Subject: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 18:07:40 -0400

The IESG is considering the following Statement on the Day Pass
Experiment.  The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks on
a policy statement, and the IESG actively solicits comments on this
action.  Please send substantive comments to the [email-masked] mailing
lists by 2010-05-20. Exceptionally, comments may be sent to
[email-masked] instead. In either case, please retain the beginning of
the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

= = = = = = = =

RFC 3777 requires that voting members of the nominating committee
(NomCom) be selected from volunteers that have attended at least three
of the last five IETF meetings.  The IAOC is conducting a day pass
experiment, making it necessary to augment the NomCom eligibility rules
to address IETF participants that make use of a day pass.  An update to
RFC 3777 to will be needed to address this situation if at the end of
the experiment the IAOC decides to make day passes a regular meeting
registration alternative; however, a BCP update for an experiment is
overkill.

The IESG observes that attending a single day of the IETF meeting is not
sufficient for a new participant to learn the culture of the IETF or the
qualities that would make an effective IETF leader.  Further, ongoing
exposure to the IETF standards process is necessary to appreciate the
significance and importance of cross-area review.

The eligibility requirements of volunteers for NomCom voting member
positions are provided in RFC 3777, which includes:

   14. Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of
       the last 5 IETF meetings in order to volunteer.

In the context of the day pass experiment, this is interpreted to mean:

   14. IETF participants must have attended at least 3 of the last 5
       IETF meetings in order to volunteer, and that use of a day pass
       does not count as IETF meeting attendance.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 18:45:41 -0400

This seems completely reasonable.

    john

--On Thursday, May 06, 2010 18:07 -0400 The IESG <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Experiment.  The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few
> weeks on a policy statement, and the IESG actively solicits
> comments on this action.  Please send substantive comments to
> the [email-masked] mailing lists by 2010-05-20. Exceptionally,
> comments may be sent to [email-masked] instead. In either case,
> please retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow
> automated sorting.
> 
> = = = = = = = =
> 
> RFC 3777 requires that voting members of the nominating
> committee (NomCom) be selected from volunteers that have
> attended at least three of the last five IETF meetings.  The
> IAOC is conducting a day pass experiment, making it necessary
> to augment the NomCom eligibility rules to address IETF
> participants that make use of a day pass.  An update to RFC
> 3777 to will be needed to address this situation if at the end
> of the experiment the IAOC decides to make day passes a
> regular meeting registration alternative; however, a BCP
> update for an experiment is overkill.
> 
> The IESG observes that attending a single day of the IETF
> meeting is not sufficient for a new participant to learn the
> culture of the IETF or the qualities that would make an
> effective IETF leader.  Further, ongoing exposure to the IETF
> standards process is necessary to appreciate the significance
> and importance of cross-area review.
> 
> The eligibility requirements of volunteers for NomCom voting
> member positions are provided in RFC 3777, which includes:
> 
>    14. Members of the IETF community must have attended at
> least 3 of        the last 5 IETF meetings in order to
> volunteer.
> 
>    14. IETF participants must have attended at least 3 of the
> last 5        IETF meetings in order to volunteer, and that
> use of a day pass        does not count as IETF meeting
> attendance.
> _______________________________________________
> IETF-Announce mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 18:58:30 -0400

> This seems completely reasonable.

And to me too.

Marshall

> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 16:15:49 -0700 (PDT)

I think the number of meetings 'registered' for is a poor criteria
for familiarity with IETF culture and more important familiarity
with the participation of the potential nominees being considered
for leadership roles in the IETF.

In the pre-day pass days, I paid full fare more than once but only
attended a day or two of each meeting. This year, when I used a
day pass, I might have opted to attend two WG meetings on two days 
requiring regular registration but not seen any more of the IETF
culture than I did with a single day pass.

I'm certain there are others with similar attendance patterns. There was a 
time when I'd have met the 3 of 5 criteria but not the spirit of the 
requirement.

In reality, attending on a day pass is probabaly as useful a measure of
commitment to the IETF culture as paying the full fare. Part of the IETF
culture as I know it is that people self-qualify for responsiblity and
I'd expect most folks know if they are qualified, whether they attended
via day pass or full registration. You can't assume that because someone
registered for the full week, that they participated in the full culture.
A day pass plus attending the Sunday reception and evening plenaries is
probably a better parcipant than full registration to attend 3 isolated
WG meetings. So I'd suggest 1 full registration over the past 3 years plus
at least two day pass meetings in the last 5 opportunities.

Dave Morris

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 16:20:03 -0700

>> This seems completely reasonable.

+1

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 11:39:07 +1200

+1

   Brian

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 17:17:59 -0700

>a policy statement, and the IESG actively solicits comments on this

[snip]

>registration alternative; however, a BCP update for an experiment is

Agreed.

>significance and importance of cross-area review.

A person can spend a whole week at an IETF meeting without 
understanding the culture.  The emphasis on culture may be read as 
favoring incumbents.  The important points, in my opinion, are the 
cross-area review and experiencing how the process works in 
practice.  There are probably not so new participants attending on a 
Day Pass.  I doubt that the IESG would say that they do not 
understand the culture.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Xiangsong Cui <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 09:58:11 +0800

I partly agree with David,
and I don't understand the statement, why "that use of a day pass does not count as IETF meeting attendance"?
They also pay registration fare to IETF, stay at the meeting venue in the meeting week (although only one day) with other 
participants together, and face-to-face talk about IETF topics......

Regards,
Xiangsong

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 18:01:28 -0800

SM wrote:
> A person can spend a whole week at an IETF meeting without understanding 
> the culture.  

True, but it seems to me that on average that doesn't/
won't happen, and given the size of the nomcom this isn't
likely to be an issue.

I used to participate in every meeting, took a few years
off, and then went to Anaheim.  Despite being on mailing
lists and having been an active participant in the past,
the general tone of things had shifted in ways I hadn't
anticipated.  In particular, I hadn't really appreciated
the way that the lowly, casual bar bof had turned into a
*Bar* *BOF*.  I think being at meetings is important if
you want to participate in shaping the future of the
organization.  I also think that's unfortunate, but it is
what it is and better to be realistic about it.

Melinda

---

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 11:10:32 +0700

Looks OK to me.

Hope this helps.

~gwz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:ietf-announce-
> [email-masked]] On Behalf Of The IESG
> Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 5:08 AM
> To: IETF; IETF Announce
> Cc: IESG
> Subject: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 23:51:58 -0500

Dear IESG,

I'm conflicted on this one. I agree that three days at IETF meetings does 
not a NomCom member make, but I know several people who are very 
experienced, but who are self-funding, and I can easily imagine someone 
doing a day pass during a trough in their business cycle.

I would be comfortable allowing someone volunteering for the NomCom 
membership pool to count ONE IETF attended on a day pass - not more than 
that.

Allowing a day pass as one of your "three of five" doesn't seem dangerous to 
me, and if you DID attend two tutorials, the reception, the social, and a 
day of IETF meetings, you certainly could have inhaled some IETF culture.

Considering how many NomCom volunteers we get, tuning the algorithm may not 
affect the membership of a NomCom more than once out of twenty years, of 
course, so please don't spend much time tuning the algorithm!

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 18:57:46 +0700

Date:        Thu, 06 May 2010 18:07:40 -0400
    From:        The IESG <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | The IESG is considering the following Statement on the Day Pass
  | Experiment.  The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks on
  | a policy statement, and the IESG actively solicits comments on this
  | action.

I have two (different types of) comments to make.    First, and most
important by far, is WTF ???   I understand the need for IESG "Statements"
from time to time, but the very worst thing to possibly to be making such
statements about is the process by which the IESG (and more of course) is
selected - if there was anything about which there's an obvious and clear
conflict of interest, it is this.

This is an issue that must be sent to a working group to decide - and in
the interim, since we know that working groups take time to resolve issues,
this should be handled  in the standard way that nomcom questions are
handled - by the nomcom chair making a decision (after taking advice from
wherever he or she deems necessary).

That the IESG have considered making a statement on this issue to the
extent of sending a last call on one appalls me - and suggests to me that
the incoming nomcom is going to have a lot of work to do, as there it
seems as if there are not many incumbents who should be returned.

That said, to the issue itself, for whatever working group is eventually
tasked with dealing with this issue - I would expect among a general
overhaul of the nomcom member eligibility rules - it has been 6 years now
since 3777 was published, plenty of time to consider how well it is working,
and whether the environment has changed enough to need a change - the day
pass thing for IETF meetings being one of many changes in the IETF environment
in the past 6 years.

  | RFC 3777 requires that voting members of the nominating committee
  | (NomCom) be selected from volunteers that have attended at least three
  | of the last five IETF meetings.

Yes, since it is important, I am going to quote the entire relevant
section from section 4 of 3777 .... (it is actually split over 2 pages in
the RFC, I deleted the page break, but otherwise this is cut & paste) ...

       The 5 meetings are the five most recent meetings that ended prior
       to the date on which the solicitation for nominating committee
       volunteers was submitted for distribution to the IETF community.

       The IETF Secretariat is responsible for confirming that
       volunteers have met the attendance requirement.

       Volunteers must provide their full name, email address, and
       primary company or organization affiliation (if any) when
       volunteering.

       Volunteers are expected to be familiar with the IETF processes
       and procedures, which are readily learned by active participation
       in a working group and especially by serving as a document editor
       or working group chair.

  | The IAOC is conducting a day pass
  | experiment, making it necessary to augment the NomCom eligibility rules
  | to address IETF participants that make use of a day pass.

I am not sure that follows.   Nowhere in 3777 does it define what "attended"
means - it has typically been implemented as "paid to attend" (so the
person's name is in the list of registered attendees) but that is certainly
not what 3777 says - it says "attended" and just "attended".

To the best of my knowledge there hasn't ever been a case where the
secretariat has said "person X doesn't qualify as they didn't attend
enough of the relevant 5 meetings" to have X reply "Yes, I was there,
I just didn't bother registering, and attended without paying".

If that is what happened, and can be demonstrated, then personally I think
X is qualified for the nomcom - certainly the reason for section 14 in
3777 isn't related to seeking more ways to make people want to pay and
so enrich the IETF, it is to ensure the potential nomcom member has enough
IETF experience to be able to properly judge the nominees - handing over
cash to the secretariat is irrelevant to that purpose.

  | The IESG observes that attending a single day of the IETF meeting is not
  | sufficient for a new participant to learn the culture of the IETF or the
  | qualities that would make an effective IETF leader.

Most probably not, but on no reading of 3777 could a single day possibly
qualify someone for noncom membership - the very minimum would be 3 days
(3 meetings, at a day each) - or perhaps 3 meetings at 5 minutes each,
to collect the (fully paid) registration packet and leave...

  | In the context of the day pass experiment, this is interpreted to mean:
  | 
  |    14. IETF participants must have attended at least 3 of the last 5
  |        IETF meetings in order to volunteer, and that use of a day pass
  |        does not count as IETF meeting attendance.

Frankly, this intermixing of the experience issue, and payment, is absurd.

What you're saying is that someone who pays for 1 day, but also attends
Sunday, and hangs around the hallways, and perhaps gets into a few "other
day" WG meetings (without payment) is less qualified (has gained less IETF
experience) than someone who pays for the entire meeting, but only attends
the opening plenary, then takes off somewhere else for the rest of the week,

That's bogus.

"Attend" has to go back to meaning "attend" and be completely divorced from
"paid", which is irrelevant.

Quite likely the definition of attending needs to change (well, that is, we
probably need to have a definition) - perhaps what might count are the number
of blue sheets signed (or data collected via RFID or however it's done these
days) and that potential nomcom members need to have attended at least N
plenaries and M working group meetings in the past Y years (or something
like that) instead of the bland undefined "attended 3 of the last 5 meetings"
however that gets interpreted.

Of course, all of this is for a working group to discuss and decide, and
certainly not for the IESG - the IESG should *never* make any pronouncements
that affect the nomcom operation, only a properly formed working group with
noomcom process issues in its charter should ever do that.

kre

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 07:22:10 -0700

On 5/6/2010 9:51 PM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> I'm conflicted on this one. I agree that three days at IETF meetings
> does not a NomCom member make, but I know several people who are very

This strikes me as a classic case of having the desire to be fair get in the way 
of being workable.

We need simple rules.  Simple rules always have problems at the boundaries. 
Being fair-minded, we want to handle boundary conditions... fairly.  That leads 
to special-case rules that primarily serve to make things more complicated, 
while typically not providing fundamental benefit.

