Re: Nomcom 2020-2021 Final Call For Volunteers

[Job Snijders <[e-mail]>]

Dear fellow IETFers,

I am currently on the 2019-2020 NOMCOM. I’d like to share a little bit of my experience in order to encourage other people to volunteer for this NOMCOM. In part (or in spite? who knows, you will never know... :-) My participation in last year’s NOMCOM process primary activity did influence who are currently in charge of “IETF”. I really hope you like it! :-)

Some of the IETF leadership outcome was influenced by whoever stood up to be volunteer for one of listed positions, some of it was influenced through the deliberations of the NOMCOM team, and maybe there are more forces at play. The same principle of ‘lack of input’ = ‘lack of output’ for IESG/IAB/etc applies to the NOMCOM team itself. Without people doing the work, we can’t expect the work to happen in a way that satisfies most of us.

I found that participating in the NOMCOM was very rewarding because I learned a *TON* about the IETF. Never before had I been exposed to all the different areas in this way. I learned what other people are working on.

What is also cool: Every volunteer that you’ll interview is passionate enough to stand for the position and is in that moment making a case for why they think they should ‘be in charge’, this time around. It is really interesting to hear all of it. Also, because of this participation I learned from a fellow NOMCOM volunteer about the existence of the Casablanca (1942) movie - which I consider a big bonus to my life experience. :-)

When it was my turn to NOMCOM, we went into a physical room, which for this new NOMCOM team will be a ‘virtual room’ (whatever that means!). That group  of people will exclusively communicate with their fellow team members *THROUGH THE INTERNET*. Through the Internet they will talk about what they thought and how it lines up to their expectations of what the IETF should be doing. *Never before* has IETF leadership selection, governance, and policy debate been exclusively through the Internet, at this scale. But we made it - we bootstrapped ourselves! We finally no longer need to crosscompile internet reality on top of physical reality.

I think we have a real shot at successfully running the Internet through the internet! Please read what Saku Ytti says here about the quality of the Internet: https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2020-June/108409.html - this is a message from a global perspective. This global public Internet *mostly works*. The Internet is now akin to a natural resource, it exists almost as globally as fresh air & fresh water are easily accessible to almost all people.

This NOMCOM is going to be the first of its kind: this new NOMCOM will truly and exclusively use the Internet to help decide the leadership of the next year of Internet building. We are full meta now, we are living in the Internet itself. And from a legal perspective in many places around the world “the Internet” doesn’t exist: usually law deconstructs things to individual building blocks (often geo-region specific): an ACL on a router, a big submarine cable to another country, photons being reconstructed into messages that make sense to humans. This only works if we strive for interoperability. I love *open* standards because of the profoundly positive impact on our local societies and global society.

How cool is it, that I can have a audio and video communication channel open with George Michaelson, for me literally on the other side of the planet, to discuss how we can make sure that our current phone call can’t be cut off by some BGP routing incident! This is real! :-)

Those legal deconstructions are based on the tools we build to make it all work. The next IETF leadership *will* influence where we dedicate our resources to make this wonderful Internet thing work for everyone on this planet.

So, If you like this Internet thing - click like and please volunteer. It will effectively take 3 or 4 weeks of your year’s office hours budget. Consider it a “month of your life”. Please discuss with your loved ones and employer(s) whether this is possible for you. I imagine there will be some awkward meeting time scheduling, since we need to plan communication hours across so many timezones. Or maybe not? It will be up to the next NOMCOM team to organise themselves in a way that is comfortable for them.

If you manage to be selected for the NOMCOM this time around, you *will* indirectly have some influence on what the Internet is like in the future.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started my participation in the NOMCOM 2019-2020 team, I felt super lucky that there were excellent people that had already been through the process themselves one or more times. They taught me how it all worked so I could participate effectively, all I had to do was listen and think about it, and then participate. It was a safe and enjoyable work environment, and while it happened - I learned could trust a lot more people in this world than I previously thought I could.

You have one week to sign up! This offer is time-limited :-)

Kind regards,

Job Snijders

Ps. Here is my understanding of who I am. Please do your own research, verify what I say makes sense to you (but also imagining where I might becoming from). I am:

- Believer that open standards help improve the quality of life for all people
- Believer that high quality open source software is needed at every layer of the stack to improve the quality of life for all people
- affiliated with NTT, a global IP Network
- affiliated with OpenBSD, a free functional secure operating system for the internet
- affiliated with NLNOG, a social community likes talking about Internet and building it
- affiliated with NANOG, a social community likes talking about Internet and building it
- affiliated with RIPE, a social community likes talking about Internet and building it
- affiliated with Dutch society, a social community that likes the Internet and was the first international entity to connect to it