Re: draft-sullivan-nomcom-chair-select-00

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for doing this, it is important to document how things work (or should work), and it is also important that we continue to make the IETF work even more as an open organisation where, for instance, people selection tasks have an opportunity for some community suggestions and participation.

I definitely think a public call for volunteers or nominations should be a part of the process.

Like a few others, I’m a bit less decided about the public list of candidates and call for feedback. I’ve never been in the Nomcom and never witnessed how the finding of the chair happens. Although, as an insider I’ve been asked by some CEOs how I’d feel about XYZ as a chair, and I’ve provided by opinion. I’m curious what the running code for the picking is, actually. There’s a set of candidates you happen to know, and you finally manage to twist one arm, and then we have the answer? Or is it typical that there’d be multiple willing ones, and that you’d have a choice? I think it is important that we give you all the tools you need to do the public call for candidate nominations, and the arm twisting. Slightly concerned that if we focus too much on the later stages of the process, then the earlier stages suffer.  Then again, a good nomcom chair candidate probably shouldn’t be one that feels their candidacy or role be somehow questioned just because there was also another candidate and he or she got picked instead. But, I’m just afraid that we should be prepared for a call for candidates… followed by a very long silence where you attempt to arm twist people so that you would get at least one name to choose from. But maybe the public candidate list could even be good for your arm-twisting efforts, because just saying “yes” to you wouldn’t mean that you’d actually get picked in the end.

Anyway, on balance I agree that we should move to a model where candidates or the potential person to be selected is published and there’s an opportunity to send feedback. As you suggested. That just seems like good governance. But hopefully what I said above provides a bit of explanation of the hesitation some of us are feeling.

On the requirements for the position — can be good to document them, but please don’t constrain the selection pool too much!

Jari