Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Scott Brim]

On Sunday, June 30, 2013, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> > From: Scott Brim >
>
> > Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said "I
> > don't understand the concern about too many message headers."
>
> I don't know about there being a UUCP one, but here:
>
>   http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/humour/net.header
>
> is the ARPANET one.
>
> Noel
>

That was it, thanks!  I hope it's in the archives.

Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Scott Brim 

> Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said "I
> don't understand the concern about too many message headers."

I don't know about there being a UUCP one, but here:

  http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/humour/net.header

is the ARPANET one.

Noel

Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Scott Brim]

Please someone find and share the UUCP message where the body said "I don't
understand the concern about too many message headers."

RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[l.wood]

-1

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/



From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa 
[j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu]
Sent: 29 June 2013 13:28
To: ietf@ietf.org
Cc: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re:   
The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

> From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)

> Yet.

PS: I probably should have added a ":-)" to that. Sorry, it's early, the
brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance
to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-)

Noel

Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Michael StJohns]

The shortest ietf email was sent at least 20 years ago, consisted of a single 
"!" as the body.  Of course the subject went on for two lines.   I forget what 
the subject was.  Mike

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 29, 2013, at 15:43, Doug Barton  wrote:

> On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> > From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
>> 
>> > Yet.
>> 
>> PS: I probably should have added a ":-)" to that. Sorry, it's early, the
>> brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance
>> to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-)
> 
> No.
> 

Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[John Levine]

In article <51cf38eb.3080...@dougbarton.us> you write:
>On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>  > From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
>>
>>  > Yet.
>>
>> PS: I probably should have added a ":-)" to that. Sorry, it's early, the
>> brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance
>> to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-)
>
>No.

?

Re: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Doug Barton]

On 06/29/2013 05:28 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 > From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)

 > Yet.

PS: I probably should have added a ":-)" to that. Sorry, it's early, the
brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance
to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-)


No.

RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)

> Yet.

PS: I probably should have added a ":-)" to that. Sorry, it's early, the
brain's not firing on all cylinders yet, and I was so entranced by the chance
to set the record for the shortest ever IETF list e-mail... :-)

Noel

RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: "Adrian Farrel" 

> "told not to post" is, AFAIK only achievable through a posting ban,
> which you don't seem to have received.

Yet.

Noel

RE: Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Adrian Farrel]

> This message is reply to an author of a new draft under ietf discussion.
> If this list is not the correct place to discuss such matter, then the
> list's responsible Chair is required to give details of where to
> discuss such new work.

I have no idea what a "list's responsible chair" is, but there is an ITEF list
dedicated for the discussion of issues related to NomCom.

https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-nomcom

"This mailing list is a relocation of the mailing list used by the
(now-concluded)NomCom working group, and reopened for discussion of the cureent
proposals for revision of the Nomcom process."

> Please note that I was told not to post more discuss messages
> on this list

That is an interesting statement, IMHO. Had you said "requested", I would have
understood. Had you said "warned of the consequences if you continued to post in
a particular way", I would have known what was going on. But "told not to post"
is, AFAIK only achievable through a posting ban, which you don't seem to have
received.

Adrian

Comments For I-D: draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 (was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility)

[Abdussalam Baryun]

This message is reply to an author of a new draft under ietf discussion.
If this list is not the correct place to discuss such matter, then the
list's responsible Chair is required to give details of where to
discuss such new work.
+

Hi Moonesamy,
(the Author of draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00)

I think the draft still needs more details, for example, the Abstract
says to give remote contributors eligible to serve but how many
remote, it is not-reasonable/not-practical to have most remote, and it
is not fare/diverse to have all not remote. Furthermore, you did not
mention diversity in the draft related to members selected.

AB> I prefer if you refer me, or the discussion list chair can refer
me to somewhere we can discuss this new draft. Please note that I was
told not to post more discuss messages on this list, so the chair or
you are required to respond on this issue related to discussing the
draft, because this may be my last post regarding this I-D.

AB> the update may need an informational draft (or better
introduction) like what [1] is doing, so if we know the information on
process challenges we will know the best practice. I like the [1]
draft I think it needs to be renewed including remote members
possibilities.
[1]  http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-crocker-nomcom-process-00.txt

AB> you need to define *remote contributor* in the draft. When the
authors define it then I can amend or edit. You need to mention that
most of meeting of IETF per year are in one region which makes some
from other regions to contribute remotely.

Section 2> The section is not reasonable because you changed with no
strong reasons. Why you want to change totally, I recommend to add
idea not change. As to give opportunity to additional memebrs that are
remote. These additional memebrs will have a special condition. This
way you don't change the conditions for the current procedure of
selecting f2f memebrs, and you may limit the number of remote
contributors maybe 10 % of the total memebrs.

AB> suggest in Section 2> I suggest not to update the text of the RFC
but to add new rule for selecting few remote participants.

AB> you need to add what are the remote memebrs responsibilities,
because they may be similar or different than the other memebrs.

my answers to your questions below,

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 1:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:
>
> Hi Abdussalam,
>
>
> Thanks for explaining why you support the draft.  I am going to list some 
> questions.  Please read them as points to consider.  There isn't any 
> obligation to provide comments.

You mean the draft should consider,

>
>  - What is your opinion about helping the "pie get larger"?


No we don't want things to get larger for others to eat, we want
things to get smarter for others to use, share, and develop equally.

>
>
>  - What would be an acceptable way of determining whether someone
>has been contributing to the IETF over a period of five meetings?

Where are the five meetings (is it a f2f meeting?)and what kind of
contributing you are asking?

>  - Dave Cridland suggested that working groups provide a smallish set of
>volunteers each for the selection process.  Is it okay to leave it
>to the working group chair to make the decision?


I really want to focus questions related to the new draft not other
issues. Therefore, I think the draft needs to involve what was
discussed on the list (feedback). Updating this RFC procedure may need
more reasons than what was presented in the draft, I think it is nice
if you add more and change info to renew this draft for more further
discusses. Thanks.

AB

New form of remote attendance [was Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility]

[Elwyn Davies]

On Thu, 2013-06-27 at 12:44 +0100, Arturo Servin (probably did not
intend to) wrote:

> What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to
> meetings?

I attend all meetings psychically so spriritual!

Sorry.. couldn't resist.
E.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Scott Brim]

On Thursday, June 27, 2013, Scott Brim wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Michael Richardson 
> >
> wrote:
> > Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of
> the nomcom itself.
>
> Yes, we need to cultivate more talent and more viewpoints while
> simultaneously using hard-earned wisdom and encouraging growth of that
> wisdom in the less experienced.  I'm looking for the proposal from a
> few years ago for a balance like that in the NomCom, but haven't found
> it yet.
>

Here it is: http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-crocker-nomcom-process-00.txt

I was particularly thinking of section 3, but reading it all might be worth
your while.

Yes we need to cultivate new leadership but that must not override the more
important need for experience and wisdom in the vital functions of the
IETF.  Finding that balance is not a new concern, anywhere in the IETF --
25 years ago I was told that the best working groups have "six young turks
and six old farts".

John Klensin pointed out that there are other problems with the current
NomCom selection rules.  True.  I'm not defending the current rules, just
the principle of what the NomCom should be able to represent.  I have no
issues with changes to the NomCom process as long as they make the NomCom
better at what it is supposed to do.

Cheers ... Scott

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hi Abdussalam,
At 12:16 27-06-2013, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:
I support the draft, it will give all participants from all the 
world equal opputunity. I made input related to this on the list 
because I found that I am remote participant and there was limits 
and conditions which I don't want. However, there may be some 
reasons that IETF done it that way which the draft may need to 
clarify and solve,


Thanks for explaining why you support the draft.  I am going to list 
some questions.  Please read them as points to consider.  There isn't 
any obligation to provide comments.


 - What is your opinion about helping the "pie get larger"?

 - What would be an acceptable way of determining whether someone
   has been contributing to the IETF over a period of five meetings?

 - Dave Cridland suggested that working groups provide a smallish set of
   volunteers each for the selection process.  Is it okay to leave it
   to the working group chair to make the decision?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy 

RE: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

At 12:38 27-06-2013, Adrian Farrel wrote:

I think you can rely on each person actually on NomCom to speak their mind and
deliver from their experience (and we can rely on the NomCom chair 
to tease that

out). So surely we can say something like:
2 old-timers chosen randomly from a list of old-timers
4 people who have been around the IETF a lot (e.g. 3 out of last 5 meetings)
3 people who have worked in the IETF quite a bit (e.g.  front page 
of > 2 RFCs)
3 people who have evidence of participation in technical work on 
mailing lists.

Each person is only allowed to be placed in one pool before selection.


I'll comment on the above.  I have seen the request about 
reconsidering Section 2 of the draft and I am not ignoring it.


Someone would have to create a list of old-timers.

I think I understand what you mean by "around the IETF a lot".  I'll 
skip that for now.