Let's start with the simple observation that attending all week, three times, by 
itself teaches one little of what is essential for doing good work on Nomcom. 
It imparts no understanding of IETF process, nor insight about the skills needed 
for performing IETF leadership, nor experience upon which to evaluate those 
being considered for leadership positions.

Given that, we do not need to wiggle with a rule that primarily serves produce 
Nomcom volunteers who have LESS of the relevant knowledge...

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 07:27:48 -0700

On 5/7/2010 4:57 AM, Robert Elz wrote:
>  I understand the need for IESG "Statements"
> This is an issue that must be sent to a working group to decide -

Oops.

Robert is correct that this cannot be an IESG decision.  This must be an 
IETF-wide decision.

I don't happen to think that requires a working group, and I'm fine with having 
the IESG take the initiative and draft the relevant text to be an addendum to 
the current Nomcom normative specification, and make an assessment of public 
rough consensus.  But the actual decision /must/ be IETF-wide and it must be 
published as an addendum RFC asserting IETF-wide consensus.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 10:59:38 -0400

On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 07:27:48AM -0700, Dave CROCKER wrote:
> assessment of public rough consensus.  But the actual decision /must/ be 
> IETF-wide and it must be published as an addendum RFC asserting IETF-wide 
> consensus.

Even for this experiment (the evaluation conditions for which have
always been a little hazy to me, but never mind that)?  That is, the
statement explicitly notes that an update to the RFC is needed for any
permanent state of affairs.  This just clarifies the rules temporarily
so that we can get on with picking the next NomCom.  Surely if we have
to get a new RFC out the door, it's going to wreak havoc with with
NomCom process this year; but we have the problem right now, because
someone could be eligible or not for this year's NomCom depending on
whether the day pass they used in Anaheim or Hiroshima is counted.

I think that, as a temporary measure to deal with the current
experiment, the IESG taking a decision is acceptable.  Excluding
day-pass-only people is completely defensible because the rules were
written in a period when day passes didn't exist.  So nobody who was
then eligible is made ineligible by this decision.  (It is not
relevant that someone "would have" used a day pass had it previously
been available: we do not make rules for every possible world, only
for the one we're in.)

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 18:10:46 +0300

Spencer: I suggested the 
one-of--your-three-meetings-can-be-with-a-day-pass option during IESG 
discussion. My thought was that day job demands and other reasons might 
make someone prefer to take an occasional day pass instead of a full 
meeting, and I'd rather err on the side of allowing more volunteers than 
being too strict. My understanding of the rest of the IESG's opinion was 
that they did not want to see any reduction in required exposure to the 
IETF process. Personally, I think the difference would be minimal. But 
so would the help that the relaxed rule would bring. I'd be surprised if 
there's a single person from the usual 100 or so Nomcom volunteers who 
has used a day pass. So I at least did not feel strongly about arguing 
this either way. (But I'm persuaded by Dave's argument that the rule 
should be simple.)

Dave, Kre: I'm not so convinced that there would be any problem even if 
the IESG (or IAOC) decided how to interpret the RFC-specified rules in a 
practical situation. However, I don't think we need to argue this 
because there is an ongoing Last Call and the intention is to ask the 
community for feedback and then make a decision. Even if we did this 
with a BCP RFC and a working group, there would still be a similar Last 
Call and an IESG approval decision. You could, of course, make the 
argument that this is important enough to be permanently recorded in an 
RFC as opposed to an IESG statement. However, my understanding is that 
the day pass is still an experiment, so you could argue that its an 
overkill. I have no problem doing this as an RFC either, however.

Jari

---

From: Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 08:13:56 -0700

Having served on Nomcom before as well have participated in the Day Pass Experiment, I find myself disagreeing with this policy statement.

The statement seems to assumes that the day-pass holder minimally use their pass and a week-pass holder maximumly uses their pass.   The statement completely ignores that choosing eligibility in NOMCOM by which passes pays for is significantly flawed to begin with.

In my opinion, no harm would be done by allowing someone who attended 3 of 5 IETFs only on minimum day passes from serving on a NOMCOM.  We should not restrict eligibility to those who pay for full weeks until such time that there is evidence of harm.   Given we haven't formed a NOMCOM since the Day Pass Experiment started, there simply cannot be yet be any such evidence.  I think this policy action is premature.

I oppose this policy statement.

Regards, Kurt

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 11:14:28 -0400

--On Friday, May 07, 2010 07:27 -0700 Dave CROCKER
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> from time to time, but the very worst thing to possibly to be
>> making such statements about is the process by which the IESG
>> (and more of course) is selected - if there was anything
>> about which there's an obvious and clear conflict of
>> interest, it is this.
>> 
> Robert is correct that this cannot be an IESG decision.  This
> must be an IETF-wide decision.
> 
> I don't happen to think that requires a working group, and I'm
> fine with having the IESG take the initiative and draft the
> relevant text to be an addendum to the current Nomcom
> normative specification, and make an assessment of public
> rough consensus.  But the actual decision /must/ be IETF-wide
> and it must be published as an addendum RFC asserting
> IETF-wide consensus.

Sadly, I have to mostly agree.   

I do think the IAOC and IESG could have avoided this issue by
defining the "day pass" experiment as a paid visitor arrangement
that explicitly does not establish eligibility for anything that
"registration" establishes, but, given the situation we now find
ourselves in...

At the same time, as long as it remains clearly an experiment, I
think (partially following Andrew Sullivan's later note) it is
perfectly reasonable for the IESG to take the position that
experiments don't establish Nomcom eligibility and that a
published RFC is not a requirement to carry out an experiment or
explain its details.  Of course, that case would be much
stronger if there were a real description of the experiment and
evaluation conditions, but...

     john

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 09:34:10 -0600

I support this change.

Cullen

PS - and when I read the [email-masked] mailing list, I am often convinced I don't understand the culture of the IETF so I am glad to note the IESG only talks about what is clearly not sufficient and makes no implications about what might be sufficient to understand the IETF. I agree the current scheme does not ensure the "best" nomcom but it's better than any other proposal we have on the table. 

> the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

Cullen Jennings
For corporate legal information go to:
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/index.html

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 09:37:44 -0600

Spencer, 

I think the right way to fix this problem is to allow anyone who self declares themselves as currently unemployed get a significantly reduced rate for a 5 day pass (perhaps the same rate as 1 day pass). I know this could be abused by people who are self employed consultants but given the type of people that are self employed consultants and that choose to come to IETF, I don't think it would be abused. 

Cullen

Cullen Jennings

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 08:54:51 -0700 (PDT)

> been available: we do not make rules for every possible world, only

The converse is also true ... if this policy had been previosly stated,
and I felt a need to stack the nomcom with myself, an otherwise 
unqualified candidate, I could have decided to pay the full registration
instead of the day pass and attended exactly the same IETF functions.

I just don't see the difference between being dedicated enough to the
IETF to purchase a day-pass and attend one day plus the added main tent 
activities and 4 meetings ago purchasing a full registration and attending
exactly the same number of meetings and main tent functions.

The RFC has already been cited and it just says attend. A day pass 
consitutes attending ... changing the english definition after the fact
is changing the rules after the fact. 

And a change which really says nothing about an individual's ability to
provide useful input in the nomcom process.

The appropriate statement from the IESG at this time is to simply confirm
that the english word 'attend' encompases day-pass attendance. At the 
present time, the maximum corruption, if it is indeed meaningful, is two 
day passes and 1 full meeting. Still a lot of dedication to the IETF as 
measured my travel time. I suspect that the nature of day-pass vs. full 
registration is that folks for whom travel costs are a major fraction of
the expense would only use day passes for local IETFs ... but it really 
doean't matter.

Meeting attendence as defined by registration is such a weak measure that
this whole discussion is really pretty silly.

Dave Morris

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 17:59:06 +0200

As I recall, the basis of the 3/5 rule (and previously the 3/3 rule) 
was to avoid ballot stuffing, I do not see substantial risk of allowing 
those who have used day passes to be eligible for NOMCOM, especially 
considering that in all likelihood nobody is going to do that more than 
once.  As such *I oppose the proposed change*, especially since it seems 
to boil down to money, since someone who pays for a full week and only 
goes the day would be treated differently.  We would call that "buying a 
vote."

I still believe the risks of ballot stuffing exist, and we should take 
some measures to mitigate them.  However, I now wonder whether the time 
is ripe to review not only NOMCOM qualification but also our NOMCOM 
processes, with an eye toward being more inclusive in a virtual world.

Eliot

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 09:29:52 -0700

On 5/7/2010 8:10 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:
> community for feedback and then make a decision.

There is a rather fundamental "constitutional" difference between having the 
IESG assess community rough consensus, versus having the IESG ask for input and 
then make the decision based on IESG preferences.  In the first, the formal 
authority resides with the community; in the second it resides with the IESG.

Again, I'm not suggesting that a working group is necessary.  There isn't that 
much to discuss.

On 5/7/2010 7:59 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
 >    This just clarifies the rules temporarily

It didn't wreak havoc with Nomcom for last year.  Why will it have that effect 
for this year?

(On the other hand, classing the day pass as applying to a visitor rather than 
participant could be a clever way to avoid the constitutional question.)

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Ross Callon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 12:38:24 -0400

Personally I think that at least for the incoming 2010 nomcom having a clear well defined criteria that can be applied unambiguously is more important than the precise details of what the criteria is. This proposed rule seems perfectly reasonable for use this time around. 

Ross

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 12:40:35 -0400

> is changing the rules after the fact. 

I think that argument begs the question.  It seems to me that this is
exactly what people are arguing about: whether registering for only
one day, being barred from other days, and paying for only that day,
is really "attending".  One could argue without straining that
"attending the meeting" means attending the whole thing or at least
the bulk of it, not just a small part of it.  Since "the IETF meeting"
lasts all week, people on a day pass do not, by definition, attend the
meeting (they attend no more than 1/5).

It was probably not clear from my earlier message, but my feeling on
this topic is that I don't care what temporary work around rules we
pick, given that we're running an experiment[1].  The key thing right
now, IMO, is to have _some_ ad hoc rule decided in advance so that we
don't have a problem when it is time to form the NomCom.  (I think
their work is hard enough without injecting a delay so we can argue
about who is qualified.  Of course, as others have observed, there is
only a tiny chance that anyone will volunteer who doesn't meet the
"standard" rule anyway.)  So I think it's acceptable that the IESG
pick some rule, even though there's a conflict of interest there; and
I don't feel strongly about what rule they pick, either.  I think
"roughly fair" in this case is just as good as "rough consensus."

If day passes continue to be a feature of the IETF, we'll need to open
the NomCom eligibility requirements.  As soon as we open the
requirements, 10 billion other issues with the current process rules
will also be up for discussion (in one of those IETF debates where we
attempt to make process rules for every annoying thing that has
happened in the past 5 years).  I predict that such discussion will
only complete slowly, so in the meantime we need some rule and for
everyone to know what it is.

[1] This situation also surely provides some indication of the care
that needs to be taken with future design of experiments of this sort.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 20:17:08 +0300

Dave,

> There is a rather fundamental "constitutional" difference between 
> having the IESG assess community rough consensus, versus having the 
> IESG ask for input and then make the decision based on IESG 
> preferences.  In the first, the formal authority resides with the 
> community; in the second it resides with the IESG.

Maybe, if there really was a difference in the intents here. I don't 
speak for the IESG's intent but my intent definitely was to treat this 
question in exactly the same way as we treat these questions for 
documents. For your comparison, here's two last call announcements, one 
for the statement and then another one for a document. Do you think 
there's a real difference? Please note that the IESG sometimes uses its 
own judgment even for documents, e.g., by blocking something that we 
believe is broken.

> lists by 2010-05-20. 
> The IESG has received a request from the <X> WG 
> to consider the following document: <DOC> as an <CLASS> RFC.
>
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action.  Please send substantive comments to the
> [email-masked] mailing lists by <DATE>.

In any case, I wouldn't mind doing this change/clarification as an RFC.  
I don't see why it would take any longer than approving a statement, but 
I am aware that other people may not agree with me on that...

Jari

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 20:58:21 -0700

> the expense would only use day passes for local IETFs ... but it really 

I think David has hit it right on the head here, and I disagree with the
IESG's statement on this basis.

Going forward I think Jari is probably on the right track, although
personally I would say something like, 'For the purposes of this section
1 out of the 3 "meetings" may consist of 2 day passes for any of the
last 5 meetings.'

