Subject: RE: area directors at risk

From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:42:34 -0500

At 05:29 PM 11/19/2001 -0500, Awduche, Daniel wrote:
>It might be worthwhile to admit additional hierarchy in
>the administrative structure to scale the organization
>and reduce the work-load on area directors.
>
>One possibility is to introduce the concept of assistant
>(or deputy) Area Directors, reporting directly to Area
>Directors and responsible for a subset of working groups
>within an area.
>
>This may also turn out to be an excellent way to cultivate
>future leaders for the IETF.

As a long time IETF participant and co-chair I have to agree with a great 
deal of the sentiment here .. there is a lot of thankless work in being an 
AD .. but any organization needs to understand its fundamental 
responsibility to groom and advance the next generation of its leadership.

I'm not sure that some AAD is the right method for that but it is worth 
consideration.

>Cheers,
>/Dan
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Aaron Falk [mailto:[email-masked]]
> > Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 4:43 PM
> > To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> > Cc: [email-masked]
> > Subject: area directors at risk
> >
> >
> > Harald, John, et al-
> >

Richard Shockey, Senior Manager, Strategic Technology Initiatives
NeuStar Inc.
45980 Center Oak Plaza   Bldg 8     Sterling, VA  20166
1120 Vermont Ave NW Suite 400 Washington DC 20005
Voice 571.434.5651 Cell : 314.503.0640,  Fax: 815.333.1237
<mailto: [email-masked]> or
<mailto: [email-masked]>
<http://www.neustar.biz>
<http://www.enum.org>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

---

From: "Natale, Robert C (Bob)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:48:35 -0500

Hi Brian,

> > Of course, there are some cases where the operation of the Internet
> > demands a single solution and, hence, we must exercise appropriate
> > architectural constraint.
> 
> And "we" is who?

Sounds like it should be:

   IAB to IESG to ADs to WG leadership...?

I strongly agree with the goal and feel that
the basic mechanisms (per above) are in place
and just need to be exercised accordingly.

Cordially,

BobN

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 10:07:06 -0500

A few observations from a WG chair actively engaged in
"cat-herding" and attempts to do so ;-) ...

> - The IESG has a congenital inability to say "no"
>   to someone who has a stupid idea. They can't
>   offend anyone, they can't do things that are
>   perceived as against the community's wishes.
>   The IESG, really, are leaders with little 
>   formal power or authority.

That's definitely not the case currently.  I've been involved
in conveying some rather forceful "no" instructions from the
ADs and the IESG to my WG (IP Storage).  Most of these have
had to do with well established principles (e.g., there were
people in the WG who thought congestion control was not
necessary -- they have been suitably "enlightened").  In at
least one case, my best efforts weren't good enough, resulting
in a lengthy IESG explanation of the word "no" during the
London plenary in response to a suggestion that security
should be optional to implement.  OTOH, in new areas where
the best technical approach isn't immediately obvious, letting
the competing technical approaches proceed seems to be a better
approach than killing one of them prematurely in the name
of consistency or whatever, but requires keeping tabs on both,
increasing the work involved.
 
> - There are working group chairs who see their working groups as
>   places for people to make presentations. This vastly increases
>   the number of internet drafts that go by -- but very few of them
>   actually result in any useful work. But it all must be monitored
>   and so on by the relevant ADs

At least in the Transport Area, the ADs take a very strong line
against this.

> - The IESG tends to be a collegial body. Individual ADs may be 
>   responsible for their areas, but they take decisions as a body,
>   which means that the "foo" AD can make comments about and
>   cause work to be done with respect to the  "bar" properties of
>   something or other. For example, the Internet AD could say
>   that something in the security area is not secure and the
>   security-AD's protestations to the contrary mean bupkus...

More to the point is that the "foo" ADs need to make sure that
the "foo" properties important to the Internet don't get screwed
up by the well-intentioned "baz" folks who don't have a good
understanding of "foo".  The ability of the IESG to get this done
without running at each other with scissors is a credit to the
individuals involved.