The front page of more than two RFCs can create an incentive to:

 (a) generate more RFCs

 (b) add more names to the author list

There are a few ideas (including the above quoted text) which could 
be combined to figure out one or more workable alternatives.


Regards,
S. Moonesamy 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Alia Atlas]

[I have significantly cut down the thread to respond to a couple points.]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:54 PM, S Moonesamy  wrote:
>
>
>  In principle, one could consider the "do we want this" and "what
>> would the criteria be" questions in either order.  In practice,
>> I think the former question is the more important and should be
>> considered first because it informs how we really feel about
>> diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of
>> f2f meetings.   I also believe that, while I might be very
>> difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote
>> participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a
>> definite that would be at least as good at discriminating
>> between actual remote participants and contributors and other
>> sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating
>> between those who understand the IETF culture and those who
>> don't.
>>
>
> In my opinion the easier path is to focus on contributors.  The IETF
> culture angle is  controversial because it is like saying that the person
> has to adopt North America culture.


The IETF is the protector of what I'd describe as a "public good".  When I
talk about IETF culture, part of what I mean is having people understand
this and have the desire to protect, preserve, and grow it - rather than
loot it for their (or their company's) profit.  It might be viewed as
helping the "pie get larger" instead of thinking of it as zero-sum game.
 Knowing what is important to preserve and protect is also important, but
can be learned.

Alia

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hi John,
At 12:33 27-06-2013, John C Klensin wrote:

I'm not sure I agree and want to come back to an earlier point
-- we should figure out what we really need and want and then
see if we can work out the details to make it work.  If we


The definition of "attend" is and has been people who pay the 
attendance fee for the three out of the last five meetings.


I'll quote a part of Paul Hoffman's message:

  "-1. Those choosing the leadership of an organization should
   understand more than the leadership of the one WG they have
   participated in."

Currently, the people choosing IAB and IESG members do not even have 
to understand as much as the leadership of the working group they 
have participated in.  I'll quote an extract from Scott Brim's message:


  "I would only entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough
   experience and hard-earned wisdom to make the difficult decisions that
   are required.  Those who participate in the process but are not really
   deep in the culture are already well-represented through the vehicles
   for contributing to the NomCom process."

And part of a reply from Michael Richardson:

  "The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a
   tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small
   children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child).

   Since people tend to pick people who look like them, that means that nomcom
   will pick people who are less diverse."

I'll go back to what is said to be oral tradition:

  "The strength of the IAB is found in part in the balance of the demographics
   of its members (e.g., national distribution, years of experience, gender,
   etc.), the combined skill set of its members, and the combined sectors
   (e.g., industry, academia, etc.) represented by its members."

In my opinion the IETF has solved the problem on paper.  If I take, 
for example, gender, there is only one woman on the IAB.  Had the IAB 
been able to address the gender problem over the last 10 years?  I 
would say no (I am using "no" as it is easier for people for which 
English is not their native language to easily understand my response).


Is there balance in the national distribution of IAB members?  I 
would say no (see above for explanation of the "no").   Is there 
balance in industry and academia affiliations?  I would say no.


Those issues have been discussed during the diversity debate and even 
before that.  I am reluctant to make a suggestion that makes the IETF 
an oligarchy.  I took at quick look at this thread.  Most of the 
participants are from North America.  There are two women who have 
commented.  If Adrian Farrel asks me why we do not see participation 
from South America and Africa, my answer is:


 If you entrust the future of the IETF to those who have enough experience and
 hard-earned wisdom the end result is that the rest of the world 
will not believe

 that it is worthwhile to participate unless they have money to gain from that
 participation.

I'll quote an extract from Michael StJohns:

  "Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less prevalent,
   both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer
   people.  Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly
   like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by
   throwing people at it."

The fact is that there has been NomCom lobbying.  That fact was 
reported a few years ago.  Is there a link between that and what 
Michael StJohns said?  I don't know.


The "open list" approach was adopted a few years back.  Two NomComs 
had different interpretations of the RFC.  I don't think that it 
matters much.  The point here is that definitions are subject to 
interpretation.  For example, there was a previous NomCom discussion 
about the affiliation of an IETF participant.


This is a side note, I'll use Ted Lemon as an example.  I see that he 
is affiliated with nominum.com.  It is easy for anyone to determine 
that.  I'll compare him with Olafur Gudmundsson.  I see that he is 
ogud.com.  Let's say that they are both chairs of a DNS-related 
working group.  Would the average working group participant be 
comfortable to ask about affiliation if he or she is not happy with a 
decision these working group chairs have taken?  Would NomCom members 
be aware of a questionable decision they have taken and how they 
handled the situation?   Would people who do not have the opportunity 
to be physically present at a meeting be comfortable providing 
negative feedback about them if the person does not personally know 
one of the NomCom members?


The IETF had to wait until Olafur stepped forward with a Recall 
petition before doing anything about an ex-IETF Trust Chair who 
likely understood IETF culture.


I agree that it would be good to figure out what is really needed and 
desired and then work out the details.



conclude --as I think some have suggested-- that we do

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Doug Barton]

On 06/27/2013 02:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:

Hello,

RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet
Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF
Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.

draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow
remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to
serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition (
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).

Could you please read the draft and comment?


FWIW, all opinions my own, etc. :)

I have attended several meetings in person, and several remotely. 
Unfortunately I do not support the concept of allowing remote attendance 
to qualify a person for Nomcom.


As others have pointed out, the acculturation that happens during in 
person attendance is a significant part of this issue. Included in that 
is the chance to have at least some exposure to potential candidates as 
people outside of what is seen in e-mail and on line during meetings. 
Those who participate remotely don't have that opportunity, and IMO the 
Nomcom would be the poorer because of that.


I am definitely sympathetic to the argument that meeting attendance 
places a high burden on the participants, and being able to attend 
enough meetings to become Nomcom eligible is a substantial investment. 
However I don't see a practical way to change that without a significant 
changes in IETF structure. (Arguably such changes may be desirable, but 
it would have to come wholesale, not piecemeal.)


Doug

RE: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Adrian Farrel]

> > Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation
> > greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and
> > our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree
> > on what they should become.  I supported the proposal to require a few
> > old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago.  I'm quite against the
> > idea of lowering requirements now.  I would only entrust the future of
> > the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to
> > make the difficult decisions that are required.  Those who participate
> > in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already
> > well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom
> > process.
> 
> Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the
> nomcom itself.
> 
> The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a
> tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small
> children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child).

I can support what Scott says if (and only if) we divide up the composition of
NomCom.  Taken to its extreme, what Scott says might return a NomCom made up
only of people over 65 who have previously served on the IAB/IESG.

But the same applies to SM's draft. Taken to its extreme, SM's draft might
return a NomCom made up only of people who have absolutely no idea how the IETF
functions today, and (more importantly) why.

I think you can rely on each person actually on NomCom to speak their mind and
deliver from their experience (and we can rely on the NomCom chair to tease that
out). So surely we can say something like:
2 old-timers chosen randomly from a list of old-timers
4 people who have been around the IETF a lot (e.g. 3 out of last 5 meetings)
3 people who have worked in the IETF quite a bit (e.g.  front page of > 2 RFCs)
3 people who have evidence of participation in technical work on mailing lists.
Each person is only allowed to be placed in one pool before selection.

I would like to see SM reconsider his Section 2 along these lines (although not
with these precise definitions).

Adrian

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:29 -0700 S Moonesamy
 wrote:

> At 09:44 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote:
>> sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote
>> attendees be  permitted to volunteer for NomCom without
>> defining what defines a  remote attendee.
> 
> Agreed.

I'm not sure I agree and want to come back to an earlier point
-- we should figure out what we really need and want and then
see if we can work out the details to make it work.  If we
conclude --as I think some have suggested-- that we don't want
often-remote volunteers on the Nomcom no matter what, or that we
don't want people who cannot just about guarantee physical
attendance at all relevant meetings to serve on the Nomcom, or
that we are unwilling to consider relaxing the current 3 of 5
rule for other reasons, then I'd argue that putting energy into
defining appropriate criteria for being a remote attendee is
pretty much a waste of time.  If we do decide we want to open
the door to remote attendees on the Nomcom and later discover
that we can't agree on criteria, that is just how it goes.

In principle, one could consider the "do we want this" and "what
would the criteria be" questions in either order.  In practice,
I think the former question is the more important and should be
considered first because it informs how we really feel about
diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of
f2f meetings.   I also believe that, while I might be very
difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote
participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a
definite that would be at least as good at discriminating
between actual remote participants and contributors and other
sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating
between those who understand the IETF culture and those who
don't.

>...


--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 13:50 -0400 Scott Brim
 wrote:

> Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom
> participation greatly increases the probability that our
> culture will fracture, and our mission statement lose meaning,
> before we have a chance to agree on what they should become.
> I supported the proposal to require a few old-timers on every
> NomCom a few years ago.  I'm quite against the idea of
> lowering requirements now.  I would only entrust the future of
> the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned
> wisdom to make the difficult decisions that are required.
> Those who participate in the process but are not really deep
> in the culture are already well-represented through the
> vehicles for contributing to the NomCom process.

Well, I agree with all of that in principle.  In practice, I
don't think the combination of a heavy Nomcom workload and long
period of commitment with the 3 of 5 rule has served us very
well in recent years, especially in terms of guaranteeing that
the criteria you think are important are met.   I think we would
be better off with requirements that made it more feasible for
people like you to volunteer to serve on the Nomcom on the basis
of long-term understanding of the culture, a history of
participating in a diverse collection of WGs, a few less f2f
meetings, and some remote participation.  Instead, the 3 of 5
rule and those other factors have brought us Nomcoms with a
large fraction of the volunteer pool being folks with far less
experience and perspective and a need to rely almost completely
on questionnaires and interviews rather than knowledge.  I don't
think those relative newcomers should be excluded either, but
I'm concerned when they appear to be dominating the volunteer
pool because they are the ones with company support, time on
their hands, and no expectations about getting selected for the
IESG, IAN, or IAOC if they don't volunteer for the Nomcom.

It is certainly possible that considering and making some
changes could make things worse.  But they could also make
things better.  And, IMO, merely having a serious conversation
about what we would like our criteria to be and what we are
trying to optimize is useful.   If nothing else, some relative
newcomers might learn something useful about the culture from
the conversation and how we carry it out.

  best,
   john

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Scott Brim]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Michael Richardson  wrote:
> Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the 
> nomcom itself.

Yes, we need to cultivate more talent and more viewpoints while
simultaneously using hard-earned wisdom and encouraging growth of that
wisdom in the less experienced.  I'm looking for the proposal from a
few years ago for a balance like that in the NomCom, but haven't found
it yet.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Abdussalam Baryun]

Thanks Moonesamy,

I support the draft, it will give all participants from all the world equal
opputunity. I made input related to this on the list because I found that I
am remote participant and there was limits and conditions which I don't
want. However, there may be some reasons that IETF done it that way which
the draft may need to clarify and solve,

AB


On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet
> Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF
> Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
>
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-**eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve
> on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/**
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-**eligibility-00).
>
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
>

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Paul Hoffman]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 10:29 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> I think that the NomCom eligibility criteria should not discriminate between 
> any contributor to the IETF Standard Process.  

-1. Those choosing the leadership of an organization should understand more 
than the leadership of the one WG they have participated in.

> The view I got from a previous discussion of the draft is that "people from 
> emerging regions are disenfranchised; that's how IETF culture works".

That's one view; another is "we need to be more creative on how to increase 
diversity". "Creative" doesn't mean "ignoring all obvious security and 
stability issues".

--Paul Hoffman

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

Scott Brim  wrote:
> Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation
> greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and
> our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree
> on what they should become.  I supported the proposal to require a few
> old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago.  I'm quite against the
> idea of lowering requirements now.  I would only entrust the future of
> the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to
> make the difficult decisions that are required.  Those who participate
> in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already
> well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom
> process.

Just as long as you understand that you are influencing the diversity of the 
nomcom itself.

The people involved will be older, work for bigger companies, and have a
tendancy to be white, north american, male, and not have small
children (or rather, not have made the choice to stay home with child).

Since people tend to pick people who look like them, that means that nomcom
will pick people who are less diverse.

--
]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect  [
] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails[

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Dave Crocker]

On 6/27/2013 3:50 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:

However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from
folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of
it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part
that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if
say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting
whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely
outcome.)



I've been a voting member on 3 and liaison on 1.  I can't imagine a 
nomcom process succeeding without a significant amount of face-to-face time.


There are two reasons.  One is creating basic working relationships for 
this type of personnel selection topic -- especially when few of the 
members have much experience with such an exercise.  Much of nomcom is 
about haggling.  Trade-offs about and among candidates.  Debating what's 
true.  Debating what matters.  Debating combinatorials for slates.


All of that is made fundamentally easier -- and easier does not mean 
easy -- when each member has a sense of knowing the other members.  (As 
I recall, there are /many/ research studies about this sort of thing.)


The second reason is interviewing nomination candidates.  There is a 
'feel' for a candidate that one can get from f2f that is much harder to 
obtain with only a voice call.  That said, recent nomcoms seem to have 
de-valued f2f interviews.


So, yes, much of nomcom is thru voice conferencing.  But I believe the 
nature of the decision-making nomcom does requires the group to have had 
significant face-time.


d/



--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Scott Brim]

These days I don't contribute much to the IETF, so I hesitate to say
much, but I care about it a lot and may contribute again someday.
IMHO ...

Once I lived in Japan for a year and got to think I understood
Japanese culture, but finally realized I had hardly scratched the
surface.  Once, in Germany, I thought Germans were a lot like
Americans, but finally realized I had no idea how different they were.
 And so on.  Likewise, people may think they understand how the IETF
"works", and deduce from that what IETF culture means, when they have
just begun to grasp it.

The IETF mission is already vulnerable.  Most of the time we can hold
the culture together, although it takes a lot of work as unanimity has
already begun falling apart.  If we want to change the mission and
culture, that's okay but we should do so consciously and explicitly.
The NomCom is pivotal for the IETF being able to do its work, to
fulfill its mission, in the future.  People who "know" how the IETF
works but do not have enough experience in the culture will not know
how to express it well, in difficult and subtle situations.  I'm not
talking about knowledge of information, I'm talking about mastery of a
trade -- something that comes with a lot of experience practicing it.

Because of that, weakening requirements for NomCom participation
greatly increases the probability that our culture will fracture, and
our mission statement lose meaning, before we have a chance to agree
on what they should become.  I supported the proposal to require a few
old-timers on every NomCom a few years ago.  I'm quite against the
idea of lowering requirements now.  I would only entrust the future of
the IETF to those who have enough experience and hard-earned wisdom to
make the difficult decisions that are required.  Those who participate
in the process but are not really deep in the culture are already
well-represented through the vehicles for contributing to the NomCom
process.

Scott

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

At 09:44 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote:
sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote attendees be 
permitted to volunteer for NomCom without defining what defines a 
remote attendee.


Agreed.

The issue you are raising - that limiting the NomCom pool to recent 
attendees of physical IETF meetings may have downsides - is valid. 
But at least the requirements the current policy sets are clearly defined.


Until you nail down what exactly defines a remote attendee, I can't 
really form an opinion on whether allowing them into the NomCom pool 
is a good idea or not.


What I did in the initial draft is to work from the text already in 
RFC 3777.  It has been mentioned by several people that participation 
is a way for somebody to get IETF experience.   The question is how 
that participation can be defined.


At 10:00 27-06-2013, Paul Hoffman wrote:
Then maybe we should wait for you to do so. This discussion is kind 
of pointless if we don't have shared definitions.


I think that the NomCom eligibility criteria should not discriminate 
between any contributor to the IETF Standard Process.  The view I got 
from a previous discussion of the draft is that "people from emerging 
regions are disenfranchised; that's how IETF culture works".


Regards,
S. Moonesamy 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Arturo Servin]

Yes, but instead of 150 volunteers from other organizations we could
have 500. So the probabilities are back to the same.

/as

On 6/27/13 4:07 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that problem - not 
> for a given company, but for pretty much locking small companies and 
> individuals out of the Nomcom.  Once scenario for this - both benign 
> intentions and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person 
> to all the meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among 
> a number of people - say 5.  So instead of the potential of say 30 volunteers 
> from one company, we now suddenly have 150.  And me with my single person 
> consultancy - still only has 1 slot to volunteer.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 11:07 -0400 Michael StJohns
 wrote:

>...
> But that's still problematic.  The current rules basically
> give any company who provides >= 30% of the Nomcom volunteer
> pool an ~85.1% chance of having 2 members (sum of all
> percentages from 2-10 members), a 12.1% chance of having 1 and
> a 2.8% chance of having 0.  

And, of course, a few related companies or one with subsidiaries
that it claims are independent and a desire to game the system
can easily do so today to produce a highly-likely larger number
of members, perhaps even a majority.   We are clearly vunerable
in that area but, perhaps inevitably, have gone down multiple
ratholes as soon as we try to tighten the specifically
anti-capture rules further.  In particular, trying to
second-guess a company's assertions about what entities are
independent of it is just fraught with problems even thought
such assertions can be used to subvert any, or almost any, "no
more than X from one company/interest" rule.

> I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that
> problem - not for a given company, but for pretty much locking
> small companies and individuals out of the Nomcom.  Once
> scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is
> that a company instead of sending one person to all the
> meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF
> among a number of people - say 5.  So instead of the potential
> of say 30 volunteers from one company, we now suddenly have
> 150.  And me with my single person consultancy - still only
> has 1 slot to volunteer.

Yes, but...

(i) Some reasonable set of "demonstrate clue" provisions, if
adopted along with the "demonstrate participation" ones, would
tend to counter that, and might even reduce the available 30 (or
whatever number one picks).

(ii) A notion of "some remote participation is ok if you can
demonstrate clue/ groking the IETF in some other way" actually
helps to protect your ability to volunteer if you suddenly
missed a few consecutive meetings and that of other one-person
consultancies (including, in the interest of full disclosure,
me) and academics like Brian) who have discovered that, as
in-person attendance rises, they need to be selective about face
to face attendance.  If one (and, equivalently, one's one-person
consultancy) can't volunteer, the likelihood of being selected
are zero (and really easy to calculate).

(iii) Unless all of those 150 people were actually participating
actively and contributing to IETF work, the company's actual
ability to influence the standards process would go down.  

> While it would be good to have more people involved, it would
> be bad in the ways in which larger companies could game the
> system.

While I agree, I think it would be really unfortunate if we
discarded opportunities to get a broader spectrum of people
involved because of fears that come company or companies might
misbehave.  I think at least two things work in our favor in the
latter regard.  We can try to educate participants and their
organizations about how little marginal commercial advantage
they would gain by, e.g., getting an extra person on the IETF
and be sure that our other procedures and safeguards reinforce
that.  For example, the reputational harm a company, to say
nothing of the individuals involved, would suffer from a few
recalls based on collusion in support of company positions would
far exceed any possible advantages from having more people in
leadership positions.   I think there is also evidence of courts
and competitiveness/ antitrust authorities being _very_
unsympathetic to organizations who try to subvert open standards
processes.  They, of course, also have the resources and
authority to untangle relationships that we do not.

best,
   john

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Melinda Shore]

On 6/27/13 5:08 AM, Cullen Jennings wrote:
> I have attended some IETF meetings remotely and I am not in favor of this 
> change.

To be honest, I'm skeptical, myself.  I have attended a lot of
meetings remotely and I don't think that it provides enough
context to be able to provide the background for critical
decisions about leadership.  I'm also not sure what problem
it's trying to solve.

Melinda

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Paul Hoffman]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 9:26 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> I prefer not to get into a definition of "remote attendance" for now.  

Then maybe we should wait for you to do so. This discussion is kind of 
pointless if we don't have shared definitions.

--Paul Hoffman

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Eggert, Lars]

Hi,

On Jun 27, 2013, at 18:26, S Moonesamy 
 wrote:
>> (1) How do you define "remote attendance"?
>> 
>> (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely 
>> attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in 
>> mind.)
> 
> I prefer not to get into a definition of "remote attendance" for now.

sorry, but it's silly to attempt to propose that remote attendees be permitted 
to volunteer for NomCom without defining what defines a remote attendee.

>  For what it is worth the current system only tells us that a person has paid 
> the registration fee.  That person could have gone shopping, fallen asleep 
> during the WG sessions, or sitting in a corner as he or she does not have a 
> dot and is not considered as important.

The issue you are raising - that limiting the NomCom pool to recent attendees 
of physical IETF meetings may have downsides - is valid. But at least the 
requirements the current policy sets are clearly defined.

Until you nail down what exactly defines a remote attendee, I can't really form 
an opinion on whether allowing them into the NomCom pool is a good idea or not.

Lars

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Dave Cridland]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Michael Richardson
wrote:

>
> Alia Atlas  wrote:
> > I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing
> at all
> > like being at IETF.  I can see modifying NomCom eligibility
> constraints
> > slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have
> the
> > necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a
> number of
> > IETFs in person.
>
> That's why, I am not in favour of significantly changing the criteria to
> *become* nomcom eligible.  I really don't think anyone thinks that one can
> become clueful about IETF culture without being there in person a few
> times.
>
>
That's possibly true.

That said, I have been to two meetings, none in the past five, and I
certainly don't think I'm automatically less clueful than all those who've
attended three of the past five.

In my favour, I've a few RFCs, including working group output, and I'm
co-chairing a working group.

Perhaps the volunteer selection process ought to be that working groups
provide a smallish set of volunteers each, and get rid of artificial
eligibility criteria which attempt to obliquely address real - and
important - criteria. I'd perhaps suggest that working group chairs cannot
be "volunteered" by their own working groups.

I suspect that doing things that way would both reflect participation
better, and produce a lot more engagement into the nomination process.

Dave.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hello,

I'll reply to several messages below to reduce ietf@ mail traffic.

At 03:03 27-06-2013, Eggert, Lars wrote:

Section 2 says:
   RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, "Nominating Committee Operation",
   Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows:

  Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
  last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of
  the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer.

A few questions:

(1) How do you define "remote attendance"?

(2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely 
attended? (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.)


I prefer not to get into a definition of "remote attendance" for 
now.  For what it is worth the current system only tells us that a 
person has paid the registration fee.  That person could have gone 
shopping, fallen asleep during the WG sessions, or sitting in a 
corner as he or she does not have a dot and is not considered as important.


Question (2) is based on the assumption that the IETF Secretariat has 
to make that determination.  I am leaving question (1) open as I 
would like to listen to what you and everyone else has to say 
first.  Question (2) could be addressed after that.


At 03:33 27-06-2013, Yoav Nir wrote:
When we started having one day passes, the question was raised about 
whether attending on a one day pass "counts" for NomCom eligibility. 
If I remember correctly the answer was no. So we couldn't let 
listening in on one session count, right?


Yes.

I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log, but that's not 
really helpful IMO.


Agreed.

At 03:50 27-06-2013, Stephen Farrell wrote:

I think physically attending 1 meeting might not be enough
esp. if a nomcom were selected that had a lot of folks on
who'd only ever been to one meeting. But I'm sympathetic
to the goal and am sure some qualification rule (*) could
be worked out. (Probably after about 1000 messages;-)


The MySQL field reserved only has two characters for the message 
count.  As such the limit is 99 messages. :-)


Please note that I am not ignoring the view expressed above.


However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from
folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of
it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part
that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if
say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting
whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely
outcome.)


I'll leave to folks who have been on NomCom to comment.


(*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom
selection process could also require that the voting
members collectively have been to N meetings, with each
voting member able to contribute at most M to that total.
Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the
random selection until you get 10 voting members that
satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require
that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs
perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index>3
or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-)


My first response to the above would be no.  However, there is 
something in the above which is interesting.  Once I get a sense of 
the high level picture I may get back to it.


At 04:06 27-06-2013, Olafur Gudmundsson wrote:
I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal 
but I think the threshold issue should be clarified.


Ok.


What does "one of the last five mean" during an IETF meeting?


  "The 5 meetings are the five most recent meetings that ended prior
   to the date on which the solicitation for nominating committee
   volunteers was submitted for distribution to the IETF community."

It's any one meeting out of that.


I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I 
would relax the rule to say something like this:
"must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including 
one of the last 5".
15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will 
allow people that that have been involved for a long time but have limited

resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes.


I tried that in another draft.  I dropped the proposal because of 
other NomCom-related issues.


Q: do you want to limit how many "infrequent" attendees can be on 
Nomcom just like the number of people from a single organization can sign a

recall ?


The quick answer is yes.  One of the issues is the assumption behind 
"attended meetings".  There is also the question of fairness.  I will 
have to reconsider my answer based on the views that are expressed.


At 05:36 27-06-2013, John Curran wrote:

I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to
serve on the NomCom in the right direction.  Long-term, it would be ideal
if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as
a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation.


My preference

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[David Meyer]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Michael StJohns  wrote:
> At 09:51 AM 6/27/2013, David Meyer wrote:
>>On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
 the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
 that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).

>>>
>>> It's already in RFC 3777.  No more than 2 per company.
>>
>>BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have
>>always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?)
>>that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at
>>the IETF.
>
> This is where acculturation comes in.  You and I are old hands - we've been 
> doing this almost too long to remember.  This is built into our personal 
> perception of the IETF.  Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and 
> less prevalent, both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the 
> newer people.  Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly 
> like all the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by 
> throwing people at it.   Given the current buy-in for the nomcom is about $6K 
> per year per person (based on about a $4K per person direct cost - I don't 
> know how to reasonably estimate the indirect costs of lost production because 
> of travel if any), that provides at least a small barrier to entry to that 
> type of manipulation, as does the acculturation that actually happens if they 
> attend 3/5 meetings.
>
> I really wish the IETF were a group of individuals, but I don't think that's 
> ever been completely true, and I have then impression its getting to the 
> point where its not even mostly true.

Agree with all of your points Mike. --dmm
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>>In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has
>>always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a
>>bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or
>>otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always
>>match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm
>
>

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael StJohns]

At 09:51 AM 6/27/2013, David Meyer wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear  wrote:
>>
>> On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>>
>>> Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
>>> the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
>>> that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).
>>>
>>
>> It's already in RFC 3777.  No more than 2 per company.
>
>BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have
>always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?)
>that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at
>the IETF. 

