IESG spin-up time (was: Re: Charters, "normal process" versus ISOC, etc. (was: Re)

[John C Klensin]

--On Wednesday, 21 May, 2003 10:33 +0200 Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
<harald at alvestrand.no> wrote:

> WRT "6 months":
>
> People's capabilities vary. Some are faster than others - and
> for routine matters, procedures and so on, I think the process
> goes much faster than 6 months. But the process of learning
> the personal, technological and organizational interactions in
> working groups you have not previously followed is a
> significant learning curve - it took me more than one IETF
> meeting after I became managing AD for the SNMPv3 group before
> I understood the interactions there well enough to be an
> effective AD, for instance (sometimes I'm not sure I ever got
> there in the 1 year I did that job).

But it took you less than one IETF meeting to come up to speed 
and be reasonably effective when you got your first AD job, so 
the equation is more complicated than that.   One thing I'm 
pretty sure about is that your co-AD in applications didn't do 
anything superhuman to help -- he pretty much assumed that you 
would hit the ground running and ask questions if needed, and 
you more than satified that expectation.

So, in one case, you came, new, onto the IESG and came up to 
speed very rapidly, both with regard to IESG procedures and with 
regard to the WGs involved.  In the other, you already knew the 
IESG procedures and had a working relationship with most of the 
rest of the IESG, which should have made things a lot faster, 
and still found taking over a new area a slow process.  Absent 
other data, I suggest this points toward an hypothesis of "some 
areas are harder to take over as AD than others, especially if 
the area is already problematic and/or the new AD hasn't worked 
extensively in it (regardless of his or her background in the 
field of that area)" rather than an issue in coming up to speed 
on the IESG itself.

regards,
      john