As someone whose IETF participation looks like this:
1. 100% mailing lists for ~3 years
2. Mailing lists + attending most/nearly all meetings for ~3 years
3. Mailing lists + remote participation for almost 5 years

I feel pretty comfortable stating that I know the difference that
actually attending the meetings makes, and I do agree that it's an
important _component_ of what would qualify someone for the nomcom.
However as David correctly points out above, the worst possible "damage"
that could occur from the simple reading of 3777 does not justify
departure from the existing process. (Nor, IMO the level of attention
it's already received, but I digress.)

> this whole discussion is really pretty silly.

Unfortunately it's one of the few that we can really quantify, and does
tend to have a fairly high correlation with the actual qualities that we
want to have in a nomcom candidate.

Of course one could also proceed down several other ratholes, including
the "Do we already have an embarrassment of riches in existing qualified
nomcom candidates" vs. "What is the value of encouraging and simplifying
the process of adding new blood to the pool?" But I won't.

hth,

Doug

-- 

	... and that's just a little bit of history repeating.
			-- Propellerheads

	Improve the effectiveness of your Internet presence with
	a domain name makeover!    http://SupersetSolutions.com/

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 May 2010 01:47:32 -0700

>conflict of interest, it is this.

The idea behind this statement is to avoid 
opening a discussion about NomCom.  The IESG 
probably sees the need to step in to solve the 
problem.  We could view this as a statement to 
clarify an administrative issue.  However the 
subject line says "policy statement".  The IESG 
does not get to decide on policy for the IETF.  That's done through BCPs.

>wherever he or she deems necessary).

Yes.  But the IESG hasn't been using working 
groups for non-technical issues.  The better 
course, as you mentioned above, is to leave it to 
the current NomCom Chair to see whether there is 
a problem and how to address it.

>seems as if there are not many incumbents who should be returned.

This is the kind of issue that gets forgotten 
after some time.  There is a way to send a 
message to the IESG if you appalled. :-)  That requires NomCom qualification.

>pass thing for IETF meetings being one of many changes in the IETF environment

The eligibility rules are arbitrary.  There is no best way for eligibility.

>   | to address IETF participants that make use of a day pass.

The problem is that this turned into a long 
running experiment.  The question of NomCom 
eligibility was raised well after the first 
run.  You may wish to ask the IAOC why it ran an 
experiment without giving enough thought to how it affects NomCom.

>not what 3777 says - it says "attended" and just "attended".

Do we really have to define what "attended" 
means?  If it is going to mean "paid" to attend", 
I would strongly object as the ability to pay 
favors a class of participants.  In the text you 
quoted from RFC 3777, it is mentioned that the 
IETF Secretariat determines whether the attendee 
fulfills the requirements.  That makes it an 
administrative matter.  By using this statement 
for more than a one-time experiment, the IESG 
would change that into a way to disqualify 
attendees outside the Standards Process.

>to collect the (fully paid) registration packet and leave...

The path to evil is paved with good 
intentions.  And that's where we are going if we 
have to define the requirements for understanding 
IETF culture.  It is not up to the IESG to 
observe what constitutes sufficient exposure to IETF culture.

>Frankly, this intermixing of the experience issue, and payment, is absurd.

Yes.

>noomcom process issues in its charter should ever do that.

It is convenient for the IESG to make these 
proclamations.  The "constitutionality" has never been tested.

>won't happen, and given the size of the nomcom this isn't

The larger question is whether NomCom is 
representative of the IETF Community or whether 
it should be shaped to protect a vision of the 
IETF as viewed by the old boys club.

>anticipated.  In particular, I hadn't really appreciated

The wind of change is noticeable on the mailing lists too.

>what it is and better to be realistic about it.

That only works if WG is not turned into Walled 
Gardens.  It could turn into that if participants 
stick to their area (IETF Areas) of interest.

At 08:10 AM 5/7/2010, Jari Arkko wrote:
>Dave, Kre: I'm not so convinced that there would 
>be any problem even if the IESG (or IAOC) 
>decided how to interpret the RFC-specified rules 
>in a practical situation. However, I don't think 
>we need to argue this because there is an 
>ongoing Last Call and the intention is to ask 
>the community for feedback and then make a decision. Even if we did

But neither the IESG nor the IAOC are empowered 
to take this decision.  If you want to sell this 
as a practical situation, you should apply this 
"rule" to the next NomCom selection only.

At 08:59 AM 5/7/2010, Eliot Lear wrote:
>As I recall, the basis of the 3/5 rule (and 
>previously the 3/3 rule) was to avoid ballot 
>stuffing, I do not see substantial risk of 
>allowing those who have used day passes to be 
>eligible for NOMCOM, especially considering that 
>in all likelihood nobody is going to do that 
>more than once.Â  As such I oppose the proposed 
>change, especially since it seems to boil down 
>to money, since someone who pays for a full week 
>and only goes the day would be treated 
>differently.Â  We would call that "buying a vote."

The change in policy for meeting locations makes 
the 3/5 rule less favorable for some participants 
who might have used the Day Pass to stuff the ballot.

At 09:29 AM 5/7/2010, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>There is a rather fundamental "constitutional" 
>difference between having the IESG assess 
>community rough consensus, versus having the 
>IESG ask for input and then make the decision 
>based on IESG preferences.  In the first, the 
>formal authority resides with the community; in 
>the second it resides with the IESG.

Right.  Some comments posted on this Last Call points to the second.

>evaluation conditions, but...

There were two experiments that gained attention, 
this one and the RFID one which raises questions 
about privacy.  The IESG decided that a fix is 
needed for the NomCom question.  The privacy 
question doesn't look like a priority yet.  The 
IETF should be used by now to experiments written 
on paper napkins and calling to survey monkeys for evaluation.

Given that remote participation is viewed by some 
as a financial liability to the IETF, the following suggestions can be ignored.

It is suggested that:

  (i) This Last Call is rescinded.

  (ii) The NomCom Chair posts a statement about 
the experiment and determines whether it is the 
consensus of the IETF community that the 
experiment should not be taken into account for the next NomCom run.

  (iii) If any IETF participant, it's not up to 
the IESG or IAOC, views that there is a problem 
to be solved, submit an update to RFC 3777 for the long term solution.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: "Bert Wijnen \(IETF\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 12:21:45 +0200

Inline
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Elz" <[email-masked]>
To: "IETF" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment

> conflict of interest, it is this.

But be fair: they are doing an IETF Last Call BEFORE they decide on the 
statement.
Is that not how you try to determine consensus within the whole IETF?

Bert

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 May 2010 11:20:57 -0400

>>  significance and importance of cross-area review.

This is the main point for me.  I want my NomCom to have significant 
breadth and depth of understanding, as described here.  I'm in favor.

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 May 2010 09:52:47 -0700

> Is that not how you try to determine consensus within the whole IETF?

That's a necessary, but not a sufficient, action.

One can solicit community comment, as a general effort to get additional input. 
  This is quite different from soliciting a demonstration of community 
consensus.  The latter explicitly declares that the real authority for the 
decision lies with the community.  The former leaves it with the group that 
issued the call.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 10:52:57 +0200

I disagree with this policy action.

Looking at the data, there are very few, if any, people who would be
eligible as nomcom members under the current version of rule 14
(attended 3 out of 5 IETF's on any program) but not under the modified
version.  And then, we have not factored in that traditionally
only some 10% of the people eligible to volunteer for the nomcom,
actually volunteers (and only a few out those, are actually selected).
Further, of the non-daypass attendees, some 40% says that they did
not attend the full week but skipped one or more days from the
program.

If we add this all up, I'd estimate that there is about a 10% chance
that one of the people on the 2010-2011 nomcom attended 2 full meetings
plus 1 day of either Anaheim or Hiroshima, as compared to the other
nomcom members who attended 3 full meetings.  Can somebody explain
to me what the problem that we are trying to solve here is?

The IAOC has always said that the day-pass experiment will be evaluated
after a couple of meetings.  This has started and we plan to show data
and a way forward in Maastricht.  What we have also said that if the
experiment was turned into a regular feature, we'd review all documents
for attendence requirements and come up with a proposal how to
modify them.  This is still the case.

In short, I fail to see the need for a policy statement at this time.

Henk
(for himself, not necessarily for the full IAOC)

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Henk Uijterwaal                           Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net
RIPE Network Coordination Centre          http://www.xs4all.nl/~henku
P.O.Box 10096          Singel 258         Phone: +31.20.5354414
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I confirm today what I denied yesterday.            Anonymous Politician.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 13:12:49 -0400

--On Friday, May 07, 2010 09:29 -0700 Dave CROCKER
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> There is a rather fundamental "constitutional" difference
> between having the IESG assess community rough consensus,
> versus having the IESG ask for input and then make the
> decision based on IESG preferences.  In the first, the formal

To the extent to which we want to open this can of worms (or are
forced into it by necessity), there is a second "fundamental
'constitutional' difference" here.  As I read BCP 101, it is
pretty clear that the IAOC (or IASA generally) are forbidden to
make policy or carry out experiments whose implications extend
beyond the financial/administrative.   If I recall, the IAOC
decided to initiate the "day pass" experiment using exactly the
model you describe above: the community was asked for input and
then the IAOC made the decision based on the IAOC's preferences.
I assume that no one thought of the Nomcom implications despite
the presence of the IAB Chair and IETF Chair and some IAB and
IESG-appointed representatives on the IAOC -- people whose role
is presumably to catch just such things.  But, if there is a
constitutional process issue here, it extends well beyond the
IESG issuing a process clarification about the implications of
an experiment.

And, yes, a regular IETF participant who attended the last
meeting on a day pass should have been able to know whether that
would count for the Nomcom qualification or not.  But nothing
prevented a person in that position from asking the question
before he or she registered, in which case we would,
appropriately, have had this discussion prior to Anaheim.

> Again, I'm not suggesting that a working group is necessary.
> There isn't that much to discuss.

Agreed.
    john

---

From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 14:13:30 -0400

<IAOC Hat Off>

IMHO, the issue is not that one does not get the flavor of the IETF by only attending for a day.  I would offer it is that prospective nomcom members would miss out on the experiences of (1) formal community feedback from scheduled meetings during the IETF meetings and (2) informal community feedback from hallway, bar, and references (I don't know her, but he does - go talk to him).  These are, again IMHO, critical experiences for prospective and nominated nomcom members to have.  That does not happen in a day or two of meetings.

Therefore, I support the IESG position.

<IAOC Hat On>
Whatever the community wants...

---

From: Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 08:39:39 -0700

> appropriately, have had this discussion prior to Anaheim.

Well, being such a person, before I registered for a day pass I did not consider the NOMCOM ramifications.  If I had, I think it would likely that I would simply have assumed the existing BCP were in force.

I argue that what the IETF now proposes is not a clarification to the BCP but a change to the BCP.   Applying such changes retroactively stinks.

So, I guess I won't have NOMCOM eligible this year (due to the change, assuming I attend the next IETF under a full registration).

-- Kurt

---

From: Ross Callon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 11:49:45 -0400

I think your email (below) argues quite eloquently for why it doesn't matter a whole lot what the statement says. As you point out, this is not likely to make a difference regarding who is actually selected for nomcom. I don't think that we know whether or not there would be *anybody* effected by this (and I would prefer to figure out what the rule should be without knowing who, if anyone, would be effected -- since I don't want the choice of rule to come down to a popularity contest on the people effected, if any). 

However, my understanding is that a chair should be appointed in the next month or two for the next nomcom, and that at that point the process will begin to pick the voting members. When this process begins, it seems highly desirable to have precise rules regarding who is eligible and who is not. 

Thus to me the point is not to have the best possible rule -- I don't think that "best possible" is well defined in this case. The point is to have clearly defined rules so that he process can go forward. 

Ross 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Henk Uijterwaal
Sent: 10 May 2010 04:53
Cc: IETF; IESG
Subject: Re: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment

Henk

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 08:58:42 -0700

On 5/10/2010 8:39 AM, Kurt Zeilenga wrote:

> I argue that what the IETF now proposes is not a clarification to the BCP but
> a change to the BCP.   Applying such changes retroactively stinks.

Yes, it does stink.  As nearly as I can tell, the import of having Day Passes, 
in terms of other IETF participation such as being on Nomcom, was entirely 
missed by the community -- that is, by all of us.  We are now paying the price 
for that.

