Summary/next steps: Thinking about adding another AD in the General(ish) area

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

So here's my current overview of the state of play:

- There's fairly general agreement that adding one more person to the team 
who is specifically pointed at "general area issues" is a good idea.

- There's fairly strong feeling that adding an assistant IETF chair is a 
significant process change, and needs detailed discussion, community review 
and community consensus before implementing it.

- On balance, more people seem to think that not having this person on the 
same cycle as the chair is important than those who think that having an 
one-year term makes more sense.

- It's clear that if nomcom is going to deal with this position on this 
cycle, they need to get the message Real Soon.

So what I suggest as a way forward:

1) I'll mention the concept (using the text below) on IAB and gen-dir, to 
get a sense on how it plays outside the IESG. Sending mail in an hour or 
two.

2) Let's discuss this on Monday, briefly, as part of the "process review" 
telechat we've scheduled then.

3) If we agree on Monday that we'll go ahead, I'll send the same text 
(suitably modified to be less hesitant) to the Nomcom.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Text to use as concept introducer
----------------------------------------------------------------
The IESG is considering asking Nomcom to fill an extra position, 
provisionally titled "General AD". No decision has been taken yet.

The reasoning behind creating this position is the following:

- There are a number of activities going on that the IETF Chair feels 
responsible for. Some of them, but far from all, involve the General area 
and the procedure updates. Others include a lot of inter-function 
relationship management, and keeping track of IETF-wide topics and issues 
that cannot be solved within a single area.
- There are a significant number of those things that has a significant 
amount of context which is not shared with the rest of the IESG. The IAB 
chair shares quite a lot of the context, but does not have the same areas 
of responsibility.
- The load imposed by process issues is very high at the moment, and is 
likely to stay there for some time - but should eventually decrease to a 
more reasonable level. (All three current GEN WGs are likely to shut down 
soon - others might be created, though)
- The way the IESG works is likely to have to change anyway, for other 
reasons, so adding more people to the IESG might not be so much of a 
long-term problem that I've thought it would be before.

There are two kinds of roles we could think of adding to the IESG in order 
to help this situation:
- A "General AD", who has a normal AD function, with responsibility for the 
General area
- An "Assistant IETF Chair", who functions as part of the Chair role, is 
expected to be part of all lists and groups where the Chair is an 
"ex-officio" member, and shares context about current IETF activities that 
the Chair is dealing with.

The first one is clearly something the IESG can "just decide".
The second is a new role, which needs some careful thinking before we 
decide to implement it (or not), and it is necessary to discuss this with 
the community before making a decision.

Considering all this, I suggest that we can ask the Nomcom for an AD to 
fill the position of "General AD", with the understanding that this person 
would also assist and consult with the Chair in following up IETF-wide 
issues and cross-area issues, and that if the community thinks this is a 
good idea, the person's role could be changed to "Assistant IETF Chair" at 
a later time.

(Note: This role is NOT saying anything about who the next chair should be. 
Both the idea of an assistant chair that is promoted to chair and the idea 
of an assistant chair who smooths the transition to the next chair are 
entirely reasonable scenarios.)

Comments?