This is where acculturation comes in.  You and I are old hands - we've been 
doing this almost too long to remember.  This is built into our personal 
perception of the IETF.  Sadly - I think this attitude has become less and less 
prevalent, both in the newer companies that have sent people and in the newer 
people.  Part of this appears to be a belief that the IETF is exactly like all 
the other standards bodies and can be managed/manipulated by throwing people at 
it.   Given the current buy-in for the nomcom is about $6K per year per person 
(based on about a $4K per person direct cost - I don't know how to reasonably 
estimate the indirect costs of lost production because of travel if any), that 
provides at least a small barrier to entry to that type of manipulation, as 
does the acculturation that actually happens if they attend 3/5 meetings.

I really wish the IETF were a group of individuals, but I don't think that's 
ever been completely true, and I have then impression its getting to the point 
where its not even mostly true.

Mike



>In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has
>always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a
>bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or
>otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always
>match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael StJohns]

At 11:13 AM 6/27/2013, Scott Brim wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Michael StJohns  wrote:
>> Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a 
>> company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating 
>> the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5.
>
>Some already do.

But those 5 are not Nomcom eligible at this time.  (And that was the "benign" 
intention I mentioned before...)

Mike

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Scott Brim]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Michael StJohns  wrote:
> Once scenario for this - both benign intentions and non-benign - is that a 
> company instead of sending one person to all the meetings starts rotating the 
> opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of people - say 5.

Some already do.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

Eliot Lear  wrote:
> I think what you're getting at is that there are different types of remote
> participation.  If one wants to listen in, that should only require the
> appropriate software and a network connection.  If one actually wants to
> participate, then one either has to get onto a WeBex or Meetecho system.  
The
> point of this is that there has should be some demonstration that someone
> substantially participated in an IETF event.

I find that jabber+streamed mp3 is sufficient for a lot of things.
I do not think that one has to actively contribute as much as be available to
object to bad ideas.  So, we mostly need to register for that remotely
controlled hum generator.

> to do so.  Others, on the other hand, require more bandwidth.  Case and 
point:
> the httpbis working group has held two interim meetings and two more are
> planned.  All off site.  Should these people be counted?  If so, how?

I think that once we have a mechanism to count remote participation, we will
use it.  I think that an interim meeting is just part of the in-person
meeting that follows it.  That makes it simple and direct.

An in-person interim meeting may provide substantially more "indoctrination"
to a new person than a full blown meeting.

> And so, as I said, I'm fine with SM's idea, modulo John's suggested edit. 
 But
> I also think it would be useful to look beyond that change as well.

+1


--
]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect  [
] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails[




pgp5QPDQW3Gzv.pgp
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Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael StJohns]

At 09:42 AM 6/27/2013, Eliot Lear wrote:

>On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>
>> Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
>> the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
>> that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).
>>
>
>It's already in RFC 3777.  No more than 2 per company.


But that's still problematic.  The current rules basically give any company who 
provides >= 30% of the Nomcom volunteer pool an ~85.1% chance of having 2 
members (sum of all percentages from 2-10 members), a 12.1% chance of having 1 
and a 2.8% chance of having 0.  


I believe the proposal as stated would further exacerbate that problem - not 
for a given company, but for pretty much locking small companies and 
individuals out of the Nomcom.  Once scenario for this - both benign intentions 
and non-benign - is that a company instead of sending one person to all the 
meetings starts rotating the opportunity to attend the IETF among a number of 
people - say 5.  So instead of the potential of say 30 volunteers from one 
company, we now suddenly have 150.  And me with my single person consultancy - 
still only has 1 slot to volunteer.



While it would be good to have more people involved, it would be bad in the 
ways in which larger companies could game the system.

So - I'm not a big fan of the proposal without a lot more analysis of the 
unintended consequences - and there WILL be unintended consequences.

Mike

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

Alia Atlas  wrote:
> I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing at 
all
> like being at IETF.  I can see modifying NomCom eligibility constraints
> slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have the
> necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a number 
of
> IETFs in person.

That's why, I am not in favour of significantly changing the criteria to
*become* nomcom eligible.  I really don't think anyone thinks that one can
become clueful about IETF culture without being there in person a few times.

--
]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect  [
] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails[


--
Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works




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Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Eliot Lear]

Michael,

I think what you're getting at is that there are different types of
remote participation.  If one wants to listen in, that should only
require the appropriate software and a network connection.  If one
actually wants to participate, then one either has to get onto a WeBex
or Meetecho system.  The point of this is that there has should be some
demonstration that someone substantially participated in an IETF event.

Speaking of which, let me also raise another issue.  As those of you who
will be there in person will see in Berlin, we have a *vast* number of
BoFs planned, and this could lead to a vast number of additional new
working groups.  We won't have room for them all.  In addition, I myself
am co-chair of a working group who is not intended to meet – *ever*. 
Linked to the issue of NOMCOM is the idea that working groups actually
meet at IETFs.  Some certainly will continue to do so.  Others, on the
other hand, require more bandwidth.  Case and point: the httpbis working
group has held two interim meetings and two more are planned.  All off
site.  Should these people be counted?  If so, how?

And yes, it is possible to make this so complex that nobody would be
able to figure out who is eligible.

And so, as I said, I'm fine with SM's idea, modulo John's suggested
edit.  But I also think it would be useful to look beyond that change as
well.

Eliot

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 09:35 -0400 Alia Atlas
 wrote:

> Just a quick aside, but having run an interim WG meeting where
> we did not charge a meeting fee and knowing how significantly
> attendance diverged, I would strongly support at least some
> meeting fee for remote attendance.  There's also the key fact
> that the IETF is funded by IETF meeting fees and ISOC.

FWIW, so would I, if only because a large fraction of where that
fee goes (at least given some assumptions about disposition of
registration fee and ISOC money) is to support activities that
have little or nothing to do with actual meeting costs.   That
makes a fee for remote participates a matter of fairness, even
though I would hope that we could keep it low enough to avoid
discouraging participation (and maybe differentiate between a
lurker fee and an active remote participant fee).   Again,
creative thinking is called for, IMO.

>   Maybe
> the remote fee is scaled by region of attendee or such if
> there is concern that it is burdensome.

We already have a fee waiver mechanism.  It may need to be more
widely publicized and/or modified to reduce the load on the IETF
Chair if the number of requests rises, but I'd hope we could
avoid region-based formulae (if the reasons aren't clear, I can
elaborate).

> I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is
> nothing at all like being at IETF.  I can see modifying NomCom
> eligibility constraints slightly - but I really do not think
> that remote attendees will have the necessary experience and
> acculturation unless they have attended a number of IETFs in
> person.

See several previous notes on this list and the Nomcom one about
acculturation.  But, as to the difference in experience, I fully
agree that it is very different.   There is, however, a bit of a
chicken-and-egg problem: while I think the IESG and other
leadership bodies have good intentions toward remote (including
mailing-list-only) participants, having those bodies be more
accountable to remote folks is probably key to making that
experience better.  I have doubts as to whether it will every be
good enough that the average remote-only participant will every
fully understand the culture and actors, but maybe we don't need
that as a criterion for success.

john

> 
> Having served on a NomCom a long time ago, I'd say that an
> inexperienced volunteer set gives substantially more strength
> and bias to the non-voting members, who are definitionally
> very familiar with the IETF and the candidates for office.
> 
> I am not convinced the trade-off is worth it - but I can see
> the benefit of modifying eligibility constraints to keep
> people eligible for longer.  I'd like to see a way to include
> active and experienced remote attendees, but am quite cautious
> on that.
> 
> Alia
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Michael Richardson
> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Arturo Servin  wrote:
>> > Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended
>> > to an IETF meeting. You have to register, pay and
>> > collect your badge. However,
>> in
>> > remote participation we do not have mechanisms to
>> > verify that
>> somebody
>> > attended to a session.
>> 
>> We need to have registration for remote participation, even
>> if we charge zero.   I believe that perhaps we need to
>> provide some magic token in jabber
>> or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote
>> participants to check-in. They have to do that during the
>> meeting itself.
>> 
>> I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should
>> be "mandatory"
>> 
>> We also need to permit judgement calls.
>> 
>> --
>> ]   Never tell me the odds! |
>> ipv6 mesh networks [
>> ]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works|
>> network architect  [
>> ] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|
>> ruby on rails [
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Michael Richardson , Sandelman
>> Software Works
>> 
>> 
>> 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John Curran]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 9:34 AM, Noel Chiappa  wrote:

> Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
> the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
> that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).

There are already controls for that, but folks who engage in games such as
this generally make use of consultants/proxies/etc. which are not at all
apparent.  I'm not citing this as a huge risk, but one which could occur
if the in-person requirement drops to a single meeting. (i.e. due to the 
large pool of remote participants that one could enlist and fund a single
on-site attendance if the goal was to seat an particular IAB or IESG member.)