The nature of that price -- besides the pain of this discussion -- is going to 
be retroactive enfranchisement or disenfranchisement of some attendees.  Either 
way, that's pretty egregious.  But since Day Passes have been handled pretty 
transparently, all along, it does appear to be an error we all share.

The question, now, is how to best handle it.  This requires juggling a number of 
constraints and requirements.  For example, it makes no sense to create 
long-term, complex rules, for handling a short-term issue, even if that creates 
unfairness for a few attendees.  (Specialized rules for handling transient, 
near-term issues is bad protocol design and bad political process design.)

With respect to Nomcom, we are talking about the core, constitutional process in 
the IETF, namely the selection of the folk who exert control over the operation 
of the organization.  Anything we decide now needs to hold the quality of that 
effort as prime, IMO.

Stated rather baldly, I think we will be faced with either /in/cluding some folk 
who have even less IETF knowledge than we've previously required, or with 
/ex/cluding some folk who have plenty of IETF experience, but happened to use a 
Day Pass.  (Anyone hearing echoes of the phrase "Type I versus Type II errors" 
is listening to the correct, heuristic song.)

If we resolve this with simple, principled rules, we can at least make the 
injustice transient, while the longer-term issues are made reasonable and 
appropriate.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:00:54 -0400

Robert:

I'd like to share my thoughts about your comments.  First, I want to say
that I mostly agree with you.  However, your suggestion is not
practical.  If there was a WG that could weigh in on this topic, then
that would have been done, but there is not an existing WG with the
charter to consider this issue.

RFC 3777 was drafted by a WG, Last Called, and then approved by the
IESG.  That is the process that made RFC 3777 a BCP.  With the IAOC
conducting the Day Pass experiment, an interpretation of the rule in RFC
3777 regarding NomCom eligibility is needed.  This point was raised at
the last plenary, and the whole community heard many opinions about the
right way to proceed.  Given that discussion as input, an interpretation
was drafted in the form of an IESG statement.  An Internet-Draft could
have been generated, but the next steps would not have been different.
That is, Last Call is the point where the community gets to tell the
IESG if they are going in the right direction or not.  That is where we
are right now.

Russ

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:05:07 -0400

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]> wrote:
> ...

I agree here.

> I argue that what the IETF now proposes is not a clarification to the BCP but a change to the BCP.   Applying such changes retroactively stinks.

I disagree here for the reasons I've already posted.

So, with such disagreements, someone has to settle it even if there
isn't a clear consensus. Pretty much all the bodies who could possibly
make this decision have an extremely remote but theoretically real
conflict. I have confidence that if there is a clear consensus that
day membership should count as attendance towards NOMCOM
qualification, the IESG will see that. But I sure don't see such a
consensus against the IESG suggestion so I think it is not only
correct but that it should stick.

Donald

---

From: Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 09:42:13 -0700

On May 10, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> The nature of that price -- besides the pain of this discussion -- is going to be retroactive enfranchisement or disenfranchisement of some attendees.  Either way, that's pretty egregious. But since Day Passes have been handled pretty transparently, all along, it does appear to be an error we all share.

Given that day passes have not been in existence long, it is more likely that the change would cause undue disenfranchisement than no change would cause undue enfranchisement.

If the new policy were to state the change does not go into effect until after this summer's NOMCOM's selection, there the undue disenfranchisement/enfranchisement issues would be minimized.

-- Kurt

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 09:43:55 -0700 (PDT)

> missed by the community -- that is, by all of us.  We are now paying the price

But as engineers, this should come as no surprise to us. How many 
times have you experienced "major consequences" as the result of
a "minor fix" in "some other part" of the system? I've certainly seen
it too many times to count, and the combination of engineering and 
governance doesn't make it any less likely to happen.

Personally, I think the right answer might be some kind of "attendance 
coefficient" based not just on "last N meetings attended" but on 
overall attendance record (and by implication knowledge of the IETF).

So, in your case, having attended I am guessing 50 - 60 meetings or 
more, your coefficient would be very high even if you decided to go 
cheap on us and use the day pass for 5 meetings in a row.

It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a simple formula for the 
coefficient and setting the threshold, but I have no doubt that we
could over-engineer that process too :-)

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen 
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

---

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:57:31 -0400

At 23:51 -0500 5/6/10, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>Dear IESG,
>
>I'm conflicted on this one.

That's a statement I can agree with.  Superficially, it seems to make 
sense that 20% (1 day of 5) doesn't count.  But...

As others have said - paying full fare and attending one day vs. 
buying a day pass only means more money being spent.  In 1998 I've 
even done a 1-day attendance having paid the full fare because of 
scheduling conflicts.  Came, made two presentations, attended 
probably the first DNSSEC deployment meeting (at lunch), and left. 
Had to fly (US) coast-to-coast too.

What does it mean to understand the culture of the IETF?  And does 
that have to come with physical presence at a meeting?  You can get a 
lot of it via the mail lists.  If you know where 3 of 5 IETFs are 
located, you pretty much have to be tuned in.

Nomcom requires a lot of time and effort, especially in the way the 
IETF runs the process.  It's pretty far-fetched to imagine someone 
who "can't spell IESG"
  - volunteer for nomcom
  - get selected via the random process
  - and then have much of a detrimental impact (which is what we are afraid of)
  - for the duration of the nomcom process

In the end, I think that the new policy is a case of "over specification."
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edward Lewis
NeuStar                    You can leave a voice message at +1-571-434-5468

Discussing IPv4 address policy is like deciding what to eat on the Titanic.

---

From: Samuel Weiler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:06:25 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 6 May 2010, The IESG wrote:

> qualities that would make an effective IETF leader.

Opposed.  (Disclosures: I've not used a day pass.  I have served on 
NomCom.)

Even if it were reasonable to do this prospectively (e.g. future day 
passes don't count), it's not particularly fair those the few (like 
Kurt) who may be disenfranchised by applying this retrospectively.
Day passes used to date should count.  Period.

As for the future, I find a flaw in the IESG's logic above.  Indeed, a 
single day of one physical meeting is not enough to learn the culture. 
But we're still requiring three separate meetings.  And it's not as 
though we're insisting that those who pay for the week stay for the 
week.

And then there's the long-term-participant-with-reduced-funding issue. 
If such a person maximally used day passes for a year or two, I can 
see them still having enough grasp on the culture to participate 
effectively in NomCom.

-- Sam

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 10:13:09 -0700

> overall attendance record (and by implication knowledge of the IETF).

This is a very nice example of taking the current problem and looking for a way 
to make an underlying, relatively simple change that happens to cover the 
current problem... while also making things more robust.

We already have a version of what you describe, namely the 3-of-5 rule (which 
was changed, I believe, from 2-of-3.)

Rather than our having a rule based on two fixed attendance numbers, you are 
suggesting using a derivative rule for proportion.  This makes the qualification 
generally more robust, where the possible anomaly of a Day Pass is covered 
almost as a side-effect.

(Kurt's latest posting suggests something that is, I think, entirely orthogonal 
to Ole's suggestion.)

> could over-engineer that process too :-)

Your use of "could" is amusing, as if there were any doubt possible.

But seriously, a justified high cost of discussing this will be considering what 
it is that attendance ensures and how much of it is 'required' to be a useful 
Nomcom participant.

And folks think credit cards and taxis are a rat hole...

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:20:53 -0400

This note assumes that it was correct (not merely reasonable, as 
reasonable folks can differ, and sometimes come to incorrect 
conclusions) for someone using the day pass program to assume that said 
attendance would count.
While some people have asserted that they find it obvious that it should 
count, other people (myself included) do not find it at all obvious.

As far as I can tell, the rules do not tell us whether the day passes 
should or should not count.  As Dave Crocker said, we have to make a 
choice.  And either choice is going to be an error relative to some 
people's understanding of the rules.
One can craft arguments for making either error.

Personally, I would prefer to stick with the narrower ruling, matching 
the proposed text from the IESG, until we either have a permanent day 
pass program, with rules suitably defined, or do not have any more day 
passes to deal with.

Yours,
Joel

Samuel Weiler wrote:
> though we're insisting that those who pay for the week stay for the week.
> 
> If such a person maximally used day passes for a year or two, I can see 
> them still having enough grasp on the culture to participate effectively 
> in NomCom.
> 
> -- Sam

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 10:33:51 -0700

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Joel M. Halpern <[email-masked]> wrote:
> This note assumes that it was correct (not merely reasonable, as reasonable
> folks can differ, and sometimes come to incorrect conclusions) for someone
> using the day pass program to assume that said attendance would count.
> As far as I can tell, the rules do not tell us whether the day passes should
> or should not count.  As Dave Crocker said, we have to make a choice.  And
> either choice is going to be an error relative to some people's
> understanding of the rules.

While it is certainly true that we can craft arguments for either
interpretation, I don't personally find the arguments for the narrow
interpretation all that compelling.  If we have to err, let's err on the
side of inclusiveness.   We can craft rules that narrow things in
the future, but we should not do so for those meetings which
have already taken place.

Disenfranchisement for those meetings where someone has already made the
calculus of how much to attend seems likely to leave a bad taste in
the mouth of at least some participants, and that may discourage
them from being NomCom volunteers, both now and in the future.
We need all the volunteers we can get.
Just my two cents,

Ted Hardie

>
> Personally, I would prefer to stick with the narrower ruling, matching the
> proposed text from the IESG, until we either have a permanent day pass
> program, with rules suitably defined, or do not have any more day passes to
> deal with.
>
> Yours,
> Joel
>
>
> Samuel Weiler wrote:
>>
>> passes don't count), it's not particularly fair those the few (like Kurt)
>> who may be disenfranchised by applying this retrospectively.
>> single day of one physical meeting is not enough to learn the culture. But
>> we're still requiring three separate meetings.  And it's not as though we're
>> insisting that those who pay for the week stay for the week.
>>
>> And then there's the long-term-participant-with-reduced-funding issue. If
>> such a person maximally used day passes for a year or two, I can see them
>> still having enough grasp on the culture to participate effectively in
>> NomCom.
>>
>> -- Sam

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:44:46 -0400

I fairly strongly support the IESG's proposed policy statement on the
day pass experiment.  I specifically belive that it is counter to our
ability to fund our ongoing activities to turn the day pass experiment
into a way to reduce the cost of attending IETF on an ongoing basis.  We
want to do what we can to keep the day pass as a mechanism for bringing
in new people and discourage its use for existing participants who want
to save a buck.  (This from someone whose last few IETFs have been
self-funded.)

I agree with the IESG's reasoning that members who have not committed to
the IETF on an ongoing basis don't make good nomcom members.  For these
and other reasons I support the IESG's statement.

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 10:48:54 -0700

On 5/10/2010 10:33 AM, Ted Hardie wrote:
> side of inclusiveness.

Given that the argument for /ex/clusiveness pertains to competence at rendering 
judgment about IETF leadership candidates, can you explain why lowering the bar 
helps produce better leadership selection?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 14:05:33 -0400

> We need all the volunteers we can get.

I think that's nonsense and typical of the fixation in recent years on
maximizing the quantity of nomcom volunteers with little apparent
concern for their level of interest. As far as I can tell, the nomcom
worked fine in its early years when there commonly less than 50
volunteers. We want people willing to put in the time and effort
required. I've never understood why some nomcom chairs worry so much
if their volunteer pool is a bit smaller than the previous year's or
make statements based on the assumption that there is a strong
correlation between the quality of a nomcom's work and the percentage
of those qualified who volunteer to be members.

Donald
(A former nomcom voter and nomcom chair recently self-funding my IETF
attendance)

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 11:08:36 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 10 May 2010, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> Given that the argument for /ex/clusiveness pertains to competence at
> rendering judgment about IETF leadership candidates, can you explain why
> lowering the bar helps produce better leadership selection?

Because from my own experience, I've demonstrated the bar has minimal
correlation with the reality of exposure to the IETF.

Secondly, I don't see this as lowering anything but a financial bar. For 
an open organization, minimizing the bars to participation is actually
a better approach.

If the objective is to provide multiple tier participation, like some
country clubs, then be upfront and offer payment of a participation fee as
an open alternative. .... Say $3000 in lieu of meeting attendance and
$15000 to bypass the random selection associated with Nomcom memmbership
and say $100,000 for direct appointment to the IESG?

If someone truly believes they are qualified to serve on the NomCom with
a day pass rather than full meeting fee, and is willing to sign up for the 
work, etc. The are likely to be as helpful to the process as some of the
very contentious, well established long term participants who happen to
have the 3 full paid meeting requirement met.

