Re: [ietf-nomcom] The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

At 05:30 27-06-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
>         * those who have some desire or expectation of being
>         tapped for leadership roles for which Nomcom membership
>         would make them ineligible.

There is the cultural factor here.  Some people with the desire or 
expectation of being tapped for a role will not step forward to say 
so or provide information to indicate their desire or expectation.

>         * those who have withdrawn from active IETF
>         participation (including physical presence) due to lack
>         of time, commitments elsewhere, or general disgust.

I don't know how significant the general disgust is.  I would 
describe it as a silent group which could protest.  This is where 
things can be unpredictable.

>There are other groups too, but I don't know how large they are.
>I am pretty confident that few, if any, of the people from the
>above groups are likely to volunteer for the Nomcom unless we
>figure out how to lower the time commitment (or at least the f2f
>commitment) required.  As with the more traditional leadership

Yes.

>positions, reversing the trends of recent years and reducing the
>time and other commitments would be likely to broaden the
>candidate pool.  By contrast, and by analogy to the "don't
>expect people from one group to be able to fully understand and
>represent the perspective of another" part of the diversity
>discussion, a very large Nomcom time commitment is likely to
>reduce the people on the Nomcom who understand the value of
>considering people for the IESG, IAB, and IAOC who are be
>committed to limiting the time commitment of those roles.

The message from the floor a few months ago was "body X is not 
representative of us".  There was a message about affiliation last 
year.  The observation was that:

   'the top four companies on this list have contributed more than half of
    the NomCom volunteers. The top three have contributed twice as many
    (44) as all of the entities that contributed only one (22).'

and the opinion was that:

   'the NomCom would benefit from having many "independent" members.  While
    that could happen (yay, randomness), the odds here don't look great.'

There were appearances of biased voting membership previously.

If the time commitment and funding are the limiting factors the IETF 
can end up with another situation similar to the Transport AD one.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy