Subject: RE: NOMCOM term limits... Re: Now there seems to be lack ofcommunicaiton here...

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 11:34:43 -0400 (EDT)

> From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>

    > The question to ask is why is there a NOMCON at all. Why not do what
    > every other major professional body does and hold elections with the
    > electorate being defined in the same way that NOMCON membership is?

Because we want to reduce the amount of politics in the IETF, and also try
and make the selection more careful. Rather than having everyone spend ten
minutes on deciding who to select, a subset (which the random draw hopefully
makes reasonably representative of the group as a whole) does a more in-depth
and thought-through selection.

    > I am not aware that this procedure has caused significant problems in
    > the IEEE or the ABA. Those are also volunteer organizations.

In some circles, the ABA (I assume you mean the "American Bar Association",
not the "American Banking Association" or any of the other organizations that
share that initialism) is seen as a clueless joke, and the ABA leadership
is a large part of the reason.

	Noel

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From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 11:34:43 -0400 (EDT)

Noel

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From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 11:40:13 -0400 (EDT)

> From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>

    > the NOMCOM process is also quite biased in that eliminates people who
    > don't attend the meetings but who may be of tremendous value to the
    > Program. Anyone who cannot afford the global travel required is
    > exempted from the process ... The NOMCOM process is neither fair nor
    > reasonable in a day and age where remote appearances are OK for most
    > any and all meetings.

But pretty much any replacement is going to have the same issue - i.e. who is
elegible to be part of the set of people who decide who the I* leadership is?

E.g. if you get rid of the NomComm and substitute direct elections (something
I'm opposed to, because we don't need more politics in the I* than we already
have), then how do you decide who gets to vote? Anyone who's registered for
any I* mailing list? That has all sorts of problems (including making packing
a lot easier).

Picking people who have attended N out of M of the last IETF's does indeed
have some problems (and as someone who hasn't been to an IETF in a while, I'm
fully aware of this downside), but it's not wholly non-functional: it does
identify a large pool of people who have a demonstrated level of commitment.
It also has a nice "bright line" quality to it.

Also, this focus on whether the process is fair (or however one wants to
characterize these complaints) is misplaced, and totally missing the point.

What's important is whether or not the resultant governing system works (for
whatever definition of "works" floats one's boat). If one thinks its not, one
first needs to identify how it's not working, and then think of changes that
will improve its *functionality*. Improving the "fairness" may sound
appealing in a demagogic way, but it's basically orthagonal to what the real
measure of any governing system ought to be.

	Noel