RE: [NON-OPERATIONAL] Re: NANOG Evolution

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1

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<

2

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. :slight_smile:

  Steve

3

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. :wink:

-Steve

4

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

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]