were only a few. In that sense, there is no
'post-covid' times but pre-Magellan times.

> may not make much of a difference for a job like IESG where arguably 
> the time commitment is the much more difficult requirement to meet, 
> but IMHO it would be perfectly valid to experiment with 
> full-time-remote IAB membership for example. And outside of NomCom 
> leadership equally for WG chairs.
> 
> Of course, i am quite biased towards thinking that remote 
> participationship is not a problem if just tooling is good enough; 
> and we have a 30 year history of building protocols, networks, tools 
> an recommendations for it.
> 
> Do i prefer in-person attendance ? Very much so. But for leadership i
> would also like to see more diversity,

I think that is a real challenge that we should consider as affected by
these mobility restrictions due to sanitary.

The very notions of 'leadership' and that of 'trust' are to be well
understood, not unlike we formulated the simple question of 'why to
meet at IETF'?

Hierarchy structure of leadership levels is to be understood and then to
be facing the trust levels.  Is the _leadership_ hierarchy made of a
top-level IESG followed by multiple WG Chairmanship seats in the middle
and then many WG contributors at an essential 'bottom', in a tree-like 
structure?

If yes, is the _trust_ level precisely following that leadership 
hierarchy structure, or is it a different structure? Basically, is it 
sufficient for the IESG to have a very tight trusting relationship (e.g. 
they know each other from kindergarten, which is a very strong trust 
level), and that trust level is replicated down to all other leadership 
levels to WG Contributors?

If yes, then it is sufficient to have the in-person meetings just for
the IESG members and all others in tele-working mode. The NomCom will 
make sure that the assigned relationship between levels work (a Chair is 
chairing) and the trust will simply 'flow' through from up to down of a 
unique hierarchy.  It is easy to understand and, and above all, easy for 
each other to situate self.

If on another hand the hierarchy and trust structures are different than
what I described, then it is more complicated. It might be that the
trust structure is different: e.g. the participants to the scotch party
of IETF meetings are probably the most tightly coupled, more than IESG
in itself, because, technically speaking, they read out loud their
public keys rather than having communicated them through risky channels.

It might be that a few people of IETF, situated on various levels of
IESG, WG Chairmanship and WG contributors, happen to meet each other
very often, because being geographically close, or other reason.  It 
might be that these groups of people should be organized naturally along 
this fundamental criterion: ability to meet safely.

It  might be that a WG contributor knows from kindergarten the boss of 
the IESG, shortcutting all typical levels of decision through a 
tree-like structure.  But this kind of relationship, independent of the 
ability to meet, is threatened by the dillution of trust risk: eyes who 
dont see each other will forget each other, at some point in time.  A 
NomCom who doesnt take that into account might be failing.

In such a 'matrix' structure the trust is more of wizardry.  Add to that 
the mobility restrictions and we risk a lot.

A covid-neglecting NomCom process would see its wizardry wisdom shaken, 
in that it nominates as if trust was as before.  First: how to nominate 
someone that the nominator has never met?  Second: how to give someone 
extensive responsibility when now knowing how that responsibility will 
be trusted by those who depend on the decisions?

This perspective might all be too remote, too difficult to accept,
compared to the easiness of coming to back the 'like before' situation.

Since this is very different, maybe all I can say we need to come back
and talk about it later.

Then we can also talk about what is the target of the NomCom: who should
they nominate?  Should NomCom nominate people by their trust levels, or
by their hierarchy levels, or should NomCom nominate _groups_ of people 
(not just single roles) primarily by their ability to meet in-person?

> and especially for possible candidates from academia and a more 
> diverse part of the industry that where the candidate but not the 
> sponsor is valuing the IETF engagement,

> IMHO air travel will become more and more an issue than it was 30..20
> years ago, when i think we had more diverse participation (e.g.: more
> from universities for example).

I tend to agree. 30..20 years ago there was more diverse participation
to IETF, in a sense, I think, and surprisingly air travel was much lower
than these days, overall.  In that times I think people travelled more
for academia conferences than for non-academia meetings, a tendency
which reversed more recently, where academia conferences are more 
considered less relevant, or too numerous, like papers.

The Internet was much smaller as well.

Alex

> 
> Cheers Toerless
> 
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