Re: Appointment of a Transport Area Director

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

A few personal thoughts follows. For the record this is completely at the general level, I have no inside knowledge about the nomination process.

I am of the opinion that ADs should not be selected based on them being rare super experts. The ability to learn, as Sam pointed out, is perhaps most important. Along with some "basic clue" about the area, as Russ put it. But it is important to note that the ADs are not just reviewers or quality checkers. In a lot of cases they are and they should be leading, helping the area move to whatever direction is necessary for the Internet to be a better place. It is the S or Steering in IESG. And I believe this is why the selection is not usually easy. It does take some, perhaps significant familiarity with the area to be able to do that. You'll be helped by everyone on that, but it cannot be entirely outsourced. (And note that this ability is not the same as detailed knowledge of protocol bits or algorithms, which may be needed as well, but you'll need a view about the industry's direction, a grasp of real-life Internet user situation and many other things as well.) So in the end maybe it is more than "basic clue".

Some "generalists" have that or could develop it. Some don't. Earlier in the thread we had an argument from Eliot and others about whether we've had success or not when picking generalists. The problem with bringing up specific cases from the past is that you don't know why those cases succeeded or failed. I can think of situations where a generalist could have worked well, but the particular person didn't have it. But I can also think of situations where a super expert didn't manage the area as well as it should have been managed. FWIW, I think there would be several generalist IETFers who would do a great job as TSV AD even if their specific congestion control knowledge is not rated at the expert level - at the moment.

In any case, I think we've now experienced the same problem for a number of years in transport. I do not think it is a one time problem, we need to make a decision about what to do this in a more long-term fashion than just for this year. This is why it is important that the discussion was brought out in the open, rather than, say, noncom just making a particular decision or the IESG just silently on changing its requirements.

And I think we should have a broader view about this than just updating the requirements for the seat. There are a couple of other aspects to consider as well. First, perhaps the way that we have organised TSV is contributing to the problems. Would a different organisation, say, a different grouping of the working groups to areas help businesses see a bigger value in sponsoring an AD for the area? Should the area be merged with something else, and if we did that, would that change available funding or expertise? Or do we have the right number of ADs to begin with? Second, are there more general things that we could do about the AD role, making it easier to do the job, e.g., as an academic and on the side of your other duties? This might also increase the number of available candidates in other areas.

Jari