Re: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Monday, 16 March, 2020 08:40 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> On 16-Mar-20 08:23, Jim Fenton wrote:
>...
>> I support counting 107 registered remote attendees toward
>> NomCom eligibility, with no session attendance requirement
>> (such as the Plenary). The requirement for session attendance
>> is only meaningful if we expect people--who have attended two
>> of the other meetings in the window--to game the eligibility
>> system by registering with no intent to actually participate.
>> I don't think that's a significant problem.
 
> Unfortunately I have to disagree. We know for a fact that some
> companies have actively encouraged employees to volunteer for
> NomCom in the past. That's been happening over many years with
> a variety of companies. I fear this would happen even more
> with an even lower barrier.
> 
> Simply leaving 107 out of the count seems fairest to me.

Brian,

I have the same concern, but reach an opposite conclusion.  If
those companies are cost-sensitive, then canceling 107 and not
counting it is a gift to them unless they have been careless of
stupid enough to try to game the minimum number of meetings
people had to attend and counted on 107 to count for this
upcoming Nomcom.  If they are less cost-sensitive (or not
cost-sensitive at all) then the relevant people have probably
attended most of the recent meetings and no decision will have
any impact.

While I'd prefer to see some minimum requirement for virtual
participation in 107 so it is not just a requirement to register
without any requirement for contact with the IETF during that
period, I'm not sure how much difference that would make to
anyone but those in the relatively small group of people who
attend slightly more than one meeting a year, i.e., who are at
the very edge of 3/5.  Ignoring 107 effectively turns that into
a 3/6 requirement; counting it for everyone effectively makes it
2/6 (I just realized that probably would make me eligible).
Small numbers in either case and perhaps not worth the energy we
are putting into the question, but I think we should be as
concerned about who we accidentally block out as about those who
are trying to get in for the wrong reasons. 

However, as I have suggested before and more or less suggested
again on eligibility-discuss earlier today, I think we need to
examine the question of what we do with Nomcom eligibility in
the first quarter of 2021 if either or both of 108 or 109 end up
without f2f meetings or with them and very low and selective
attendance.  "Ignore 107" and "Count everyone as having attended
109 without any further requirements" probably both imply
another fire drill to invent ad hoc solutions in those cases
because we would almost certainly not want to do the same thing
two meetings in a row or even two of three.  Something that
establishes some minimal surrogate for participation in 107
would seem unlikely to require significant retroactive tweaking
a year hence and, with some planning and a bit of luck, could
easily be folded into longer-term plans.

best,
   john