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

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On fredag, mai 23, 2003 11:01:27 -0400 John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com> 
wrote:

> --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.

thank you!
(that would have to be Stockholm - the meeting where I came back to Norway 
and wondered why I had a severe case of jetlag without any timezone shift 
:-)

> 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.

another possible interpretation of the data is that there's a significant 
time gap between the time of "other people see you performing adequately" 
and the time of "you yourself see yourself performing adequately".

or - that an AD can be harder on him/herself than other people are!

                         Harald