OPEN ISSUE: Nomcom Process

[Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com]

Keith,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Keith Moore [mailto:moore at cs.utk.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 3:19 PM
> > > 2) For those candidates who are not selected, there could be the
> > > feeling of having been "defeated". This is especially a 
> problem for
> > > cultures where loss of face is a big issue, and so would serve to
> > > discourage their participation.
> > 
> > This must be a cultural issue. I do not think that people _should_
> > feel defeated if an obviously more competent person wins. 

Once again I correct that I meant _should not_! (This is when you get careless while writing mails...)

> 
> what people should feel and what they do feel are probably different.
> and selection probably shouldn't be based entirely on 
> competence anyway,
> but also on other factors like "fit" between that 
> individual's skill set
> and the skills that the nomcom thinks are lacking or would
> complement other ADs' skills, support from the candidate's employer.

Agreed, people react differently to different situations. And, of course, there should be no public embarrassment to the person who has been "defeated", which I would say there would not be. I am not implicating that the people that weren't chosen should be publicly fed to pigs... ;) (Why is it that only Jim and I find this amusing. Maybe it tells something about our characters...)

> 
> > If someone feels
> > defeated in the end, I guess that person was not into this for the
> > right reasons.
> 
> how the candidate feels might not be as important as the way other
> people mis-interpret the nomcom's action.  at any rate, the "losing"
> candidate already knows he "lost" out to someone else, so 
> he's going to
> feel "defeated" anyway - the reason we want to keep it private
> (relatively) is to avoid having the action (mis)interpreted by others.

I think this should be made clear: Even if you didn't "get" in this time, it may just be that the time was not right, yet and there is nothing wrong with you. However, I would also say that if people are afraid of having their names public during the NomCom just wait when you are the AD. I think it should be (or made) clear to everybody that there are usually multiple people running, and it can be only one of them. Not getting in is definitely no shame! One reason could be, for instance, that the person is an extraordinary WG chair it has been seen more valuable to keep the person in that position than to put her/him to a more 'political' position.

> 
> (I write "losing" and "lost" and "defeated" in quotes because the
> traditional way for someone who has been there to acknowledge someone
> who has "won" a spot on the IESG is to offer condolences, and it's not
> unusual to acknowledge someone who has been "defeated" by offering
> congratulations.)

I still believe that there are no winners or losers in this game. Except maybe the people who got selected have lost quite a bit of their free time... ;)

Cheers,

Jonne.