Re: General view of re-org proposal (was : Out-of-area ADs)

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

On 12/01/2015 13:46, Jari Arkko wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
> Good points. Thanks for your mail.
> 
> I will just briefly note that the key question is of course whether one believes areas are generally useful from the point of view of people participating in IETF work, despite the fact that they will necessarily have somewhat imprecise and soft borders.

fwiw, I think the areas are very valuable as a way of organising the work.
That's why I find the proposed reorg hard to grok, because putting myself in
Jari's shoes, I cannot imagine how to steer the work of the steering group
in future. I do earnestly suggest that the IESG's mindset should be: this is
an experiment, and there will be no shame in unwinding the change in a few
months or a couple of years if it fails.

On the other hand, it is a very bad thing if the areas become silos and the
cause of them/us thinking. So this experiment has the virtue of shaking up
the silos.

> 
> One practical value that I have found both as a participant and as a manager of IETF work, is (most of the time) finding the people who are in charge of a particular topic. For instance, if there’s a routing issue I know which ADs I can turn to :-) And they know it. And the participants know it. There are of course counterexamples, mostly relating to those soft edges. YMMV whether you believe those outweigh the clarity in other cases.

Exactly - it's a tradeoff.

   Brian