NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

The cancellation of the in-person IETF 107 meeting raises the issue of
how that meeting affects NomCom (Nominating Committee) eligibility.
This is especially important because a new NomCom will be formed
between now and IETF 108, giving us all a fairly short time to figure
out what to do.

For convenient reference, the current rules for an IETF participant to
be eligible to be a voting member of a NomCom (Section 4.14 of RFC
8713) require attendance in person at three of the last five meetings.
Normally, for the upcoming NomCom, that would mean three of the
following five meetings: 107 (Vancouver), 106 (Singapore), 105
(Montréal), 104 (Prague), 103 (Bangkok). A new participant who had
been to 105 and 106 would become eligible by attending 107.  An
occasional participant who had been to 103 and 105 would also become
eligible by attending 107. On the other side, someone who had attended
102, 104, and 105 would lose eligibility by NOT attending 107.

The IESG would like the community’s input: How do *you* think 107
should be treated in regards to NomCom eligibility?  While we have
time to come up with a longer-term answer for this as a general
matter, we need to make a one-time decision about how to handle 107
now, before this year’s NomCom is formed.

One choice is to entirely ignore 107 for the purposes of NomCom
eligibility.  The last five meetings would then be 106, 105, 104, 103,
and 102, and one would have had to attend three of those to be
eligible this year.

Another choice is to consider 107 to be a meeting that everyone has
attended, for the purpose of NomCom eligibility.  There, the last five
would still be 107 to 103, but 107 would be an automatic “yes” for
anyone who volunteers for the NomCom.

Perhaps there are other workable options.  Please let us know what you
think by responding to this message thread.  And to be absolutely
clear: whatever we, as a community, decide now, with fairly short lead
time, is for the 2020-2021 NomCom cycle only.  Any longer-term
decisions might be different and will need to be done through a more
formal, consensus-based process, which we also hope to initiate in the
near future.

Thanks in advance for the discussion we’re sure to have on this.

Barry, for the IESG