Dave Morris

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 11:13:14 -0700

> an open organization, minimizing the bars to participation is actually

How does this trend at reducing the requirement for participation lead anywhere 
but to eventually saying that anyone may volunteer, without any regard for IETF 
experience?

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 10:49:40 -0700

>beyond the financial/administrative.   If I recall, the IAOC

The IAOC is the body that deals with financial and administrative 
matters.  Decisions taken by the IAOC indirectly affect policy.  It's 
up to the IAOC to see that it does not cross the policy line or else 
it will cause other problems.

>IESG issuing a process clarification about the implications of

Didn't the IPR WG make a similar mistake?  The lesson to be learned 
is that even if the community is asked for input, some problems only 
come to light during the implementation phase.  We can ask why the 
representatives mentioned above didn't point to a possible problem 
with the experiment.  But that won't solve the problem.

The various BCPs do not specify who is the "authority" to address the 
problem.  The IETF can ignore the process and come up with a 
solution.   Henk Uijterwaal commented on the numbers and asked 
whether it is worth solving the problem.  Jari Arkko mentioned that a 
statement can be treated as the usual documents.  The "process" 
followed by this Last Call is as follows:

  1. The IESG discussed about the statement.  The draft statement 
represents the view of the IESG.

  2. The IESG starts a Last Call.  We already know that the IESG is 
in favor of this statement.

  3. The IESG decides that the statement can be adopted as that seems 
to be the community consensus.

Some twit (yours truly) opposes the statement.  The twit explores the 
options available.

  (i) An appeal is filed.  That's not really a good course of action 
given Items 1 and 3.

  (ii) Assuming eligibility for NomCom, a random number generator is 
used to select an IESG member for a Recall petition.

Option 2 could serve as a reminder to IETF-related bodies not to 
cross the line.  If we consider this issue as one about the 
"constitutional" process, we will be leaning towards that option.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 01:41:17 +0700

Date:        Mon, 10 May 2010 12:05:07 -0400
    From:        Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

Mostly (these days) I prefer to make one comment, then keep quiet, but
this message from Donald needs a response...

  | So, with such disagreements, someone has to settle it even if there
  | isn't a clear consensus.

Yes.

  | Pretty much all the bodies who could possibly
  | make this decision have an extremely remote but theoretically real
  | conflict.

If there is no consensus there is no change - no question it is the IESG
that gets to decide if a consensus exists (currently, that looks to me to
be a clear "no") but it shouldn't be the IESG that's creating the statement
upon which consensus is called (even if it weren't for the issue in question
here, that's another conflict of interest.)

But this ...

  | I have confidence that if there is a clear consensus that
  | day membership should count as attendance towards NOMCOM
  | qualification, the IESG will see that. But I sure don't see such a
  | consensus against the IESG suggestion so I think it is not only
  | correct but that it should stick.

is 100% totally backwards.   And why I am commenting on this issue a
second time - as this kind of thinking seems to me to have become far
to common in the IETF (I've seen signs of this in quite a few working
groups as well.).

If there is no consensus on a new proposal, the new proposal fails.

Here the IESG's suggestion is the new proposal, if there is no consensus
to adopt it, then it fails, and we remain with the rules we have now.

That rule merely requires "attendance" without saying how much attendance,
one day, two days, or more, all count as attending by any logical
interpretation of the words, so anyone who has attended 3 out of the
relevant 5 IETF meetings qualifies for nomcom - unless there is community
(rough) consensus to change that rule.

I agree with you that there is (currently) no consensus here, some people
like the IESG proposal, others don't - that's "no consensus", hence "no
change" - but "no change" means RFC3777 remains as written, not the IESG
suggestion fails to be defeated.

The IETF community as a whole needs to be watchful for (and reject) this
kind of thinking everywhere - another place I have see it is where a
"design team" (or just draft author) writes some text, and the WG discusses
some part of that, then eventually the WG chair (assumed correctly here)
decides that there's no consensus on some issue - unfortunately, often
that's been interpreted as "no consensus to change the design team proposal"
which is flat out wrong - if there's no consensus the existing state of the
world remains - which means (in this postulated example) the design team
proposal fails (on at least that one point), not that it remains as written.

That is, we must stop asking "do we have consensus to change this proposal"
and instead ask "do we have consensus to accept this proposal", the latter
certainly makes it harder to get things done, but the former is far to easily
open to abuse.

And then, since I am here anyway ...

Russ Housley <[email-masked]> said:

  | However, your suggestion is not practical.  If there was a WG that could
  | weigh in on this topic, then that would have been done, but there is not an
  | existing WG with the charter to consider this issue.

Agree with all of that, except "not practical".   See below.

 | RFC 3777 was drafted by a WG, Last Called, and then approved by the IESG.

Yes - that is, the IESG determined that there was community consensus to
support 3777, that's fine.

  | That is the process that made RFC 3777 a BCP.  With the IAOC conducting the
  | Day Pass experiment, an interpretation of the rule in RFC 3777 regarding
  | NomCom eligibility is needed.

Why?

What is the problem supposed to be?

The Last Call certainly gives no clue, all it says is ...

    The IAOC is conducting a day pass
    experiment, making it necessary to augment the NomCom eligibility rules
    to address IETF participants that make use of a day pass.

which makes no sense to me.   3777 doesn't say anything about "fully paid
attendance" or "attended for 5 days" or anything else, all it says is
"attended" - there is no obvious need to change it because of the day pass
experiment that I can see.

It has never been true that everyone who paid to attend an IETF meeting
(in the time before "day passes") attended all N days of the meeting, and
I cannot believe that either the authors of 3777, nor the community at
large, ever thought that they did.   It has always been that some people
only attended a very short part of the meeting - yet 3777 was content to
just say "attended" without attempting to require any accounting of
attendance records (beyond merely having attended).   I don't see that
reducing the financial burden upon some of those (short term) attendees
changes anything of significance, does it?

Certainly it is possible that the community might believe that the
current eligibility rules need tweaking - the current rules have been
in place 6 years now, which was about how long the previous set, with
the 2 of 3 meeting requirement, operated - so perhaps we're due for an
overhaul.

But that's certainly not urgent, there's plenty of time to form a new
working group, and have it thoroughly discuss the nomcom eligibility
rules - including (if that WG decides it is appropriate) whether we need
to determine just how much attendance counts as attending for nomcom
eligibility purposes.   That is, there is no immediate need for a solution
for the coming nomcom that I can see, nor even for the following one
unless the chair of the next nomcom determines that there was in fact a
real problem and that clarification is urgently needed.   Personally I
find it hard to imagine that happening.

I would certainly be astounded if in the dozen (or whatever it is) nomcoms
that have existed since the 2 of 3 rule was first introduced, that in
every single case, everyone on the list of volunteers had attended all
4 (or 5) days of the (originally 2, now 3) required meetings.  I'd
be not at all amazed if sometimes some of the volunteers may have attended
just one day (for all kinds of reasons, such as the one Ed Lewis just posted
about) of one (or more) of the required meetings.

But I see no evidence that there has been some great difficulty caused by
that.   Which nomcom chair's report raised this issue?

So, please enlighten us all - exactly why is some kind of urgent repair
needed?   Why can't we continue using the current rules, where all is
required is unquantified attendance, at least until a WG, and then the
IETF as a whole, decides that some better criteria should replace that?

What actual problem exists to solve here?

  | This point was raised at the last plenary, and
  | the whole community heard many opinions about the right way to proceed.

I wasn't there ... did any of those opinions actually point to an actual
problem or was it just more of what has been seen here in response to this
last call, where he just have theoretical guesses as to what might be better
with no real evaluation of a range of different possible fixes?

Who initially raised this issue?   Did it come from someone in the (existing)
nomcom process?  Or from the IESG or one of its members?  Or just from the
floor?   If we knew where the first suggestion that something might need
changing originated, we could perhaps ask just why that conclusion was
reached, causing the issue to be raised.

  | Given that discussion as input, an interpretation was drafted in the form of
  | an IESG statement.

If there is some real problem that must be solved, such that a quick
solution really is needed, then first I'd expect to have seen some
statement of the problem, and a request for suggestions for fixes.

Do recall that IETF work is supposed to happen on the lists, not at the
meetings - so the discussion at the plenary might have been useful for
clarifying the issue, but cannot itself be the solution - whatever was
said there.

Then I would expect that some independent person (maybe a past poised or
poisson chair, or someone who might chair a new WG if one is eventually formed)
be asked to collect and consolidate the community ideas (in response to
the problem statement) and propose a solution (that is, assuming that this
doesn't go directly to a new WG because there is some justification for an
urgent fix).

Once that proposal was clarified, whether it be as an I-D, or just as
an e-mail message, the IESG could issue a last call on it - an I-D would
be best, as if approved, it could (fairly quickly) become an RFC that
would update 3777, and the process would be clear and documented properly.

Doing it this way means that we both avoid the IESG appearing to be
making changes to the process by which they are reappointed, and then
the IESG determining whether the community agree (roughly) with the
IESG's own statement - both of which are clear conflicts of interest,
just on the face of them (no suggestion of actual malfeasance, just the
appearance of the possibility that it could happen).

So...

  | An Internet-Draft could have been generated, but the next
  | steps would not have been different.

Maybe, maybe not - who can tell if perhaps someone independent from
the IESG might, after reading community suggestions, have come to
a different idea of what change (if any is needed at all) should be
proposed?   How can we know whether the current proposal might not
have been motivated by some desire to boost fully paid attendance at
forthcoming meetings, rather than anything directly affecting the nomcom?

Your message suggests that you believe that the IESG proposal is the only
logical way forward, nothing would have changed (you suggest), and if
you have that frame of mind "something must be done, this is the only
possible solution that makes sense" then how can you possibly rationally
judge the community response?

This is exactly the kind of problem we have to avoid, and why IESG members
particularly must constantly be aware of potential conflicts.

This whole process seems to me to be flawed from the start, withdraw
the last call and start again (if there is really a problem that needs
a solution) and this time do it properly.

kre

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 11:43:00 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 10 May 2010, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> How does this trend at reducing the requirement for participation lead
> anywhere but to eventually saying that anyone may volunteer, without any
> regard for IETF experience?

All I'm really trying to highlight is that the current bar is an 
essentially meaningless measure. If participation should be measured,
and I think it should, a better measure should be defined by some 
future WG activity.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 21:43:10 +0300

Henk,

I do agree, of course, about the likelihood of this rule matching anyone 
who actually does volunteer for Nomcom.

I do think that we should clarify the policy regardless of the small 
likelihood. Think of it as insurance against an unlikely event but with 
bad consequences (possibly long time spent in the nomcom process to 
handle such a case, questioning the legitimacy of the member selection, 
etc).

Jari

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:09:53 -0700

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]> wrote:
> volunteers.

Burnout risk alone should tell you it isn't nonsense, even if you care
absolutely nothing about the diversity of volunteers available to NomCom.

The NomCom takes time and energy to do well, and if someone cares
enough about the IETF to volunteer it, turning them away because some
of their most recent experience was on day passes is silly.  I know at
least two former ADs who attended the last meeting on day passes,
and we have seen others who have not met a 3/5 rule only because
illness forced them to participate remotely.   I'd personally rather
we expand "attend" to include remote attendance rather than narrow
it to exclude folks who didn't pay for a whole week.

As Dave Crocker has pointed out again and again:  the time and attention
of the participants is the biggest undocumented donation in the whole IETF
system.  We use a mechanistic way to determine whether someone is
contributing now for the purposes of NomCom eligibility, recall
petitions, and so.
It's not a great measure and narrowing it, as this proposal does, only
highlights
how poor it really is.

I understand Sam's concern about our funding, but relying on this stick
to keep us solvent within our current paradigm doesn't strike me personally
as either likely to succeed or likely to produce the best results for
the Internet
even if it does keep the org afloat without a funding change.

Just my two cents,

Ted

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 15:44:10 -0400

> it to exclude folks who didn't pay for a whole week.

I've already said too much in this thread, but while I might happily
agree with any plans to diversify the way we define "attend", we
simply cannot do that on anything like a permanent basis without
changing the relevant RFC.  So we need to separate that issue from the
immediate issue of who might qualify for the NomCom _this year_.  We
need to separate the issues because the latter is an immediate
practical concern, and it's really just more important that we have
some rule than that we have a perfect one.  Please let us not conflate
these two matters.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:06:34 -0700

On 05/10/10 08:58, Dave CROCKER wrote:
> 
> Yes, it does stink.  As nearly as I can tell, the import of having Day
> Passes, in terms of other IETF participation such as being on Nomcom,
> was entirely missed by the community -- that is, by all of us.  We are
> now paying the price for that.

One could just as easily argue that there are a non-trivial number of
caring individuals who actually were aware of the issue and relied on
the simple definition of the word "attend."

Doug

--

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:08:38 -0700

> some rule than that we have a perfect one.  Please let us not conflate

Andrew's right.  Sorry for conflating the two.  For this specific issue,
I disagree with the IESG's proposal to declare use of a day pass did
not qualify as "attending" the IETF meeting for the purposes of
NomCom eligibility.

regards,

Ted Hardie

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 16:25:12 -0400

>From the discussion at the plenary, it was clear to me that some people
expected the purchase of a day pass to count as participating in that
IETF meeting, and that others had the opposite expectation.  Both views
have been expressed on this thread.  Thus, an interpretation of the rule
stated in RFC 3777 is needed.

Russ

---

From: todd glassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:36:12 -0700

>> some rule than that we have a perfect one.  Please let us not conflate

Doesnt then also attending a meeting through a video conference
including streaming also qualify? Seems to me both are reasonable
methods of attending these days.

Todd Glassey

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:59:08 -0700

Would it be possible to get a number from the secretariat of those who
have paid full freight for 2 of the last 5 meetings, plus used a day
pass for one or more of the other 3?

I have already asserted that the attention devoted to this so far has
exceeded that which is reasonable based on the fact that it should have
been an easy issue to deal with in the first place. I further suspect
that the number of people for whom the "exception" might need to apply
is sufficiently small as to make the level of attention even sillier.

Doug

--

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 16:59:22 -0400

>>>>> "todd" == todd glassey <[email-masked]> writes:
    todd> Doesnt then also attending a meeting through a video
    todd> conference including streaming also qualify? Seems to me both
    todd> are reasonable methods of attending these days.

I also agree that we should diversify the meaning of attendance.
My preference has been essentially:
   - that to initially qualify you need something like 3 out-of-last-5
     *IN-PERSON* (and yes, I would exclude daypass)

   - but that to remain qualified, you need to attend 1 out-of-last-4
     in-person, and (remotely attend 2-out-of-last-5 OR
     author-at-least-3-revisions-of-draft).

The problem with video conferencing is that you don't get to do any of:
    1) chat in hallway
    2) chat at social
    3) be a tourist at something you know nothing about
    4) hang out in bar, and overhear something that matters
    5) overhear heated debate during fight for cookies

While it is possible that you might get up at 2am to attend a video
conference version of a session you don't care about, I doubt it.

And those above things are pretty important --- it's water cooler talk,
and if you haven't experienced it, then you likely don't know what the
social context things are.

While it's true that things can change after you qualify, and video
conferencing won't tell you much about that, my hope is that the
attendance requirement will update you on that.

(I was at about 8 out of 9 meetings from 1995 to 2004, and about 1
meeting/year since 2005, having missed remote attendance completely,
once.  I blame lack of well-endowed employers, combined with a lack of
desire to fly into the US, even though those meetings are generally
cheaper for me than non-NA ones.  Currently struggling with Maastrich
decision) 

- -- 
]       He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life!           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
   Kyoto Plus: watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE>
	               then sign the petition.

---

From: Martin Rex <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 23:08:28 +0200 (MEST)

> stated in RFC 3777 is needed.

I thought the current wording was "attending" the last 3 out of 5 IETF
Meetings, _not_ "participating".

Although I believe that the spirit is more about participation than
it is about paying a particular registration fee.

In the past, the 3-out-of-5 criteria could be met with the
"North America IETF meetings".  For 2011,2012, attending IETF meetings
in North America will no longer suffice for NomCom eligibility:

Summer 2010   Maastricht,  Netherlands     (Europe)
Fall   2010   Bejing,      China           (Asia)
Spring 2011   Prague,      Czech Republic  (Europe)
Summer 2011   Quebec City, Canada          (North America)
Fall   2011   Taipei,      Taiwan          (Asia)
Spring 2012                                (Europe, provisional)
Summer 2012                                (Asia,   provisional)
Fall   2012   Atlanta,     Georgia/US      (North America)

I would not be surprised if the pool of NomCom volunteers is
going to be much more affected by the upcoming meeting locations
than it would be by retroactively excluding meeting attendees
that purchased a day pass to limit their travel expenses in
an economic decline.

-Martin

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 05:46:51 +0700

Date:        Mon, 10 May 2010 16:25:12 -0400
    From:        Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | From the discussion at the plenary, it was clear to me that some people
  | expected the purchase of a day pass to count as participating in that
  | IETF meeting, and that others had the opposite expectation.  Both views
  | have been expressed on this thread.

That much I can understand, and that is all OK.

  | Thus, an interpretation of the rule stated in RFC 3777 is needed.

But given that we have people with different opinions, we cannot just
pick one and say "that's it" - whichever one you pick, you can't get
consensus because there are lots of people who prefer the other.

That's what working groups are good for - slower certainly - but they can
lead to either compromise, or perhaps an entirely different way of looking
at the problem.

There's not going to be any quick fix for this, and aside from some people's
desire to have one rule over the other (for reasons that still aren't
clear to me) there is still no actual problem.   Nothing is actually
breaking because of this.

Go slow, do it properly.

kre

---

From: Xiangsong Cui <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 09:21:56 +0800

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sam Hartman" <[email-masked]>
To: "IETF" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 1:44 AM
Subject: Re: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment

> into a way to reduce the cost of attending IETF on an ongoing basis.  We

Attending a non-IETF-attendanced IETF meeting? And tell them their
one-day-pass activity does not count as IETF meeting attendance? 

I think there are two separate questions:
1, Does the one-day-pass count as IETF meeting attendance?
2, Is one-day-pass attendance qualified for nomcom memeber?

For the second question I have no strong opinion, 
but for the first one, I think it does.

Regards, Xiangsong

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 21:29:30 -0400

> absolutely nothing about the diversity of volunteers available to NomCom.

Ah, burnout! Thanks for bringing up this point which supports my position.

I'd been thinking that the only significant harm of the annual
drum-banging to get more volunteers and all the wailing and gnashing
of teeth if, say, there are "only 70" volunteers, was arm-twisting
people who aren't that involved or interested into volunteering. (And
I have evidence to support this in that there was usually one
"deadbeat" voting member, who did very little, on nomcoms in which I
was involved.) But, of course, it is also a significant harm that it
may cause people to volunteer who are burnt out and otherwise would
refrain. You know, there is a reason they are called *volunteers*.

Lets say there were 50 qualified volunteers each year. If someone
volunteered every year, they'd only serve one in five on average,
which doesn't sound too bad to me, and if/when they actually serve
they don't have to volunteer again until they are ready to. In fact,
for years (I just checked the past three), the volunteer pool has been
running around 100 people. I just don't see how involuntary burn-out
can possibly be a problem.

Then there is diversity. Sounds fine, but I do not think it would be a
good way to increase diversity by qualifying people who would be, *on
average*, less involved and less widely involved in the IETF.

> of their most recent experience was on day passes is silly.  I know at

It's fine if you think the qualification threshold should be a bit
lower than what I think. But to change it, there should be a real WG
process. The criteria is that for 3 out of the last 5 meetings,
qualify to attend for the week, show up and pick up your badge, and
get publicly listed for a while so anyone who thinks you are not
qualified can object. I don't think that should be changed due to an
IAOC experiment.

> illness forced them to participate remotely.  ...

So, do you think that every case should be judged separately and
individually? By who? I think you need a simple, easy to objectively
enforce, bright-line rule.

Thanks,
Donald

---

From: Phil Roberts <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 02:40:59 -0500

> We need all the volunteers we can get.
Either way the IESG decides to go on this for this round of nomcom 
eligibility will be fine I think given the circumstances.   But I tend 
to think Ted is right about this.  We've done the day passes for two 
meetings?  With how many people taking advantage of it?  And how many 
people taking advantage of it more than once?  It seems that the 
downside of the perception of not being inclusive is greater than the 
risk of getting a nomcom loaded up with a bunch of people who aren't 
really paying much attention.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 12:02:44 +0200

Although I disagree with Don's position overall because I do believe 
we need to be more inclusive as a matter of principle, I may agree with 
him on this one point, because for the MANY years or so that I was 
eligible for the NOMCOM, the random process never chose me.  And chose a 
bunch of people multiple times.  How many times did it pick Ole?  Man...

Which by the way leaves me feeling disenfranchised.  I've written 
numerous RFCs, chaired two working groups, one research group, and yet 
have had little say as to our leadership.  I think that's wrong.

Eliot

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 06:18:15 -0600

On 5/11/10 4:02 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
>  Although I disagree with Don's position overall because I do believe we
> need to be more inclusive as a matter of principle, I may agree with him
> on this one point, because for the MANY years or so that I was eligible
> for the NOMCOM, the random process never chose me.  And chose a bunch of
> people multiple times.  How many times did it pick Ole?  Man...
> 

Perhaps we need a nomcom for nominating people for the nomcom. :)

I mean that semi-seriously. We're trying to measure something vague
(familiarity with the IETF) using a blunt measure (number of meetings
attended in the last ~2 years). There are bound to be misalignments.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 19:15:50 +0700

Date:        Mon, 10 May 2010 21:29:30 -0400
    From:        Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | It's fine if you think the qualification threshold should be a bit
  | lower than what I think. But to change it, there should be a real WG
  | process. The criteria is that for 3 out of the last 5 meetings,
  | qualify to attend for the week, show up and pick up your badge, and
  | get publicly listed for a while so anyone who thinks you are not
  | qualified can object. I don't think that should be changed due to an
  | IAOC experiment.

It's fine if you think the qualification threshold should be a bit higher
than what I think.  But to change it, there should be a real WG process.
The criteria is that for 3 out of the last 5 meetings, attend.   There is
no criteria to pick up any badges, do anything for a week (incidentally, do 
you mean to exclude all the people who fly home Thursday evening and don't
stay for the Friday sessions?_, ever walk in the hallway, or go to the bar,
or even a single working group meeting or plenary.   Just attend (ie: be
there, and perhaps, pay.)   That is what is in 3777.   You might not like it,
you might even be right, but to change it, as you say, you need a full WG
process, not just an IESG statement.

The IAOC experiment just changes payment options, it doe not automatically
cause anyone to attend less, or more, than they would have otherwise, or to
experience any more or less of the "IETF culture".   I cannot even begin to
imagine how this is relevant to nomcom selection.

Would an IESG statement that limited nomcom participation to those who
paid the full fee, and exclude those who used early bird (cheaper) registration
be just as acceptable to you as this one?   (Or the reverse if you prefer,
accept only those who were committed enough to the IETF to pay well in
advance, and exclude those who turned up at the last minute?)

If no, why not - it (either) is exactly the same kind of "clarification" ?

Anything like this requires WG consideration.   For this year we just
leave it like it is where "attends" is "attends" and counts anyone who
was there, paid or unpaid, day pass, early bird, student rate, or full fee
(or snuck in).

For sometime beyond this year (and maybe even next year) the whole issue,
with a whole range of possible changes, can be considered by a WG that
would not be constrained to "take this or leave it" as we currently have.

kre

ps: all the questions as to what qualifications are required of a noomcom
volunteer, how big the pool should be, ...  are all fine topics to discuss -
in a WG created to discuss those issues - none are relevant now - that you'd
even consider making an argument on those lines means that you're accepting
that the IESG "statement" is in fact a change - you support it because you
think it is a good change, while at the same time opposing any other change
(that you like less) as requiring a WG process.   That's unacceptable.

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 06:37:14 -0700 (PDT)

I have attended exactly 70 out of 77 IETF meetings. Assuming the 
perfect coefficient to be 1 (77/77) mine is 70 / 77 = 0.909090909
(is that really recurring ???) And having mostly been good about
volunteering, the system has picked me twice in 24 years, keeping
in mind that we did not have nomcoms etc in the early days and
that we used to all fit in one room.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen

On Tue, 11 May 2010, Eliot Lear wrote:

>  Although I disagree with Don's position overall because I do believe we need
> to be more inclusive as a matter of principle, I may agree with him on this
> one point, because for the MANY years or so that I was eligible for the
> NOMCOM, the random process never chose me.  And chose a bunch of people
> multiple times.  How many times did it pick Ole?  Man...
> 
> Which by the way leaves me feeling disenfranchised.  I've written numerous
> RFCs, chaired two working groups, one research group, and yet have had little
> say as to our leadership.  I think that's wrong.
> 
> Eliot
> 
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 22:51:29 -0400

Just one point on this issue.

