Re: I-D Action: draft-hardie-iaoc-iab-update-00.txt

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

[as ever in this discussion, as myself only]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2016 at 04:17:08PM -0500, Scott O. Bradner wrote:
> in IANA management might have on the IETF and on the IETF Trust - it seems that, at least for the last two IAB chairs, the
> IAB chair has been the IAB point person on these topics and the chair’s direct knowledge of what has been going on has
> been quite helpful

I will note that this is mostly an accident: both Russ and I were
already closely engaged in the IANA evolution program.  I was the IANA
program lead.  Russ was the lucky winner of one ICG appointment from
the IAB -- an appointment for which I was emphatically told by my
management that I could not be a candidate, perhaps because when they
agreed to fund my appointment to the IAB they had the impression that
the IAB chair had to do all those additional things, instead of IAB
members.  I really do not think that the IANA transition is the
central issue here -- either on the time-demand side, or on the
plugged-in side.

Others in the IAB have been quite happy to delegate attention to the
IANA transition to the IANA evolution program, yet I think any of my
IAB colleagues this year would have been successful chairs.  Whether
the IAOC would have been best served by someone who'd been paying less
attention historically to IANA, however, is another question, and one
the draft is intended to address.

> there is a image factor - that the IAB considers the IAOC important enough to ensure that the IAOC role is part of the chair’s
> task set projects a somewhat different image than having another IAB member - not a huge issue but a factor
> 

I can see just as much an argument in the other direction -- that the
IAB considers the IAOC important enough to dedicate a support program
and some designated IAB member to it, instead of just having the chair
inherit the duty as a matter of course.  Moreover, the above again
suggests that the IAB chair is special.  I just don't see it.  The
difference between what I do today as IAB chair and what I did last
year as a mere IAB member strikes me as rather little in practice; and
where the differences are apparent they mostly come down to the fact
that we keep pretending the chair is somehow more important than other
IAB members (so, for instance, my employer is more indulgent of time
commitments because I have the "chair" gold star next to my name).
I'm arguing that, as an organization, we say we have a commitment to
the chair not being more important.  So let's act that way.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]