--David

---------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 435-1000 x75140     FAX: +1 (508) 497-8500
[email-masked]       Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
---------------------------------------------------

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:30:03 -0500

Agree!

"Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
11/20/01 11:23

        To:     John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
        cc:     Randy Bush <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
        Subject:        Re: area directors at risk

At 05:39 AM 2001-11-20, John C Klensin wrote:
>(i) In principle at least, we are in complete agreement about
>how to handle parallel efforts and competing proposals.
>
>(ii) However, this strategy requires a good deal of careful
>consideration and judgement -- about WGs, about documents, about
>when consensus has been achieved -- and all of that takes up
>IESG time.
>
>Your suggestion was?  :-(
We (WG chairs) need to do our part in reducing AD workload.
By proposing better charters, better documents, being better
consensus builders, and to avoid pushing issues upon the ADs
unnecessarily.

My point is simple,
  The ADs are at risk because we place them at risk!

Kurt

---

From: "Ong, Lyndon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 10:03:13 -0800

Allison,

Any further thoughts on how WG chairs can make your jobs easier would be
great, this discussion would benefit from understanding more about what
consumes your time and could be avoided.

Cheers,

Lyndon

-----Original Message-----
From: Allison Mankin [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 8:55 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: re: area directors at risk

> consensus builders, and to avoid pushing issues upon the ADs

Kurt,

This is very well said.  You said it earlier too - the
work is far less if the WG documents are written well:

  - if they've been edited for grammar and usage.  Way
    many drafts come in to the AD with no evidence of 
    this editing pass.  (And we don't know whether the
    draft is on the marginally ok or unreadable side
    of the line till we've booted enough sense of
    the content and spent a lot of time already).

  - if they explain the context and purpose to people
    (the users) who haven't been in the WG meetings.
    The AD knows some of the context (sometimes a lot,
    sometimes less); the other IESG probably don't;
    most to the point, the users who did not attend
    IETF or who have a memory like most of us, don't
    have the context and purpose unless the doc
    presents it.

  - if they are concise (please take the extra time
    to make the document as short as possible).

Allison

---

From: "Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 23:43:36 +0100

> Stuart Staniford wrote in response to Fred Baker:
> > > a combination of (1) and (4) would come back to charters; 
> > > I'd like to see the WG's charter updated at least annually,
> > > with appropriate problem-statement and milestone twiddling,
> > > and then the WGs hew pretty close to their charters.
> >
> >Mmmm.  Wouldn't this just be more work for already overwhelmed 
> >ADs?  My understanding right now is the AD and IESG have to 
> >approve a charter revision.
> 
Yes... but we also use the charters to check as to how much progress
WGs make. I also remember that when I started as AD, that I wanted
to use the charters to see what had been done sofar and where the
WGs were going.

Some charters are in reasonable good shape.
But many are in really bad shape, certainly w.r.t. milestones.

Since this is copied to the wg-chairs mailing list....
Why don't all WG chairs take some tiem to check out their charter
page and evaluate if any changes are needed to be up to date and
realistic again.

Bert

---

From: Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 11:30:14 -0800

>Transferring technical information is a skill that is completely
>separate from programming in my experience. There are people in
>Silicon Valley who are highly paid to do this, and only this, and
>good technical documentation can make the difference between
>a product that is easy for engineers to build on and one that is
>difficult or impossible.

I have kept quiet until now, but I will make one comment:

I believe that clear thinking and clear writing often go hand-in-hand.

Clear thinking is, I think, a prerequisite for good protocol design.

I have often been very disappointed with documentation from so-called 
professional documentation writers -- all style and no substance.
Splitting the job of designer and writer into two separate roles is not 
the answer.