Please do not write a policy that says 'part attendance method X does
not qualify'. Instead write one that says that a full on-site
attendance pass is required to qualify.

Otherwise we risk having to keep on carving out one-off exceptions and
may end up with the exception still in the policy long after the one
day passes are gone.

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 11:33:14 +0200

Peter Saint-Andre writes:
> We're trying to measure something vague (familiarity with the IETF) 
> using a blunt measure (number of meetings attended in the last ~2 
> years). There are bound to be misalignments.

But are they bound to be problematic?

My two cents: _Use_ the daypass experiment. If some daypass-only 
attendee volunteers for nomcom (doesn't seem likely, but who am I to 
say?) and is selected, see how it works out. When the daypass 
experiment ends, evaluate its results. Then have a long thread on 
ietf@.

Arnt

---

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 15:48:33 -0400

This is an update to the Last Call that is currently in progress.

The IESG is considering the following Statement on the Day Pass
Experiment.  The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks on
this statement, and the IESG actively solicits comments on this
statement.  Please send substantive comments to the [email-masked]
mailing lists by 2010-05-20. Exceptionally, comments may be sent to
[email-masked] instead. In either case, please retain the beginning of
the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

So far, only one person has registered for the IETF 78 meeting with a
day pass, and that person has not paid yet.

= = = = = = = =

RFC 3777 requires that voting members of the nominating committee
(NomCom) be selected from volunteers that have attended at least three
of the last five IETF meetings.  The IAOC is conducting a day pass
experiment, making it necessary to clarify the NomCom eligibility rules
to address IETF participants that make use of a day pass.  An update to
RFC 3777 will be needed to address this situation if at the end of the
experiment the IAOC decides to make day passes a regular meeting
registration alternative.  This statement provides guidance until an
update to RFC 3777 is proposed, reviewed, and approved.

   14. IETF participants must have attended at least 3 of the last 5
       IETF meetings in order to volunteer.  Use of a day pass for
       meetings prior to April 2010 counts as IETF meeting attendance;
       however, use of a day pass for meetings after to April 2010 will
       not count as IETF meeting attendance.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 15:58:01 -0400

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 03:48:33PM -0400, The IESG wrote:

> Experiment.  

I do not object to this statement, and I support the IESG making some
statement on the matter so that the eligibility rules are clear.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 13:02:15 -0700

> day pass, and that person has not paid yet.

I asked on 10 May for the number of people that the policy would apply
to from the last 2 meetings, and haven't had any response to that query
yet. I'm still interested in that information, and I hope I'm not alone
in thinking that it's germane to the discussion and should be provided
to the community before the IESG (or anyone else) takes a final decision
on this topic.

Thanks,

Doug

- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Last Call: Policy Statement on the Day Pass Experiment
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:59:08 -0700
From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
To: IETF <[email-masked]>
CC: The IESG <[email-masked]>

...

- --

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 16:25:48 -0400

My $.02 worth.

1) For the purposes of the upcoming Nomcom, the decision to not count a day pass as "attending" is reasonable and timely and within the purview of the IESG (or for that matter the IETF chair) to decide.

2) The IESG/IAOC can choose whether or not to offer such a day pass as that is an administrative issue, but the longer and broader discussion on whether or not a day attendee is an attendee for Nomcom purposes should still happen.

3) The IETF depends upon the revenues generated from IETF attendance and, as a matter of incentive, there should be a decrease in benefits if there is a decrease in revenue to the IETF.  In this case, it may also be reasonable to eliminate "student" attendees as eligible for Nomcom membership.

4) The discussion on whether or not you get enough IETF culture while attending on a day pass is a rat hole.  I would submit that I (and probably anyone with more than a 3-4 years or IETF attendence) have accumulated enough culture over my large number  (73) of meetings that my cultural inculcation would not suffer by my attending solely on day passes for the next 5 years or so.  It really is all about trying to avoid providing an incentive for attendees to make a choice that reduces the IETF's meeting income.

5) If the community decides that day attendees are full attendees for the purpose of Nomcom, I would recommend that the IESG/IAOC eliminate the day pass option as a matter of IETF sustainability.

Some additional comments made by others in a discussion between former Nomcom chairs (I'll let them identify themselves) on this issue: 

o My concern with the day pass is that one is unlikely to meet people outside one's relatively small universe.

o Whether we include day passes or not I suspect isn't going to make _that_ much difference in the grand scheme of things.  Someone whose employer isn't willing to spring for the full week, and more importantly, be willing to let the engineer stay for more than single day, is also probably not going to be supportive in letting said engineer put in the necessary time to serve on Nomcom....

Mike

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 13:59:14 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 14 May 2010, Michael StJohns wrote:

> My $.02 worth.
> 
> 1) For the purposes of the upcoming Nomcom, the decision to not count a
> day pass as "attending" is reasonable and timely and within the purview
> of the IESG (or for that matter the IETF chair) to decide.
> 
> 2) The IESG/IAOC can choose whether or not to offer such a day pass as
> that is an administrative issue, but the longer and broader discussion
> on whether or not a day attendee is an attendee for Nomcom purposes
> should still happen.

Or whether a full week pass is any more meaningful.

> 3) The IETF depends upon the revenues generated from IETF attendance
> and, as a matter of incentive, there should be a decrease in benefits if
> there is a decrease in revenue to the IETF.  In this case, it may also
> be reasonable to eliminate "student" attendees as eligible for Nomcom
> membership.

The assumption that folks WANT to participate in the NomCom vs. volunteer
out of a sense of duty to the organization. Purchasing full meeting
attendance so one can volunteer for the NomCom and actually be selected
through the random process is a lot like playing the lottery, etc. I can't
imagine that most folks who would be on the edge re. day pass vs week pass
would really be motivated to spend the extra money so they might be
on the NomCom.

> 4) The discussion on whether or not you get enough IETF culture while
> attending on a day pass is a rat hole.  I would submit that I (and
> probably anyone with more than a 3-4 years or IETF attendence) have
> accumulated enough culture over my large number (73) of meetings that my
> cultural inculcation would not suffer by my attending solely on day
> passes for the next 5 years or so.  It really is all about trying to 
> avoid providing an incentive for attendees to make a choice that reduces
> the IETF's meeting income.

It is not about income, it is about facilitating participation. I continue
to assert that purchase of a 5 day pass doesn't have much correlation
with learning of the IETF culture, and more important seeing potential
new leaders interacting with their peers and expressing their professional
opinions.

> 
> 5) If the community decides that day attendees are full attendees for
> the purpose of Nomcom, I would recommend that the IESG/IAOC eliminate
> the day pass option as a matter of IETF sustainability.

You have no basis for that recommendation other than speculation. My 
speculation is that day pass attendance will increase overall revenue by
encouraging folks w/o any reason to be present for 4.5 days to attend
and participate where it is important.  Furthermore, a number of folks
have suggested allowing multiple day passes which would further
increase revenue.

In any case, the objective should be to encourage qualified participation
in the IETF processes. Adding financial barriers will only server to
reduce participation.

> Some additional comments made by others in a discussion between former
> Nomcom chairs (I'll let them identify themselves) on this issue:
> 

You are still arguing a question that hasn't been raised ... that is what
actually constitutes knowledge of the IETF culture, people, etc. My
agrument is that paying full fare really has no relation to that question.
I paided full fare as recently as Vancouver, attended exactly two sessions
on two days of one working group. That full fare DID NOT qualify me to
help select future leaders via NomCom participation.
 
> o Whether we include day passes or not I suspect isn't going to make
> _that_ much difference in the grand scheme of things.  Someone whose
> employer isn't willing to spring for the full week, and more
> importantly, be willing to let the engineer stay for more than single
> day, is also probably not going to be supportive in letting said
> engineer put in the necessary time to serve on Nomcom....

So the argument is moot ... they won't volunteer

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:42 -0400

On May 14, 2010, at 4:02 PM, Doug Barton wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>

Hiroshima:  121
Anaheim:  135

Ray
IAD

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> Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD)
>
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> =+ckt
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 18:23:35 -0400

Day Pass History:
   Hiroshima: 121
   Anaheim: 135

On 5/14/2010 4:02 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 15:32:43 -0700

>    Anaheim: 135

Thanks Russ (and Ray). However it's not clear to me if those numbers
represent the total number of day pass participants (which they seem to)
or if those numbers are an answer to the question I posed below.

Thanks,

Doug

--

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 18:41:43 -0400

These are the number of day passes that were purchased for the meeting
listed.

Russ

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 19:02:37 -0500

Doug,

I had also wished for numbers that more clearly translated into impact on 
who was NomCom eligible (as you requested), but decided not to, simply 
because I wasn't convinced this would matter enough on who was selected to 
serve on NomCom, to justifiy spending secretariat time gathering the 
information.

Now that the IESG has changed their proposed policy statement so that people 
who MIGHT have purchased a day pass thinking that this counted as 
"attending" for NomCom purposes, I am OK with not knowing these numbers, and 
I believe that the IESG is interpreting 3777 in a way that is not 
unreasonable.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 19:29:02 -0700

On 05/14/10 17:02, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> Doug,
> 
> I had also wished for numbers that more clearly translated into impact
> on who was NomCom eligible (as you requested), but decided not to,
> simply because I wasn't convinced this would matter enough on who was
> selected to serve on NomCom, to justifiy spending secretariat time
> gathering the information.

Here is where my boundless optimism works against me. I imagined that
since this is the Internet ENGINEERING Task Force that the NUMBER of
people affected by the proposed policy would have been something that
the IESG would have asked for PRIOR to generating a policy for them; and
that not communicating that information was simply an oversight that
could easily be rectified. The concept that having to generate that
information at this stage in the game would be new work never occurred
to me.

(OTOH if this were the Internet "Feelings and Flowers" Task Force then
endless pontification about abstract concepts without any actual data to
pollute the stream of consciousness would be totally germane, and not at
all a waste of everyone's time.)

> Now that the IESG has changed their proposed policy statement so that
> people who MIGHT have purchased a day pass thinking that this counted as
> "attending" for NomCom purposes, I am OK with not knowing these numbers,
> and I believe that the IESG is interpreting 3777 in a way that is not
> unreasonable.

The new statement is an improvement as a stopgap measure, yes.

Doug

--

---

From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 15:02:04 -0700

> the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

I support the IESG statement below.
In particular, I note that this statement is specifically regarding the NOMCOM volunteer eligibility for meeting participants with day-pass registrations; it's not about participants with student status.  
I believe student participants should continue to follow the current rule regarding their NOMCOM volunteer eligibility.

Lixia

PS: Full disclosure: I was a graduate student in my first few years of IETF meetings.

PPS: My understanding is that, as of now, IETF meetings have very small number of student participants (Ray can correct me here if I get it wrong).  If this number ever goes up significantly, it may deserve a reconsideration.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 08:10:01 +0200

Rob,

> (that you like less) as requiring a WG process.   That's unacceptable.

I think you scope a working group charter based on the conversations 
like these that occur.  I disagree with the IESG's statement, and I 
don't see even a rough consensus from my own view, but I do accept that 
they have the authority to make such a statement, if rough consensus 
could have been shown.

Eliot

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 21:33:28 +0700

One final message from me on this topic, then I'm done ...

    Date:        Mon, 17 May 2010 08:10:01 +0200
    From:        Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | but I do accept that they have the authority to make such a statement,
  | if rough consensus could have been shown.

I didn't ever say that the authority wasn't there, in fact, if I recall
correctly, in my original message I think I explicitly agreed that the
IESG has the ability to issue such statements when circumstances warrant.

What I said was that they shouldn't here.  There are two reasons.

One is the conflict of interest, the nomcom is a topic, where (just possibly
extreme emergency excepted - which is really hard to imagine here) the
IESG should always ensure the full IETF procedure is carried out.
I said enough about this before so I won't say more here.   [Aside: nomcom
procedure as I recall it has always been that if there's an area of
ambiguity or doubt, the nomcom chair makes a ruling, if there was an urgent
problem here that needed fixing, that would be the way to do it ...]