FYI,
/John

Disclaimers: My views alone (& not part of any group seeking NomCom capture... 
:-)

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Andy Bierman]

Hi,

I am strongly opposed to a remote meeting registration process and remote
meeting fees.
This increases the financial bias towards large corporate control of IETF
standards.
I like the IETF because anybody can comment on a draft or write a draft
without
paying fees.

I think there could be several ways to prove one has been recently involved
in the
IETF.  IMO I-D or RFC authorship shows more involvement than just showing up
at an IETF.  People who never read, write or comment on any drafts can be
more nomcom-qualified (by attendance metrics) than somebody who worked on
10 drafts
over the same time span.

Andy


On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:36 AM, Dave Cridland  wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Michael Richardson  > wrote:
>
>>
>> Arturo Servin  wrote:
>> > Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
>> > meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However,
>> in
>> > remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that
>> somebody
>> > attended to a session.
>>
>> We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge
>> zero.   I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in
>> jabber
>> or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to
>> check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself.
>>
>
> We could require room registration for the XMPP ("Jabber") chatrooms, and
> have remote participants fill in an equivalent of the blue sheet in order
> to join the room.
>
> I'm not sure if the current XMPP implementation supports this, but it will
> work in principle with a number of existing deployed implementations.
>
> (And, note, we no longer have to care about Google Talk interop, which
> makes things easier).
>
> Dave.
>

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[David Meyer]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Eliot Lear  wrote:
>
> On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>
>> Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
>> the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
>> that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).
>>
>
> It's already in RFC 3777.  No more than 2 per company.

BTW, while I understand the spirit of 3777 on this point, I have
always found the restriction somewhat at odds with our belief (hope?)
that we represent ourselves and the best interest of the Internet at
the IETF. In addition, a central ethic (IMO anyway) of the IETF has
always been to honor individualism and independence, so I find it a
bit strange that in the NomCom context we're all just corporate (or
otherwise) drones. All of that said, evidently reality doesn't always
match our ideals, hence clauses like the one you cite from 3777. --dmm

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, June 27, 2013 11:50 +0100 Stephen Farrell
 wrote:

>...
> (*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom
> selection process could also require that the voting
> members collectively have been to N meetings, with each
> voting member able to contribute at most M to that total.
> Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the
> random selection until you get 10 voting members that
> satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require
> that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs
> perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index>3
> or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-)

While it risks taking us into a statistical rathole, I think
that notions like the above may be the sort of thing we should
look at.  

More broadly, I think we may need to try to figure out what we
really want and need on or from the Nomcom in this decade
(remembering that the system was designed for the rather
different times and IETF composition of the early 1990s and has
been tuned in minor ways but not carefully and openly reviewed
since) and then try to devise criteria to match.   It seems to
me that may require looking at separate aspects of things rather
than trying to come up with a single surrogate for everything.  

For example, as the above suggests, there are some purposes for
which we probably need to look at overall Nomcom composition
rather that just individual qualifications.  Measures to avoid
capture fall into that category.  Whether the existing rules are
adequate in that regard or not, they represent on case where we
do look at total composition already.

We might want to look at whether some collections of
participants should be guaranteed representation or weighted
more heavily in the selection calculations (whether voting or
otherwise).  That raises the risk that SM identifies of pushing
us toward a Nomcom as a representative body of constituencies
demanding slots, but the advantages seem very strong for Dave
Crocker's proposal to guarantee a certain level of expertise and
some ideas to be sure that the perspective of remote
participants or other underrepresented populations are heard.
The question is how to find the right balance and then reach
sufficient consensus around the justification that we can hold
the line.   Not easy, but, at least IMO, probably worth the
investment it would take.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure that "groks the IETF" [1] is an
important and useful criterion.  I don't think "3 of last 5" is
a valid exclusive surrogate.  Perhaps what is needed is a list
of alternatives, any of which could demonstrate sufficient
familiarity with the culture.

If we separated the "IETF culture" requirement, I still think
that some level of participation, even face to face
participation is important.  I don't think that 3 face to face
meetings in 5 is needed for people who already understand the
culture; maybe some combination of remote participation and less
frequent attendance should be equally acceptable. 

"Participation" is similar.  If we think it is important, then
someone who is actively contributing to mailing lists and
document reviews and who is showing up in meeting Jabber logs
with useful comments is, IMO, a more appropriate Nomcom member
than someone whose company pays registration fees and travel
expenses and who then shows up at meetings and either goes to
the beach or sits in a few WG meetings reading email.  I don't
know how to eliminate the second (perhaps others have ideas) but
I can think of ways to identify the former as long as they are
not the exclusive "minimum participation" admission criteria.  

I would just hope that we don't fall into the trap of focusing
on what is easy to measure and quantify rather than what is
important and a good measure of what we are looking for.   It is
always tempting but, at least IMO, this issue is important
enough to the community in the long term that we ought to be
willing to invest some resources in it.   "3 of 5" may represent
an instance of that trap however well-intentioned it was when it
was instituted.

john


[1] I wonder, its introduction into the OED notwithstanding, if
the use of that term marks some of us as being either from a
particular, increasingly-ancient, generation or is more
culturally idiosyncratic than is appropriate.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hi Alejandro,
At 05:42 27-06-2013, alejandroacostaal...@gmail.com wrote:
  First, as a comment, I guess there is people who follow more IETF 
remotely than other in place.


Yes.

Here's is an extract from a Jabber log:

  "I don't think I've seen a WG chatroom this full before
   Well the future of the free world is at stake here :-)"


  Second, I like this idea of changing the threshold.


Thanks for reading the draft and providing feedback.

  Third, In the other hand, since there are several positions that 
are fill using this RFC maybe we can place a testbed. 50% can be 
fill using the current way and 50% using the proposed way, sounds 
crazy but it might be a good beginning.


I don't think that it sounds crazy.  A good beginning is when people 
make suggestions like you did.  I don't know yet whether I will say 
okay to the idea.  I would like to read all the suggestions, 
including yours, and then decide.


Regards,
S. Moonesamy 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Eliot Lear]

On 6/27/13 3:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>
> Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
> the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
> that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).
>

It's already in RFC 3777.  No more than 2 per company.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Dave Cridland]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Michael Richardson
wrote:

>
> Arturo Servin  wrote:
> > Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
> > meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However,
> in
> > remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that
> somebody
> > attended to a session.
>
> We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge
> zero.   I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in
> jabber
> or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to
> check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself.
>

We could require room registration for the XMPP ("Jabber") chatrooms, and
have remote participants fill in an equivalent of the blue sheet in order
to join the room.

I'm not sure if the current XMPP implementation supports this, but it will
work in principle with a number of existing deployed implementations.

(And, note, we no longer have to care about Google Talk interop, which
makes things easier).

Dave.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Alia Atlas]

Just a quick aside, but having run an interim WG meeting where we did not
charge a meeting fee and knowing how significantly attendance diverged, I
would strongly support at least some meeting fee for remote attendance.
 There's also the key fact that the IETF is funded by IETF meeting fees and
ISOC.   Maybe the remote fee is scaled by region of attendee or such if
there is concern that it is burdensome.

I have attended one meeting remotely - and the experience is nothing at all
like being at IETF.  I can see modifying NomCom eligibility constraints
slightly - but I really do not think that remote attendees will have the
necessary experience and acculturation unless they have attended a number
of IETFs in person.

Having served on a NomCom a long time ago, I'd say that an inexperienced
volunteer set gives substantially more strength and bias to the non-voting
members, who are definitionally very familiar with the IETF and the
candidates for office.

I am not convinced the trade-off is worth it - but I can see the benefit of
modifying eligibility constraints to keep people eligible for longer.  I'd
like to see a way to include active and experienced remote attendees, but
am quite cautious on that.

Alia


On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Michael Richardson
wrote:

>
> Arturo Servin  wrote:
> > Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
> > meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However,
> in
> > remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that
> somebody
> > attended to a session.
>
> We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge
> zero.   I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in
> jabber
> or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to
> check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself.
>
> I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should be
> "mandatory"
>
> We also need to permit judgement calls.
>
> --
> ]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh
> networks [
> ]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network
> architect  [
> ] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails
>[
>
>
> --
> Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works
>
>
>

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: John Curran 

> the proposed language also increases the possibility of "capture" (i.e.
> the ability of an single organization to inappropriately skew the
> outcome of the process) 

Why not just say directly that 'to prevent "capture", no more than X% of
the NomCom may work for a single organization' (where X is 15% or so, so
that even if a couple collude, they still can't get control).

Noel

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Stephen Farrell]

On 06/27/2013 02:24 PM, Michael Richardson wrote:
> 
> Stephen Farrell  wrote:
> > However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from
> > folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of
> > it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part
> > that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if
> > say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting
> > whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely
> > outcome.)
> 
> Please note two things:
> 1) under the original proposal and my revised one, you have
>attend in person somewhat regularly.
> 
> 2) for the November meeting, the nomcom *itself* must be present.

Tend to agree.

>I think it unrealistic to think that the nomcom itself could
>be remote for that meeting.  For the summer and march meeting,
>the nomcom could be anywhere.

Not this year:-)

> 
> so, even if you are eligible, don't volunteer for the nomcom if you can't
> attend the november meeting.

But doesn't that run counter to one aspect of SM's otherwise
reasonable goal? (And if getting randomly picked for nomcom
implied some I* thing has to pay your way to the Nov meeting,
then this is IMO a *much* larger change proposal.)

S.

> 
> --
> Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works
> 
> 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

Stephen Farrell  wrote:
> However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from
> folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of
> it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part
> that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if
> say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting
> whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely
> outcome.)

Please note two things:
1) under the original proposal and my revised one, you have
   attend in person somewhat regularly.

2) for the November meeting, the nomcom *itself* must be present.
   I think it unrealistic to think that the nomcom itself could
   be remote for that meeting.  For the summer and march meeting,
   the nomcom could be anywhere.

so, even if you are eligible, don't volunteer for the nomcom if you can't
attend the november meeting.

--
Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works




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Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

Arturo Servin  wrote:
> Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
> meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in
> remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody
> attended to a session.

We need to have registration for remote participation, even if we charge
zero.   I believe that perhaps we need to provide some magic token in jabber
or in the NoteWell slide, that needs to be used by remote participants to
check-in. They have to do that during the meeting itself.

I also ask whether remote participation on the plenary should be "mandatory"

We also need to permit judgement calls.

--
]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect  [
] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails[


--
Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works




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Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Michael Richardson]

I have not read the thread yet, on purpose.
As a person who has done significant remote participation myself, and has also
observed the difficulty new people have in understanding how things fit
together, I can not support your specific proposal, but I support the idea.

I would suggest:

2.  Updated Text from RFC 3777

   RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, "Nominating Committee Operation",
   Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows:

  Members of the IETF community become eligible for the NomCom by
  having attended at least 3 of the last 7 IETF meetings in person.

  Once a person has become eligible for NomCom, they retain their
  elibility to NomCom by attending at least 1 of the last 4 IETF meetings
  in person, and at least 3 of the last 5 meetings in person or remotely.

  Should a person lose eligibility for NomCom, they return to not-eligible.

(We could, true to form, describe this as a state machine with three states,
or even a simpler to write in Verilog one with 7-8 states)
===

I have raised the bar slightly over your requirements in the form of still
requiring 3 meetings to be attended, but lengthening the time to 7 meetings,
such that a person who attends one meeting/year, if they do it right, can
become eligible easily.  I feel perhaps that in the becoming eligible
process, that some of the 4 meetings not-attended should be clearly attended
remotely, but I'm sure how to specify that.

I have lowered the bar to remain eligible such that a person who not travel
for 12 months (such as someone on maternity/paternity leave. Civilized
countries get at least 1 year..) could remain eligible.

--
]   Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works| network architect  [
] m...@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/|   ruby on rails[





--
Michael Richardson , Sandelman Software Works




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Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Cullen Jennings]

I have attended some IETF meetings remotely and I am not in favor of this 
change.


On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture 
> Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight 
> Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
> 
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow 
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on 
> NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
> 
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
> 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Eliot Lear]

John,

I agree with everything you wrote.  I especially applaud SM for getting
out there with new ideas, and I like the idea of opening up eligibility
a bit more.  John's proposed change would reduce risk of capture.  I do
think that risk is also mitigated through other mechanisms (like
limiting the number of people with the same affiliation from joining the
NOMCOM), but Ted's point is also important, that people have some feel
for how the IETF operates, both in person and on mailing list.  John's
proposal seems to strike a good balance.

Eliot

On 6/27/13 2:36 PM, John Curran wrote:
> On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture 
>> Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight 
>> Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
>>
>> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow 
>> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on 
>> NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
>>
>> Could you please read the draft and comment?
> SM - 
>
> I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to 
> serve on the NomCom in the right direction.  Long-term, it would be ideal 
> if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as 
> a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation.
>
> Noting agreement in the direction, the reality of remote participation 
> today is somewhat different.  In recent years, I have been a frequent 
> remote participant and occasional on-site participant, and while it is
> possible to effectively contribute to working group efforts remotely, 
> such success is predicated on knowing quite a bit about IETF processes 
> and workflow, and it not clear to me that a remote participant picks 
> up the necessary background at anywhere near the same rate as on-site 
> participants.  As a result, I am concerned that the proposed language 
> in draft wouldn't necessarily provide for experienced IETF participants 
> in the NomCom, and/or those who have well-informed insight into what 
> makes for good IAB/IESG/IAOC members.
>
> Note also that the proposed language also increases the possibility of 
> "capture" (i.e. the ability of an single organization to inappropriately
> skew the outcome of the process) in that a relatively large pool of 
> remote participants could quickly be made NomCom-eligible by having them 
> attend the very next IETF meeting, and then all volunteered to serve on 
> the NomCom.  While this is not a particularly likely course for a party
> not happy with the IETF, it is an aspect to be considered in the NomCom
> processes.
>
> With an view towards finding a middle ground, would it be possible to
> change your proposed text from:
>
>   "Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
>   last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 
>   of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer."
>
> to this:
>
>   "Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
>   last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least _2_ 
>   of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer."
>
> The change from 1 to 2 meetings being in-person significantly reduces the
> potential risk of capture while also increasing the exposure level of
> NomCom volunteers to dynamics that occur in the hallways and between the
> formal IETF working group sessions.  The net result recognizes the value
> of remote participation, moves in the right direction, but does so at a
> more moderate pace than you originally propose.
>
> Thoughts?
> /John
>
> Disclaimers:  My views alone.  NomCom '95 Chair (back before any NomCom
>   procedures existed... :-)
>
>
>

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[alejandroacostaalamo]

Hi,
  First, as a comment, I guess there is people who follow more IETF remotely 
than other in place.
  Second, I like this idea of changing the threshold.
  Third, In the other hand, since there are several positions that are fill 
using this RFC maybe we can place a testbed. 50% can be fill using the current 
way and 50% using the proposed way, sounds crazy but it might be a good 
beginning.

Thanks,

Alejandro,


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-Original Message-
From: Olafur Gudmundsson 
Sender: ietf-boun...@ietf.org
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:06:36 
To: S Moonesamy
Cc: Internet Whining TF
Subject: Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility


On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture 
> Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight 
> Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
> 
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow 
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on 
> NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
> 
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
> 


SM, 
I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal but I 
think the threshold issue should be clarified. 
What does "one of the last five mean" during an IETF meeting? 

I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I would relax 
the rule to say something like this:
"must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the 
last 5". 
15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will allow people 
that that have been involved for a long time but have limited 
resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes. 

Q: do you want to limit how many "infrequent" attendees can be on Nomcom just 
like the number of people from a single organization can sign a
recall ? 


Olafur

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[John Curran]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture 
> Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight 
> Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
> 
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow 
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on 
> NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
> 
> Could you please read the draft and comment?

SM - 

I have read the draft, and believe that it moves the qualification to 
serve on the NomCom in the right direction.  Long-term, it would be ideal 
if remote IETF participation was equivalent (both as an experience and as 
a NomCom qualification) to in-person IETF participation.

Noting agreement in the direction, the reality of remote participation 
today is somewhat different.  In recent years, I have been a frequent 
remote participant and occasional on-site participant, and while it is
possible to effectively contribute to working group efforts remotely, 
such success is predicated on knowing quite a bit about IETF processes 
and workflow, and it not clear to me that a remote participant picks 
up the necessary background at anywhere near the same rate as on-site 
participants.  As a result, I am concerned that the proposed language 
in draft wouldn't necessarily provide for experienced IETF participants 
in the NomCom, and/or those who have well-informed insight into what 
makes for good IAB/IESG/IAOC members.

Note also that the proposed language also increases the possibility of 
"capture" (i.e. the ability of an single organization to inappropriately
skew the outcome of the process) in that a relatively large pool of 
remote participants could quickly be made NomCom-eligible by having them 
attend the very next IETF meeting, and then all volunteered to serve on 
the NomCom.  While this is not a particularly likely course for a party
not happy with the IETF, it is an aspect to be considered in the NomCom
processes.

With an view towards finding a middle ground, would it be possible to
change your proposed text from:

  "Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
  last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 
  of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer."

to this:

  "Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
  last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least _2_ 
  of the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer."

The change from 1 to 2 meetings being in-person significantly reduces the
potential risk of capture while also increasing the exposure level of
NomCom volunteers to dynamics that occur in the hallways and between the
formal IETF working group sessions.  The net result recognizes the value
of remote participation, moves in the right direction, but does so at a
more moderate pace than you originally propose.

