Re: List of volunteers for the 2020-2021 NomCom

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 04:17:11PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> And, in that regard, the (admittedly rather simplistic) "no more
> than two actually on the Nomcom from one company" rule is
> attractive in two ways, the need to take a conservative view of
> relationships like subsidiaries and significant ownership
> notwithstanding.

>  One is that it provides the IETF some
> protection against a hypothetical company (or corporate culture)
> that would encourage or reward people for getting on the Nomcom,

Uhmmm... is that big evil company called IETF ? Because i think we here
all do encourage each other to volunteer for NomCom. And before
corona there was also a nice dinner reward included from IETF.

> or participating in particular decisions one there, for reasons
> we might consider nefarious.

IMHO the main reason why members of one company rightfully often
promote job candidates from the same company is just a sepcial case
of more likely knowing and having worked with that person and/or
being able to better inquire about that persons suitability for
the job. The same though is true for NomCom members working
for a tiny company but being involved with a larger loyalty
perimeter of people they worked with. Only that that second case
is not discriminated against by NomCom rules.

And i think we already start being unhappy about NomCom members
way short of nefarious. Simple "lazy" "i have no ideas about
what is important in a person, i will just vote for the guy
from the same company as myself" is not fitting to the job given.
But again: this is not limited to being in the same company.

> The other is that, even if the
> reasons there are many volunteers from one company and/or many
> of its (or its subsidiaries, etc.) in the leadership and the
> reason for that is that the organizational culture includes
> public-spirited participation (with no company involvement in
> actual decision-making), it looks bad to outsiders trying to
> examine the IETF and asking questions about who is in control.

Yeah, well, if IETF would want to live up to its ideal
instead of (as you said) making the rules just "look good",
then even individuals working for large companies would be
given the benefit of the doubt as participating as individuals
whereever it counts.

> I don't believe that the two person rule provides enough
> protection against either situation, but it is lots better than
> nothing and I despair of our being able to do significantly
> better without side effects that are worse.

I like the idea of examining what would happen if we limited
per-country NomCom membership to two. How would that
decrease diversity ?

Cheers
    Toerless