Selecting leadership for process issues

[Edward Lewis]

At 7:57 -0500 12/2/02, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
>Perhaps the nomcom could take on the task of selecting a leader, from people
>nominated by the community?  Or, if the current nomcom is already overloaded,
>we could spin-up a separate nomcom-like group to choose someone?

Being on the nomcom now, I think that this would throw in too much 
confusion.  Not only would we be trying to find the best person for 
the IAB and IESG jobs as we understand them to be now, we'd also have 
to find the best person to guide the process to determine what the 
jobs should be in the future.

For myself, I'm not sold that the traditional WG environment is the 
way to solve the problem.  I'm not opposed to it, but I have my 
doubts.  Yes, it is the way the IETF is supposed to go about 
discussing issues, in the open and inclusive manner we advertise. 
But it seems to me that those questioning the usefulness of the IETF 
are unhappy with the current way in which the WG-AD-IESG-IAB 
arrangement now works.

Perhaps the WG format is the right one, but the problem has been the 
ways in which folks have been carrying out their roles in recent 
history.  Maybe we need to use the same structure, but staff the 
roles in a different way.

In this case, having the IESG name a WG chair presents a bit of a 
conflict of interest - the chair is put in place and can be recalled 
at any time by the very person/people holding roles that could be 
undermined by what is discussed before the chair.  Perhaps the chair 
should be named via the same process as the nomcom chair (ISOC)? 
Perhaps we should have the chair named via input from other 
organizations that peer with the IETF?
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Edward Lewis                                          +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer