Mashing areas [Re: IETF areas re-organisation steps]

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 26/12/2014 08:25, IETF Chair wrote:
...
> III.  MERGING OF UPPER LAYER PROTOCOL AREAS
> 
> ... the IESG is proposing to merge the APP, RAI, and TSV
> areas into one combined Network Applications (NAPP) area. From March
> 2015-March 2016, this combined area would be overseen by the five remaining
> ADs from APP, RAI, and TSV, with some redistribution of WG shepherding
> responsibilities among them to balance workloads. DISPATCH, TSVWG, and APPSAWG
> would continue to function much as they currently do.

I've been trying to think of a nice way to say this, but there isn't one.

I think this is a terrible idea. It would create a very unwieldy structure,
effectively an IESG within the IESG. It would only take about a week for the
5 ADs concerned to decide that they need weekly coordination meetings; after
a month they'd discover the need for a well-defined chair for those
meetings.
Depending on the individuals, the result might be a power bloc within the
IESG. Given that there might also be a mini-power bloc formed by 3
Routing ADs,
the dynamics of the IESG would be very different and chairing it could
become
rather challenging.

I fully appreciate the RAI/Apps issue. There's clear overlap and a lot has
changed since RAI was created. I agree you have to do something there.

However, the merge with Transport is technically strange. Agreed, there
are four or five WGs in Transport that could equally well be in Apps, and
there are some in RAI that could equally well be in Transport. But beyond
that, I just don't see the synergy. (Where we need synergy, we know how
to create it, e.g. the DART WG.) Wouldn't it be better to rebalance by
moving a few groups from RAI to Transport, and the solve the RAI/Apps
problem on its own? (Since I assume that everything is on the table,
there are 2 or 3 Apps WGs that could move to Security, for example.)

Regards
    Brian