Second, is that there is no need for any kind of statement here, from anyone.
If the IESG simply did nothing, everything would continue working just the
way it has in the past, nothing would break, or fail to work, in any
way at all, nothing that needs a quick fix anyway, and there is no ambiguity
that needs clearing up.

I know there are people who believe that the requirements for nomcom
membership should change, or should be interpreted differently than
they have been, or now that it is practically possible in some cases to
interpret things differently than it has been in the past, we should do
do - and all of that is fine, I don't agree with all of that, but they're
all legitimate viewpoints - but they all represent changes to the process,
and should be achieved via the working group route, and not via the
back door method of an IESG statement changing the rules.

I have seen the argument that RFC3777 always meant "attended for the whole
IETF meeting" and not just "attended" as it says.  I'll explain more below
why I think this is an incorrect interpretation, but for now let's just
accept that is what 3777 means, and that (because of that) the IESG's
statement is just a clarification, because attendance on a day pass cannot
mean "attended for all 5 days" (I'll explain below why that's incorrect too,
but let's ignore that problem for now).

I would note that in the revised IESG statement, even the IESG agree that
what they are doing is changing the rules - the only justification for allowing
day pass attendees from the past 2 meetings to volunteer, and not those
for future meetings, is that the rules previously allowed them, but they are
not to allow them any more.   If 3777 really meant "attended the whole meeting"
then the original IESG statement would have been the way to go - people
who attended one of the last two meetings on a day pass, clearly did not
attend the whole meeting, and if 3777 does require attendance at the whole
meeting, they should not be eligible.   By making the change made in the
revised statement, the IESG is making it clear that they are changing the
eligibility rules for the nomcom - that's something only a WG should do.

But if "attended the whole meeting" is what 3777 really means, then the
IESG statement doesn't go far enough (not the current version, nor the
original), we know from Rus Housley's message ...

[email-masked] said (Sat, 15 May 2010 11:15:03 -0400):
  | Attendance was determined by the presence of a check-in date.  That is, the
  | person's registration packet was picked up at the registration desk. 

that the secretariat have the ability to determine who was actually present,
and what's more, when they were first there (the check-in date mentioned.)
Even if they didn't have that now, we could easily ask them to collect 
that information for the future, as (just as been done in the modified
IESG statement), if we are actually making a change, no matter what change
is made, or how - via WG or IESG statement, we don't want to apply
retroactively, only to the future.

With this information, we can (or could) disqualify from counting towards
nomcom eligibility anyone who hasn't collected their badge by (say) 11:00
(11am) on the Monday morning - if the intent is that the volunteer must have
attended all 5 days, then certainly anyone who wasn't there Monday morning
(maybe pick some other time instead of 11:00 -  that's the kind of issue a
working group could hash out, of course) was not there for the full 5 days,
and we would know that just as certainly as we do for someone who attended
via a day pass.

Now we have excluded everyone who arrived too late to have garnered enough
IETF experience to be a nomcom volunteer, we just need some way to detect
all of those who leave too early - this one the secretariat would currently
be unable to handle I suspect, but we could ask them to collect badges of
people departing on Friday, say sometime after 10:00 (or 11:00) (Whevever the
Friday sessions end these days), anyone departing before that could take
their badge with them (in case they return) or hand it in (where it would
be ignored for this purpose) - only those people who handed in a badge after
the termination deadline would be showing evidence of having remained until
the end of the IETF and so have (possibly) attended for all 5 days.

We'd still need to deal with people who are at the meeting at the start,
and again at the end, but miss much in the middle, if we are requiring a 
complete 5 days of attendance.  This would be trickier (maybe the RFID
stuff could be managed to watch for people mingling in the halls, or the
bars, as some messages seem to imply is important in order to become a
nomcom volunteer) - or this could simply be skipped as unlikely to make
enough difference to matter.

Just in case anyone is confused and about to argue that all of this is
too much, and unnecessary, I reiterate, I agree - all of that assumes that
being a nomcom volunteer (the requirements in rfc3777) requires attendance
at the whole of the IETF meeting, and not just attendance at some part of
it - a view that I do not hold.

But there's one more (logical) problem with the IESG's proposed statement
I believe, in that it assumes, as best I can tell without justification,
that someone who uses a day pass only attends for one day.  I cannot find
anything that justifies this opinion.  I have been looking for the
announcement of the day pass experiment, and cannot find one anywhere
(not in my saved e-mail archives, and not on the IETF (or IAOC) web pages,
I admit to not attempting to search the archived IETF mailing lists, my
saved e-mail contains only what I considered important when the message
was received - I do have the IETF meeting #76 registration announcement
that said about day passes being available as an experiment for the first
time - but that's not very precise about just what the experiment is, or
the rules - it's about what I would expect for where it appears (ie: it
is OK in context) but I was hoping I'd find something more comprehensive
elsewhere, but couldn't.

Anyway, I cannot find anything that says that someone cannot attend 2
(or more) days of an IETF meeting using day passes for each day.
That is, you simply turn up Monday, obtain a day pass, then if you feel
inclined, turn up Tuesday, and obtain another day pass, and again
Wednesday ...

Now (especially at the rates set for the forthcoming meeting) this might
not make much financial sense, in that attending every day on a day pass
would cost much more than simply paying for the full meeting (for the
forthcoming meeting, if I recall correctly, a day pass is > 1/2 the early
bird full registration rate - for IETF76 however, someone could have attended
3 days on day passes and paid less than the early bird rate, or 4 days on
day passes and just about broken even on the full fee registration (so it
was not even financially silly to use a day pass more than once - and even
now I can imagine scenarios where it still makes sense to do it that way,
even if the eventual cost might be higher than paying for the full meeting).

I challenge anyone to explain why someone who attends 5 days and pays the
full fee IETF rate is more qualified to serve on the nomcom that someone who
attends the same 5 days and instead (for whatever reason) pays for 5 day
passes instead of a full fee registration.

But the IESG's proposed policy is to rule the 2nd type of attendee (of future
IETF meetings) ineligible where the former kind is eligible - which is really
a perverse variation of the intent expressed by some of the people who are
supporting the IESG's proposed policy,   That is, someone who can demonstrate
that they did attend all 5 days of the meeting is to be excluded, in favour
of someone else who actually only attended 30 minutes, but paid for the full
meeting.   Bizarre!

One last topic for this message then you will hear (read) no more from me
on this topic (just possibly excluding the possibility that someone asks me
a direct question not already answered here or in an earlier message, or
just perhaps, if the IESG try a third variation on their statement).

That is, did 3777 ever really intend to require that nomcom volunteers should
have attended all 5 days of the IETF meeting in order to qualify?

The implication being that it was simply too hard to test this previously,
we simply assumed that anyone who paid for it all would attend it all, but
now with (use of only one day of) the day pass type of registration, we can
easily identify some people who did not attend all 5 days, and so we should
exclude them.

I disagree with the assumption - when 3777 (and 2027, 2282 and 2727 before it)
were being discussed, no-one ever considered that it was necessary to have
been at the entire meeting in order to have "attended".   2027 says

	(4) members of the IETF community must have attended at least 2 of the
	    last 3 IETF meetings in order to volunteer.

That's where "attended" originated, later RFCs have qualified things a
little, and changed 2 of 3 into 3 of 5, but "attended" remains as written
then, without any real thought being given to what it means (nor to changing
what it means).

2027 was published in Oct 1996, and discussed in the period before that.

I can assure people who may not have been attending IETF meetings in that
period, that it was *VERY* common for attendees to leave on Thursday
night, and not stay for the Friday morning sessions - my guess just based
upon observing activity around the hotel checkout desk, and number of
people still around on the Friday, is that perhaps 75-80% of all of the
attendees at meetings around and before this period would not have been
present for the Friday.

That is, if "attendance at the whole IETF meeting" is what 2027 meant by
"attended" then there would have been very few eligible volunteers.   I
have no doubt that we'd have several people who have served on nomcoms or
at least volunteered to the point of being in the final list (passed the
attendance check) who will admit that in some of their qualifying meetings,
if not all, they weren't actually present for the Friday morning session.

This was not a secret during 1995 and 1996 - everyone in the poised, poised95,
and poisson working groups would have been aware that people come and go
during the IETF meeting, and that only a very small number of people actually
attend the whole thing (whatever that means - if you're in the hotel, but
in some non-IETF private meeting for a day, is that "attending" the IETF
meeting, or not?   What's more, even then it was common for people to attend
for just one day - one of the standard issues to defuse was to appease people
who were attending for just one day only to discover that the WG meeting they
wanted to attend had moved at the last minute to a different day.

All this was common knowledge (well, some infrequent attendees might not
have known about the possibility of schedule changes, but those attending
the poised family of working groups, and working on the drafts that became
2027 and successors certainly knew it.)

Had the working group ever intended to require attendance on all 5 days,
and had that survived the absurdity test, then I am quite sure that the
text would have said so.   It doesn't, it just says "attended" with no
qualification at all on what that means.  Nor does it say "to have attended
a potential volunteer must have been participating in the meeting for
at least 3 of the meeting days" or anything else like that.

Maybe (subject to practicality) something like that might be a good idea,
but we're not here now to discuss what might or might not be a good idea
to require, but what 3777 does require, and whether the IESG statement is
a change of the rules (which really should go to a working group - perhaps
some other options should be considered, not just this one take it or leave
it) or whether the statement is just a clarification of what the rule always
said.

I submit that it is clear that it is not just a clarification, all 3777
(and all of the RFCs that preceded it) ever required was simple attendance,
with no specification at all of what that means, or what counts as having
attended.   3777 doesn't even say how the secretariat should check who
attended - we all assume that they must use the paid attendee lists, and that
seems like a logical implementation method, but 3777 does not require that.

If we can assume (or agree to) all of this, then I further submit that there
is absolutely nothing that needs to be done now - the secretariat is just as
able to tell who paid for, and picked up a badge (of whatever type) and
thus who attended (I doubt anyone who did not pay but attended anyway is going
to be drawing attention to their actions by demanding to be a nomcom volunteer,
but if that ever happens, and they can demonstrate that they did attend they
should be allowed to volunteer - this is so unlikely I think we should just
ignore the possibility until it happens).

Whether the attendance is via a single day pass, or 5 one day passes, or
a full, early-bird, or student, registration should make no difference.
None of that has ever mattered before, there's no reason for us to believe
that it should matter now.

It would be different if we had a report from a nomcom chair that the
nomcom believed that some of its members had insufficient IETF experience,
and that the qualification rules need to be altered.   I don't believe that
we have that, but if we do, that would be all the justification needed to
immediately charter a WG to look into the issue, and produce a proposal
for the IETF to consider (with no attempt from me to pre-judge what the
results might be, but I'd be astounded if a change that was just "no day
pass attendee volunteers" was the result - especially since no past nomcom
could possibly have had day pass attendees, day passes didn't exist before
the last nomcom was formed, so they could not possibly have caused whatever
problem might have already been observed.)

Absent a problem, I see no compelling need to do anything at all right now.
Perhaps there is a desire to make some changes, which might grow strong enough
to warrant action (in the form of formation of a WG), but I see nothing
immediately that should require that, or any, action.

Imagining what future problems might arise, and seeking to counteract them
before we know what they are, especially without a thorough examination of
all of the available options to correct whatever it is that needs correcting
is just counter-productive.

Please, IESG, just withdraw this statement, and do nothing at all - nothing
needs to be done (and some subset of IETF attendees believing that something
needs to be done does not make it so.)

kre

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 10:51:02 -0700

>Experiment.  The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks on

Is the IESG referring to the "One-day Guest Pass Experiment"? [1]

>day pass, and that person has not paid yet.

11% of the people in Hiroshima used the "day pass".  There were two 
NomCom members who used the "day pass".

The NomCom report [2] submitted by Mary Barnes mentions that there 
was "an issue with regards to individuals lobbying for specific 
nominees.  In addition, there were attempts to exert undue influence 
on the process by suggesting that NomCom members should support a 
specific nominee due to business relationships between the NomCom 
member's sponsor and the organization exerting the pressure".  I 
could not find any reference to an issue in regards to the "day pass".

>registration alternative.  This statement provides guidance until an

Where is the experiment documented?

How long will the experiment be run?

How long will this IESG statement be applicable?

I leave it to the IETF Community to appreciate the message posted by 
Robert Elz [3].

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg06415.html
2. http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-barnes-nomcom-report-2009-00.txt
3. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg61729.html