Subject: Re: Nomcom process realities of "confidentiality"

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:06:12 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 10:11:09AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:

    > ... the conduct of Nomcom processes tends
    > towards pretty classic personnel assessment, but with people
    > typically lacking classic personnel training or experience. 

This would be different from a normal election... how? :-)

	Noel
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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:34:54 -0700

> This would be different from a normal election... how? :-)

Well, skipping over the smiley and the entirely accurate implication that a 
voting population mostly comprises people without this sort of assessment 
expertise, I'll observe that a Nomcom is a small crucible of specially-empowered 
individuals.

The dynamics on Nomcom members (and Liaisons and Confirming Bodies) are 
considerably more intense than on an individual voter.

d/

ps.  But yeah, this is a topic ripe for humor.  If only it also were not so ripe 
for misunderstanding and distraction.  And I've already received some 
well-intensioned private email demonstrating how easy it is to miss the point I 
was trying to make.

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net
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From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:47:32 -0400

> This would be different from a normal election... how? :-)

Well, one of the that have been raised in the past about keeping the
list of candidates confidential, and to have Nomcom ask send out
questionnaires to a specific, targetted set of more senior technical
leaders in the community, as opposed to simply throwing it open and
having everyone send in comments, is (a) it might overwhelm the Nomcom
who might have to wade through a vast number of comments, and (b) it
might turn it more into a popularity contest, as opposed to picking
someone who was the best qualified.

But as I said earlier, this is one of the places where how you frame
the NOMCOM process is critical.  Is it a "governance process", where
we are trying to select the organizations political leadership, in
which case perhaps direct elections and campaigning and complete and
total transparency, with no privacy rights expected or given (maybe we
should demand that candidates publish their tax returns, like US
Presidential candidates :-)?   While we're at it, maybe we can take
snippets of comments made at an IETF plenary years ago, take it out of
context, put it on You Tube, and arrange to have it played constantly
and constantly on the evening news....

Or is it a personnel process, where we are trying to find the best
candidates to promote to a technical architect position --- and in
personnel processes there is usually *much* more use of confidential
feedback and information, and most of the time, when the management
selects who will be the next senior technical architect for a
department, the junior engineers just out of college don't get to see
the list of candidates being considered, and get to submit comments to
the promotion board about whether it's easier to work with candidate A
or candidate B.

The answer of course, is that it's a bit of both.  Which leads to all
of these tensions, and IMHO one of the reasons why we have such a hard
time finding consensus on this issue.

Regards,

						- Ted

---

From: "Eric Gray" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:29:26 -0500

Dave,

	As a clarification, the NomCom is a small crucible of 
specially-empowered volunteers.  The fact that one has to be
a volunteer explicitly makes it the case that self-selection
is a factor in at least the initial phase.

	Hence it is very much the case that people who feel 
excessively unqualified may elect not to volunteer.  

	Also, it is the case that the processes within NomCom
are very open to sharing experience within the self-selected
group of people who probably felt capable of making personnel
selection decisions before volunteering.

--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Dave Crocker
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:35 AM
> To: Noel Chiappa
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Nomcom process realities of "confidentiality"
> 
> 
> 
> Noel Chiappa wrote:

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:41:23 -0700 (PDT)

The random selection process coupled with the relatively small number 
of volunteers is an interesting factor in all of this. I have been
selected 3 times (albeit the second time it all fell apart in The 
Giant Reset of 2006 :-) and volunteered probably 10 or 15 times.

It's either hard to get on the nomcom or easy, depending on your point
of view.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

---

From: Eric Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:15:55 -0400

> of volunteers is an interesting factor in all of this

Nomcom is  a group  of people randomly  selected from  among a set  of folks
whose only qualifications  are that they want to be on  nomcom and they like
traveling to meetings.

I've never understood  the logic behind the theory that  this is supposed to
lead to a good slate of candidates.  

> The Giant Reset of 2006

Oh I remember  that.  For fairness, we replaced  one randomly selected group
of  folks  with another  randomly  selected group  of  folks  from the  same
volunteer pool.  We wouldn't want to end up with the wrong randomly selected
group, would we?  That's another bit of logic I never understood.

Given  that the  whole  process is  whacky,  fine tuning  of various  little
details probably won't make much of a difference.

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:42:38 -0700 (PDT)

Eric,

Thank you for such a wonderful positive description of the process. I 
am sure it will lead to much more participation and volunteer 
activity, after all, who doesn't want to travel?

I am particularly pleased to see that you have so many creative 
suggestions for alternative ways for choosing our leadership. Keep it 
coming!

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen

---

From: Marshall Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:38:15 -0700

> whose only qualifications  are that they want to be on  nomcom and  

well, in the planning meeting, i think i suggested that only people  
who didn't want to be on the nomcom should be eligible, but folks  
seemed to think this would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

the sad fact is that in the absence of rigorous membership  
qualifications, identifying folks who have been able to attend recent  
meetings is the only objective criteria we could find.

if we could have switched from meeting attendance to rfc authorship,  
but then the environmentalists would be upset because there would be  
50 or so "authors" on each rfc, thereby resulting in a larger carbon  
footprint for ietf activities (printing, bandwidth usage, etc.)

/mtr

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:35:11 -0400

Wrenching this thread back to match the subject line .....

Having just gone through the nomcom process as a new addition to the
IAB, I just wanted to add my two cents ....

In the past I've volunteered for the nomcom lottery but was never
selected, so I can't speak with authority about any previous nomcoms,
but regarding THIS nomcom just past, from everything visible to me,
the nomcom members took their responsibilities EXTREMELY seriously and
professionally, and at no point did I ever feel like I had to worry
about anything discussed between me and nomcom, either orally or in
writing, being improperly disclosed. This included not only
information provided by me about myself, but also comments I provided
to nomcom regarding other nominees for the IESG and the IAB. Likewise,
I remain completely ignorant of what other people may have said about
me, and I prefer it that way. :-)

Going forward, several people have proposed that the next nomcom and
the confirming bodies agree at the beginning of the process as to what
information will be needed for confirmation, and it should then be
made explicitly clear to nominees as to what information will be used
by which bodies. I highly support this proposal.

Cheers,
Andy