I do not think it is too much to ask of our best protocol designers, if 
they are truly capable of clear thinking, to ask them to make an effort 
to produce clear writing too. (I should not assume that I am without 
fault here, so if anyone thinks that my own technical writing is not up 
to the required standard, I'd be willing and happy to attend a technical 
writing class -- and pay for it -- to learn how to do better. The 
responsibility to produce high-quality documents is one I believe I have 
to meet, not avoid.)

Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
 * Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Computer
 * Chairman, IETF ZEROCONF
 * www.stuartcheshire.org

---

From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 22:21:09 -0500 (EST)

> I may be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that
> milestone updates worked the way you describe already; if you send a
> request to update your milestones to the Secretariat, and you cc your
> AD, I *think* the milestones will get updated right away.  It's only
> if there's a charter update that you need to go through the approval
> process

that is correct as long as new milestones are not being added
(i.e., if dates are being changed or milestones are being marked as done)

Scott

---

From: "Kastenholz, Frank" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:00:31 -0500

Several separate comments on this thread....

1. To the best of my recollection, I've not seen anyone
   actually say "Dear IESG, what are the problems you
   are facing in doing your job?" We seem to be offering
   advice and solutions to problems that we presume to
   exist. 

2. On the notion of letting WG chairs update their own
   charters without any feedback... This is an extremely
   bad idea for any of a number of reasons, such as
   - IESG/IAB review is the only feedback in the system.
     Feedback, especially disinterested/external feedback
     is essential in any system such as this. 
   - The IESG had, when I was on it, and still seems to 
     have, a hard time throwing documents away (i.e. not
     publishing them as an RFC of some form or other). I'm
     told that it is getting better at this - but I remain
     skeptical... If there is no admission control to the system
     then even _more_ documents will end up on the IESG's
     agenda, requiring even more time for review and so on, 
     leading to more stupidities being published... This does
     not seem like a winning idea to me.
   - Working groups (and often their chairs) tend to have a 
     megalomaniacal "we must solve all the problems in our wg"
     tendency. Without that external third-party review, this 
     tendency would be enhanced, not decreased.

3. This is not the good old days -- this is not the old Internet
   where we were all one big happy family, this is not the old
   IETF/IESG/IAB/I... where it was one big collegial effort. This
   is not the old, semi-academic, non-critical techno-toy where
   oopses were unpleasant but not really bad. 

   I used to be of the "keep everything open and let random people
   come in and bring up wacky ideas -- who knows, it may be brilliant"
   camp. I have changed my mind. The Internet (and its supporting
   development, engineering, etc,) are no longer techno-toys. They
   are more and more essential pieces of infrastructure in the 
   world. As such, random technical ideas, while perhaps intriguing,
   are more and more likely to be truly dangerous to the network,
   people's livelihoods, and perhaps their lives. 

4. Re which AD's review documents. 
   A criterion for being selected as an AD is that you have good
   technical knowlege on the specific area that you are an AD for.
   This is so that you can look at things and check them out
   from the perspective of your area of expertise. Putting
   Bubba on the IESG as the barbecue-area-director because
   Bubba Knows barbecue and then saying "you can't review documents
   on their barbecue-merits" sounds, to me, kind of silly...

5. Tools
   Tools are useful for keeping track of stuff, which is good, 
   but they need to be used by everyone. People need to enter new
   documents into the tool, update the status as needed, etc, etc.
   And the tool needs to be better than the current system - which
   right now is called Steve Coya :-). If we are not emailing steve
   with updates/etc, then why will they suddenly start using some other
   tool?

6. Document quality
   I said it before, some folks tried lobbing a few incendiaries
   my way :-) and I'll say it again.... The IETF is in the business
   of producing clear, readably, technically correct, specifications.
   The people producing the specifications need to be technically
   competent and be excellent writers. Working groups attract
   enough engineers to ensure that somewhere there is technical 
   excellence. But that still leaves the writing part of the job
   unfulfilled. If one can not write a technically correct, 
   coherent sentence in the English language then one has no
   business writing RFCs. One may be technically brilliant, but
   that's not sufficient.

Frank Kastenholz
Resident Grump