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

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

'Andrew Sullivan' <[e-mail]> wrote:
    > 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.

Your analysis is spot on, and hits home.
I now realize that I dealt with both situations, and I'm reflecting a bit on,
  "gosh, did I actually manage to handle that?"

{It didn't seem such a big deal at the time}

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

Yes, but I think that these skills are:
  1) somewhat trainable
  2) valuable to have all over the IETF.

Which leads me to suggest that ISOC and/or the LLC ought to consider if this
is worth investing directly in.  I seem to remember making such a suggestion
in a different way a while ago, and it was not well understood.

Graduates of such a course might be good foder for nomcom chairing :-)
Cynically, it's like a time-share condo presentation...

    > 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.

Oh no.

Imposter syndrome in the middle of a pandemic, and we can't take you out and
get you drunk!   (Not that this will solve the problem)

    > 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.

--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide