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Re: Fwd: NomCom Volunteer List

What I'm looking for is for this version to be approved NOW... the current nit picking on the nomcom list is neither productive nor likely to solve the current problem. If there are problems, enter a new cycle of document review after this one is approved. If its approved before the nomcom is empaneled the new rules should apply.

I think its neither fair nor appropriate for three organizations to pack the volunteer pool - given that I'd like to use the new rules and prevent any one organization from having more than 2 representatives on the Nomcom.

If the nomcom ends up again with 4 or 5 representatives from say ... Nokia - I'm going to find it difficult to confirm any candidate regardless of their qualifications. We depend on the Nomcom to select the "best" candidates on behalf of the IETF. When the nomcom is a random selection of people covering a broad spectrum of the IETF I can go into the process without too much doubt to their intentions and with little worry of collusion. When a substantial part of the nomcom comes from a single organization as it did last year, I no longer have any confidence in the basic fairness of the process.

Let me put it another way. Statistically speaking, a random selection of people from a larger population should mirror the distribution of that larger population (e.g. if the larger population is 2000 and 100 of those are from ARC (a router company), inc then if you select 100 people from the larger population, about 5 should be from ARC. I find it hard to believe that Nokia, Cisco and Nortel make up 42% of the eligible population and to me that says there's something more going on than just a desire to serve.

Just for illustration - there were 1679 attendees at the Atlanta meeting. Around 45 were from Nokia - 2%... having 18% of the Nomcom pool be from Nokia seems a little out of proportion.

I have it anecdotally (and unfortunately unconfirmed) that at least Nokia and Cisco strongly encourage their attendees to volunteer for this duty as a company policy. I don't know if this is true, but the reports are troubling. The fix in the nomcom documents at least would have eliminated the more than 2 problem.

*sigh* It shouldn't take a year to fix a problem.


Later, Mike


At 12:37 10/8/2003, Eric Rescorla wrote:
Michael StJohns <mstjohns@mindspring.com> writes:

> >From: Richard Draves <richdr@microsoft.com>
> >To: IETF-Announce: ;
> >Subject: NomCom Volunteer List
> >
> >At this time, 2727bis has not yet been approved as an RFC. Hence I will
> >use RFC 2727's eligibility criteria (attended 2 of the last 3 IETF
> >meetings) when performing the random selection.
>
>
>
> >  I will not check the
> >primary affiliation of the volunteers.
>
> Umm... BULLSHIT!   On this list of 113 volunteers, 16 come from Cisco,
> 19 from nokia and 13 from Nortel.    48 in total or about 42% of the
> total list.    That means it wouldn't be unusual for 6 of the 10 to
> come from this group.  And it wouldn't be all that unusual for 3 or 4
> to come from Nokia or Cisco. (Statistically speaking)
>
>
> This was supposed to be fixed and it was the IESGs job to get this
> document through the process prior to this beginning....
>
>
> At that, what's in the document still isn't a fix - we could still end
> up with 6 or more from this group...  could we at least keep them from
> all being from one organization - please.

Mike,

I'm trying to figure out what you're looking for here...

While I agree that it's bad that the document hasn't been approved
yet, but it seems to me to be problematic for Rich to try to
enforce these rules prior to the document being approved.

Confused,
-Ekr