RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

[Scott Mansfield <[e-mail]>]

My two cents...

There are many steps to the process related to nomcom participant selection.

The chair along with the secretariat along with the tools team leverage all
the registration and attendance data present.  My experience is that there
are multiple places data about past attendance is pulled.  This leads to
discrepancies in validation of eligibility that requires investigation on a
case-by-case basis. In the end the nomcom team gets a list together and
sends it to the community for review.  During that process, some in the
community do take the time to review the list and provide their opinions on
the list (kudos to the community!).  There are times that the list is
missing people, there are times the list has people that are not eligible
for various reasons.  Once the list is finalized, the randomizer is run and
the people on the list are contacted to determine if they are willing to do
the job.  Keeping in mind that we need to check for disqualifying factors
like affiliations (no more than 2 of the same) and/or if the individual has
decided to run for leadership.  Once the random list is validated, it is
sent to the community for yet another review.  So the list has to go through
another challenge period before the list of volunteers is finalized.

My point is...  There is a lot of community feedback and transparency to the
volunteer selection process.  There are multiple chances for challenge and
comment.  So while I understand the desire to "reward" people that have
attended 3 out of the last 5 face-to-face IETFs meeting (because they would
be more steeped in the culture I reckon), I find the 3 out of 5 face-to-face
meeting issue to be less important (anachronism really) than the "I'm
willing to do the job" criteria.  As more work is done remotely on email
lists, we have seen that people can be effective with remote attendance.  I
value the face-to-face meetings, but I sense a change (virus
notwithstanding) demonstrating the efficacy of hybrid f2f/virtual meetings.
That leads me to the conclusion that getting virtual attendance counted for
nomcom participation a must.

Currently the requirements on a nomcom member are high.  It is STRONGLY
recommended, that if you are on a nomcom that you attend the Summer meeting
and the Fall meeting IN-PERSON and dedicate a serious bulk of your time at
the Fall meeting for interviews and discussion.  There are eMeetings between
Summer and Fall, and if the nomcom doesn't finish, there are eMeetings after
the Fall meeting.   Each nomcom has its own set of issues.  We have had
remote participants that do practically nothing, we have had remote
participants that perform extremely well.  Same can be said for face-to-face
participants.  It is harder on the face-to-face participants in some ways to
include remote participants in the deliberations at a face-to-face meeting,
but WE are the INTERNET community and should be able to figure it out.

My suggestions:
1) Drop the 3/5 face-to-face requirement for the upcoming nomcom (since we
don't really have a process for virtual participation yet)
2) For this upcoming nomcom - take the list of anyone that checked the
"nomcom willing" box from any of the past 5 meetings (103 - 107) - and
follow the usual process described above.
3) When the call is made for nomcom volunteers, send the
criteria/expectations for participation, and the list from step 2
4) Ask the community for feedback on the list as per usual
5) For IETF 108 (and beyond) registration.  Keep asking the question if the
individual is willing and able to do the nomcom job and start tracking
virtual attendance if you really still want to have some kind of 3 out 5
meeting requirement (virtual, hybrid, face-to-face whatever)
6) Rinse, Repeat

-scott.

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Lars Eggert
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 7:53 AM
To: Salz, Rich <rsalz=[e-mail]>
Cc: Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>; Barry Leiba
<[e-mail]>; IETF discussion list <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

Hi,

On 2020-3-26, at 19:54, Salz, Rich <rsalz=[e-mail]>
wrote:
> I want to get the largest pool of candidates.

so that's a worthwhile goal.

But: My guess is that any fine-tuning here would not make a huge difference
to the size of the pool of people eligible to be considered as voting
members.

The pool that we actually want to maximize is the sub-pool of eligible
people *who volunteer to be considered*. If we can convince more eligible
people to actually volunteer it would have a much more sizable impact
(again, a guess.)

Anyone got data on #eligible vs. #volunteered?

Lars