Re: List of volunteers for the 2021-2022 NomCom

[Peter Thomassen <[e-mail]>]

On 6/28/21 5:30 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> If we wanted to go down the path of more effectively limiting
> the ability of organizations to guarantee themselves Nomcom
> seats, we could preserve the spirit of the current model by
> setting a threshold such that, for companies that had more than
> a handful* of people in the pool, a preliminary randomization
> and draw would be run for each such company to determine a small
> number** of their people who would be part of the final pool and
> draw.  Then the normal procedure would be run as usual on the
> adjusted pool, with no organization having enough people in the
> pool to guarantee Nomcom seats.

I like this idea.

Another point worth considering may be some sort of limitation of re-selection. Say, for example, a company can only have some number of selected candidates in some number of years (such as 4 selected people in 4 years); once that's reached, candidates from the same company are removed from the pool for the current selection.

While other proposals suggest altering the method of drawing from the pool, this one allows the pool to be without regard to company size a priori, and moves the problem onto the time dimension later on. So, if a large company has no history of selected candidates, all (otherwise eligible) candidates are fine and have equal chances, instanciating the "guaranteed seat" bias -- but only temporarily. Candidates from admissible candidates are thus not at a disadvantage in comparison to other candidates. OTOH, if the company's N-year qouta is reached, chances are zero. I can imagine such a rule feels more tangible to candidates than individual chances ever-decreasing to minuscule levels by pre-drawing from the company pool, or by applying some other weighting. (If the company quota is already full at the beginning of the selection, there's just no point to volunteering for that selection in the first place.)

(At least three aspects would need to discussed broadly: a) is it appropriate to treat individuas as a company of one; b) how do mergers and company splits affect the scheme; c) could this be done by modifying the elegibility criteria alone?)

Cheers,
Peter

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