On diversity in the NomCom

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

https://www.ietf.org/topics/areas/

We have 7 areas by my reading of that page, which are considered so significantly areas of differentiation within the IETF. I'm interested in topics from various areas but by far I would say my "primary affiliation" within the IETF is ART.

Areas are indeed so important that when you look at the agenda, you see:

1100-1240  Session I
Room 1          	ART 	dispatch    	Dispatch WG - Joint with ARTAREA
Room 2          	IRTF	pearg       	Privacy Enhancements and Assessments Research Group 
Room 3          	RTG 	spring      	Source Packet Routing in Networking WG
Room 4          	SEC 	sacm        	Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring WG
Room 5          	SEC 	teep        	Trusted Execution Environment Provisioning WG
Room 6          	TSV 	dtn         	Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking WG
Room 8          	TSV 	tcpm        	TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions WG


Right there as almost the most important part of each line is which area the meeting belongs to.

I'd say of the many types of diversity - geographic location, primary language, personal identity, age, length of time involved with IETF, etc... that primary area affiliation would be a valuable thing to have diversity of within the nomcom - particularly since it handles nominations for the directors of these areas - having experience within multiple areas on the committee is valuable.

So there's my two cents towards any rework of the criteria for nomcom eligibility filtration - we should ask people to nominate a primary area and allow no more than say 4 from each area. In the worst case we would have only 3 areas represented, but right now it could all be from one!

Cheers,

Bron.

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 Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
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