RE: [NON-OPERATIONAL] Re: NANOG Evolution
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Feldman [mailto:feldman@twincreeks.net] Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 8:34 PM To: Hannigan, Martin Cc: Daniel Golding; nanog@merit.edu; nanog-support@merit.edu Subject: Re: [NON-OPERATIONAL] Re: NANOG Evolution
[SNIP ]
I agree, this is an imperfect mechanism, but there was a desire to get the process going well in advance of the next meeting. Otherwise we would have to wait a few extra months. Also, note that not all voters will be at any given meeting.
All the broadcast mechanisms will be. [ SNIP ]
[ dead horse ]
Lastly, "6.2.1 Program Committee Membership and Selection " is not acceptable, IMO, for the group at large. It should be normalized much like the Mailing List Admins. This disables the ability of the Steering Committee to lead.
Ultimately, the SC is elected to represent the membership and carry out it's will and that should be uniformly actionable across the board in order for the SC to be taken seriously by the group and by Merit.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
It means that it doesn't make a lot of sense to handcuff the SC out of the gate on a supposition that they will do 'something bad' to the PC. Anyhow, it's a window dressing handcuffing. Looks like anyone can be removed with a 5 to 7 vote of the SC. You've all read the revised Charter, top to bottom? Kind of makes 6.2.1 ceremonial. It should be removed based on that alone. [ SNIP. It's procedural, not personal ] -M<
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 11:09:37PM -0400, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
I agree, this is an imperfect mechanism, but there was a desire to get the process going well in advance of the next meeting. Otherwise we would have to wait a few extra months. Also, note that not all voters will be at any given meeting.
All the broadcast mechanisms will be.
You know, on my way home tonight I had the wild notion that someone could host a webcast discussion or debate by the candidates before the voting starts. The candidates and a moderator could dial in, and anyone who wants could listen to the stream, either live or recorded. Note that I'm not volunteering for any of this. :) Steve
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
Ultimately, the SC is elected to represent the membership and carry out it's will and that should be uniformly actionable across the board in order for the SC to be taken seriously by the group and by Merit.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
It means that it doesn't make a lot of sense to handcuff the SC out of the gate on a supposition that they will do 'something bad' to the PC.
Anyhow, it's a window dressing handcuffing. Looks like anyone can be removed with a 5 to 7 vote of the SC. You've all read the revised Charter, top to bottom? Kind of makes 6.2.1 ceremonial. It should be removed based on that alone.
As the charter is currently written, every future steering committee will be stuck with a specific half of the program committee, left over from the previous year. The first steering committee gets to decide which of the current program committee members are in the half that they're stuck with, so they're much more powerful when it comes to program committee selection than any future steering committee will be. In the draft that several of us worked on, the first steering committee had even more power than that, as they could have fired the entire program committee and started over. Merit changed that, and gave lots of time for people to object, but nobody did. As a result, we've got a system where all program committee members will have been chosen by the steering committee immediately, but half of them will have been chosen from a limited pool. A year later, we'll have a program committee that has been entirely chosen by the first two elected steering committees. In the original draft, we staggered the steering committee terms because we wanted continuity. In Merit's version, that continuity was extended to the first year. As Marty points out, a super-majority of the steering committee could remove more program committee members. The super-majority requirement was put in to make it hard to do -- something that should happen when there's consensus that somebody isn't working out. I don't think it would be appropriate or necessary for the steering committee to use that power to override the intent of the charter, nor do I think it would be a good idea for the steering committee to get rid of even half of the program committee at once. If Marty is feeling constrained by that section of the charter (I'm not sure if he is, or if he's just making noise), then we've found at least one difference between two of the candidates. ;) -Steve
The PC has 16 seats. Finding eight qualified people will be doable. Finding 16 qualified people, capable of hitting the ground running, with a conference 4 months in their future to plan, would be untenable. It takes a non-trivial amount of time to recruit and organize that many folks. I'm not crazy about this being written into the bylaws, but in practice, its the most efficient approach and probably the one that would have been taken in any case. The other issue is, when looking at the current composition of the PC, there are at least 8 qualified, dedicated people. The idea of moving the PC to a be more representative of the operational and infrastructure community is a good one. The PC has, in the past, been too heavily weighted towards vendors and ex-Merit folks. Appointing 8 new folks will move the PC in the direction that the community wants to take. I don't think we should be worried about the "power" of the SC. Instead, we should be concerned about being able to effect the necessary changes that the community wants - a more representative PC, better talks on a wider and more interesting range of topics, etc. Part of this will involve changed to the mission of the PC... - an expectation that each PC member will actively recruit/present/moderate at least one quality session per conference. - expanding the scope of presentations to include new (to us) topics such as those related to providing VoIP services, hosting, access networks (DSL/Broadband/Wireless), network security, MPLS VPN scalability and interconnection issues, etc. I'd rather have a great talk on WiMax (IEEE 802.16-2000) than a bad talk on BGP any day. - Finding ways to inject the material we've seen in recent BOFs into the plenary or tracking sessions. The BOF material has been the most innovative stuff due to a relative lack of oversight combined with a freer format. - Maintaining and expanding the educational aspects of NANOG's mission through tutorials and other sessions. PC folks who are ok with this, old or new, will be able to contribute to and lead this effort. (BTW, for those responding or posting to this thread or others which are similar, please include a "non-op" tag in the subject line so that folks who don't want to read about political machinations can procmail us efficiently) - Daniel Golding On 6/21/05 3:03 AM, "Steve Gibbard" <scg@gibbard.org> wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
Ultimately, the SC is elected to represent the membership and carry out it's will and that should be uniformly actionable across the board in order for the SC to be taken seriously by the group and by Merit.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
It means that it doesn't make a lot of sense to handcuff the SC out of the gate on a supposition that they will do 'something bad' to the PC.
Anyhow, it's a window dressing handcuffing. Looks like anyone can be removed with a 5 to 7 vote of the SC. You've all read the revised Charter, top to bottom? Kind of makes 6.2.1 ceremonial. It should be removed based on that alone.
As the charter is currently written, every future steering committee will be stuck with a specific half of the program committee, left over from the previous year. The first steering committee gets to decide which of the current program committee members are in the half that they're stuck with, so they're much more powerful when it comes to program committee selection than any future steering committee will be.
[snip]
-Steve
participants (4)
-
Daniel Golding -
Hannigan, Martin -
Steve Feldman -
Steve Gibbard