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

['Andrew Sullivan' <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Sorry for the long RTT; I'm pulled in a lot of directions these days.  For the avoidance of doubt, I'm still the ISOC President and speaking in that role, though I'm using this address for convenience.

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 09:51:11AM +0100, Adrian Farrel wrote:
>
>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
>

I think that's right.

>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.

I think that's right, but I think the weight of "willing to do this" and "has the support to do this" are a bigger consideration than you might think.  In general, the job is a heavy one without I think much in the way of benefit, so it's difficult to ask people to do it -- especially because the commitment runs at least two years.

I also look for people who are likely to be able to herd volunteers to be successful.  One thing I observed generally but perhaps more acutely when I was the IAB liaison to the nomcom was the potential fragility of the whole thing: these are volunteers pulled from a hat, and many of them may be sufficiently unfamiliar with the roles they're selecting from that they face a daunting challenge.  A common path to that is to attempt to solve the problem with information: more questionnaires, longer interviews, and so on.  These approaches, however, have their own problems and often don't resolve the doubts of the voting members.  So, a good chair needs to have enough management skill to get the nomcom to focus on the questions at hand and to be confident enough to make decisions with inadequate information (sometimes, to learn that skill).  Since the nomcom chair has literally no power over the voting members, this is a fine balance.

A similar balance is needed in the other direction: some years, the random numbers appoint a person with very strong views who can tend to dominate the nomcom discussions as he or (to rarely, I'll note) she tends to dominate WG discussions.  There is no way to know whether that is going to happen when one is selecting the chair, so one has to select on the assumption that it _will_ happen, because a chair who wouldn't be able to deal with such a circumstance would create a different problem.

All of this requires sensitivity and management skills that are, unfortunately, not really a set that tend to be selected for in the IETF.

I hope that helps.

>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.

I am not by nature inclined to throw away things that are working, but I think some of the recent discussions I have observed in the IETF (and elsewhere) make me wonder what "working" means.  I must say, speaking personally, certain recent discussion have made me feel terribly alienated from the IETF and make me question my suitability to appoint anyone to any position of any kind.  I think that can only get worse over time, since I can no longer make useful contributions to the work of the IETF (assuming I ever was able to) and so will inevitably be out of touch with good current candidates.

Thanks and best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]