Re: [Eligibility-discuss] NomCom eligibility & IETF 107 (fwd) Scott Mansfield: RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

The problem with “willingness to participate” as a sole criterion is that there are plenty of people who are willing to participate because they want to completely change the character of the IETF, rather than because they want to serve the IETF and make it more true to its aspirational goals.  If we don’t place any bar on such people, there is zero cost to them joining, and then whether or not the IETF survives them depends purely on how many of them there are—if 10% of applicants are like this, it’s probably okay (although random chance could go badly wrong).  If it’s 90% of applicants, then there is no hope.

So I think we have to have some criteria for participation that involve a meaningful investment of time and that demonstrate meaningful participation.  I know Brian and some others pooh-poohed the directorate review requirement, and I get why they did, but if we don’t have anything like that, I think we don’t have anything at all.  We can’t scope the pool to only those who have published RFCs recently—that’s too small.   But if the pool is everyone in the world, that’s too big.  Our job is to find a workable compromise between these two extremes.

> On Mar 29, 2020, at 6:25 PM, Michael Richardson <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Scott Mansfield <scott.mansfield=[e-mail]>
> Subject: RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107
> Date: March 27, 2020 at 8:42:01 AM EDT
> To: Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>, "Salz, Rich" <[e-mail]>
> Cc: Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>, IETF discussion list <[e-mail]>
> 
> 
> My two cents...
> 
> There are many steps to the process related to nomcom participant selection.
> 
> The chair along with the secretariat along with the tools team leverage all
> the registration and attendance data present.  My experience is that there
> are multiple places data about past attendance is pulled.  This leads to
> discrepancies in validation of eligibility that requires investigation on a
> case-by-case basis. In the end the nomcom team gets a list together and
> sends it to the community for review.  During that process, some in the
> community do take the time to review the list and provide their opinions on
> the list (kudos to the community!).  There are times that the list is
> missing people, there are times the list has people that are not eligible
> for various reasons.  Once the list is finalized, the randomizer is run and
> the people on the list are contacted to determine if they are willing to do
> the job.  Keeping in mind that we need to check for disqualifying factors
> like affiliations (no more than 2 of the same) and/or if the individual has
> decided to run for leadership.  Once the random list is validated, it is
> sent to the community for yet another review.  So the list has to go through
> another challenge period before the list of volunteers is finalized.
> 
> My point is...  There is a lot of community feedback and transparency to the
> volunteer selection process.  There are multiple chances for challenge and
> comment.  So while I understand the desire to "reward" people that have
> attended 3 out of the last 5 face-to-face IETFs meeting (because they would
> be more steeped in the culture I reckon), I find the 3 out of 5 face-to-face
> meeting issue to be less important (anachronism really) than the "I'm
> willing to do the job" criteria.  As more work is done remotely on email
> lists, we have seen that people can be effective with remote attendance.  I
> value the face-to-face meetings, but I sense a change (virus
> notwithstanding) demonstrating the efficacy of hybrid f2f/virtual meetings.
> That leads me to the conclusion that getting virtual attendance counted for
> nomcom participation a must.
> 
> Currently the requirements on a nomcom member are high.  It is STRONGLY
> recommended, that if you are on a nomcom that you attend the Summer meeting
> and the Fall meeting IN-PERSON and dedicate a serious bulk of your time at
> the Fall meeting for interviews and discussion.  There are eMeetings between
> Summer and Fall, and if the nomcom doesn't finish, there are eMeetings after
> the Fall meeting.   Each nomcom has its own set of issues.  We have had
> remote participants that do practically nothing, we have had remote
> participants that perform extremely well.  Same can be said for face-to-face
> participants.  It is harder on the face-to-face participants in some ways to
> include remote participants in the deliberations at a face-to-face meeting,
> but WE are the INTERNET community and should be able to figure it out.
> 
> My suggestions:
> 1) Drop the 3/5 face-to-face requirement for the upcoming nomcom (since we
> don't really have a process for virtual participation yet)
> 2) For this upcoming nomcom - take the list of anyone that checked the
> "nomcom willing" box from any of the past 5 meetings (103 - 107) - and
> follow the usual process described above.
> 3) When the call is made for nomcom volunteers, send the
> criteria/expectations for participation, and the list from step 2
> 4) Ask the community for feedback on the list as per usual
> 5) For IETF 108 (and beyond) registration.  Keep asking the question if the
> individual is willing and able to do the nomcom job and start tracking
> virtual attendance if you really still want to have some kind of 3 out 5
> meeting requirement (virtual, hybrid, face-to-face whatever)
> 6) Rinse, Repeat
> 
> -scott.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Lars Eggert
> Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 7:53 AM
> To: Salz, Rich <rsalz=[e-mail]>
> Cc: Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>; Barry Leiba
> <[e-mail]>; IETF discussion list <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-3-26, at 19:54, Salz, Rich <rsalz=[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>> I want to get the largest pool of candidates.
> 
> so that's a worthwhile goal.
> 
> But: My guess is that any fine-tuning here would not make a huge difference
> to the size of the pool of people eligible to be considered as voting
> members.
> 
> The pool that we actually want to maximize is the sub-pool of eligible
> people *who volunteer to be considered*. If we can convince more eligible
> people to actually volunteer it would have a much more sizable impact
> (again, a guess.)
> 
> Anyone got data on #eligible vs. #volunteered?
> 
> Lars
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
> -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
> 
> 
> 
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