Re: On diversity in the NomCom

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 11:38 +0200 Eliot Lear
<lear=[e-mail]> wrote:

>> Areas have changed over the years, and I'd be reticent to
>> see these areas institutionalized to the point that people
>> choose "primary" affiliations. I certainly wouldn't
>> want to have to choose an affiliation.
> 
> I agree that hardcoding areas is a bad idea.  They are already
> hardcoded enough (the number of changes in 30 years can be
> counted on two hands at most).  In a way, I wish we could
> strip the labels entirely and just let the IESG self-organize
> around the work at hand, indicating to NOMCOM how many people
> they feel they need to cover the workload.

My earlier comments and strawman proposal notwithstanding, I
agree. I'm perhaps oversensitive due to speading too large a
fraction of my IETF time on fringe areas (you know, like email,
Internet-PSTN boundaries, and internationalization). However, in
the least couple of decades, I've sat in many WGs and listened
to people say "we don't want to understand that, we just want a
simple solution" (sometimes with WG Chairs agreeing), seen the
IAB push architectural issues that are important to the Internet
aside because no one in their membership both cared about and
understood them, and have seen multiple documents held up in the
IESG because no one understood the subject matter (but one or
more ADs acted as if they felt a need to have opinions anyway
without a willingness to spend the time to learn).   I'm also
seen reason to question the ability of a Nomcom with no, or
almost no, experience on the relevant topics to evaluate
candidates for the IAOC and LLC Board.  One certainly cannot
blame those problems (others may not even agree that they are
problems) entirely on Nomcoms and their composition but I can't
help feeling that, if Nomcoms had people on them who could
advocate for a broader set of perspectives and for consideration
of the importance of various technologies, we might be better
off.

best,
   john