Thoughts?
/John

Disclaimers:  My views alone.  NomCom '95 Chair (back before any NomCom
  procedures existed... :-)

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Ted Lemon]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 8:06 AM, Arturo Servin  wrote:
> "must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of 
> the last 5". 
> 
>   may be a good compromise. Also, I would suggest "one of the last 6" 
> (instead of 5). I guess in two years the IETF does not change too much.

I think Olafur's suggestion is a good one, and I tend to support it, but bear 
in mind that the problem is not the IETF changing: it's the former attendee 
changing.   We want them to return to the well from time to time to take 
another deep draught, so that they do not lose the unique flavor that the 
waters bear.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Arturo Servin]

Ted,

Thanks.

Perhaps then Olafur recommendation:

"must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the 
last 5". 

may be a good compromise. Also, I would suggest "one of the last 6" 
(instead of 5). I guess in two years the IETF does not change too much.

Regards,
as

On 6/27/13 12:59 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> On Jun 27, 2013, at 7:44 AM, Arturo Servin  wrote:
>>What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to
>> meetings?
> Acculturation: the opportunity over time to absorb the IETF culture and 
> become a part of it.  The other points you raised are valid, but this is the 
> main thing.
>
> I think acculturation is possible for remote attendees in theory, but not 
> with the current level of support for off-site participation—while what we 
> have is great for helping people to participate in selected working group 
> meetings, it doesn't provide anything like the experience of an on-site 
> participant.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Ted Lemon]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 7:44 AM, Arturo Servin  wrote:
>What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to
> meetings?

Acculturation: the opportunity over time to absorb the IETF culture and become 
a part of it.  The other points you raised are valid, but this is the main 
thing.

I think acculturation is possible for remote attendees in theory, but not with 
the current level of support for off-site participation—while what we have is 
great for helping people to participate in selected working group meetings, it 
doesn't provide anything like the experience of an on-site participant.

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Arturo Servin]

I have a general question.

What is the rationale of the requirement to attend psychically to
meetings?

- That nomcom participants know the IETF
- That nomcom participant know in person people appointed to IESG,
IAB, etc
- To avoid game/abuse the system by an organization?

etc.

I think that something that the draft need to say is why we need to
change the requirement, is it obsolete? why?

Regards,
as

   
On 6/27/13 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hello,
>
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet
> Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF
> Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
>
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to
> allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible
> to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition (
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
>
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hi Arturo,
At 03:00 27-06-2013, Arturo Servin wrote:

I read the draft and although I like the idea I have some concerns.


Thanks for taking the time to read the draft.  I'll comment below.


Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in
remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody
attended to a session.


I am aware of a case where the person attending the IETF meeting is 
not the one who's name is on the badge.  I don't think that there was 
any malice or that it is a problem as that person will not game the system.



Even, if we had a registration similar to the face to face meetings,
it would be difficult to verify that the people attended to a session
remotely (even if you correlated registry vs. jabber/webex logs it would
be difficult to know if it is really the person registred, somebody else
or even a bot). I guess that there would be many ways to game the system.


I do not wish to suggest having registration.  The IETF does not 
require registration to participate in working group discussions.  I 
agree that there can be many ways to game the system.


I will quote the second paragraph of the Introduction section of the draft:

  "The IETF Trust considers any submission to the IETF intended by the
   Contributor for publication as all or part of an Internet-Draft or
   RFC and any statement made within the context of an IETF activity
   [RFC5378].  Such statements include oral statements in IETF sessions
   as well as written and electronic communications, made through a
   Jabber room."

It would be a serious issue, in my opinion, if the IETF cannot 
identify its contributors.  There are people who currently contribute 
through Jabber.  It has never been considered as a problem.



As I said I like the idea and I think that we should try to make it
work. I do not know if all the locks and tools to protect the system
against some sort of abuse should be in the draft or not, but we should
address those (before or in parallel with adopting/working on the draft.)


I agree that you and I should try to make it work.  One of the 
problems of putting all the details in a document is that we lose the 
flexibility to, for example, address some sort of abuse that we did 
not specify clearly at the time the document was written.  I would 
not look for locks and tools to protect the system; I would look for 
something else.


Regards,
S. Moonesamy 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Olafur Gudmundsson]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 5:50 AM, S Moonesamy  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet Architecture 
> Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF Administrative Oversight 
> Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
> 
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow 
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to serve on 
> NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
> 
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
> 


SM, 
I read the draft, I think there might be some merit to this proposal but I 
think the threshold issue should be clarified. 
What does "one of the last five mean" during an IETF meeting? 

I think the threshold of having attended one meeting is too low, I would relax 
the rule to say something like this:
"must have attended at least 5 meetings of the last 15 and including one of the 
last 5". 
15 meetings is 5 years, I know that is a long time, t this will allow people 
that that have been involved for a long time but have limited 
resources to attend to participate in Nomcom/recall processes. 

Q: do you want to limit how many "infrequent" attendees can be on Nomcom just 
like the number of people from a single organization can sign a
recall ? 


Olafur

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Stephen Farrell]

On 06/27/2013 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet
> Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF
> Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
> 
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to allow
> remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible to
> serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition (
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
> 
> Could you please read the draft and comment?

I think physically attending 1 meeting might not be enough
esp. if a nomcom were selected that had a lot of folks on
who'd only ever been to one meeting. But I'm sympathetic
to the goal and am sure some qualification rule (*) could
be worked out. (Probably after about 1000 messages;-)

However, before getting into that I'd like to hear from
folks who've been on or chaired nomcoms. I know a lot of
it is done remotely, but how important is the f2f part
that happens during meetings? Would it really be ok if
say 5 voting members could never come to a meeting
whilst serving? (And I think that'd not be an unlikely
outcome.)

S.

(*) Like I said, too early to get into it, but the nomcom
selection process could also require that the voting
members collectively have been to N meetings, with each
voting member able to contribute at most M to that total.
Say with N=30 and M=4 or something, and keep running the
random selection until you get 10 voting members that
satisfy that. And if we went there, we could also require
that nomcom as a group have written a number of RFCs
perhaps or even have some folks with Jari's h-index>3
or something. We could have lots of fun with all that:-)


> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
> 
> 

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Randy Bush]

> I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log

as much of the acculturation happens outside of wgs, we can have the nsa
install jabber spies in the hallway.  and they log everything!

randy

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Yoav Nir]

On Jun 27, 2013, at 1:03 PM, "Eggert, Lars"  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Section 2 says:
>   RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, "Nominating Committee Operation",
>   Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows:
> 
>  Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
>  last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of
>  the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer.
> 
> A few questions:
> 
> (1) How do you define "remote attendance"?
> 
> (2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? 
> (Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.)

When we started having one day passes, the question was raised about whether 
attending on a one day pass "counts" for NomCom eligibility. If I remember 
correctly the answer was no. So we couldn't let listening in on one session 
count, right?  

I guess you can prove attendance by Jabber log, but that's not really helpful 
IMO.

Yoav

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Eggert, Lars]

Hi,

Section 2 says:
   RFC 3777 [RFC3777], Section 5, "Nominating Committee Operation",
   Paragraph 1 of Rule 14, is replaced as follows:

  Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
  last 5 IETF meetings remotely or in person including at least 1 of
  the 5 last IETF meetings in person in order to volunteer.

A few questions:

(1) How do you define "remote attendance"?

(2) How does the secretariat determine whether someone has remotely attended? 
(Based on whatever definition of remote attendance you have in mind.)

Thanks,
Lars

Re: The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[Arturo Servin]

SM,

I read the draft and although I like the idea I have some concerns.

Today it is possible to verify that somebody attended to an IETF
meeting. You have to register, pay and collect your badge. However, in
remote participation we do not have mechanisms to verify that somebody
attended to a session.

Even, if we had a registration similar to the face to face meetings,
it would be difficult to verify that the people attended to a session
remotely (even if you correlated registry vs. jabber/webex logs it would
be difficult to know if it is really the person registred, somebody else
or even a bot). I guess that there would be many ways to game the system.

As I said I like the idea and I think that we should try to make it
work. I do not know if all the locks and tools to protect the system
against some sort of abuse should be in the draft or not, but we should
address those (before or in parallel with adopting/working on the draft.)

Regards,
as

   


On 6/27/13 10:50 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hello,
>
> RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet
> Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF
> Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.
>
> draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to
> allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be eligible
> to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition (
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).
>
> Could you please read the draft and comment?
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy

The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy]

Hello,

RFC 3777 specifies the process by which members of the Internet 
Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group and IETF 
Administrative Oversight Committee are selected, confirmed, and recalled.


draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility proposes an update RFC 3777 to 
allow remote contributors to the IETF Standards Process to be 
eligible to serve on NomCom and sign a Recall petition ( 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-nomcom-eligibility-00 ).


Could you please read the draft and comment?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy