RE: [Gen] Thinking about adding a new person to the IESG

[john.loughney@nokia.com]

Harald,

I think this is reasonable.  As I thought about it, the questions that
arose were along the lines of: what exactly will the General AD
be responsible for; what things would the General AD consider
when doing document review, etc.  I realized that most of these questions, 
however can be applied to the IESG itself and are not special to a
General AD position.

So, in summary, I see only benefits for adding a General AD.

br,
John


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gen-dir-bounces@alvestrand.no
> [mailto:gen-dir-bounces@alvestrand.no]On Behalf Of ext Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand
> Sent: 01 November, 2003 09:22
> To: iab@ietf.org; gen-dir@alvestrand.no
> Cc: iesg@ietf.org
> Subject: [Gen] Thinking about adding a new person to the IESG
> 
> 
> The IESG is considering asking Nomcom to fill an extra position, 
> provisionally titled "General AD". No decision has been taken 
> yet, but we'd 
> like to hear comments from the IAB and the gen-dir before 
> going further 
> with this.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 
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