August 11, 2005, Conference Call Minutes
Attending: Scheduled business, taken from the NANOG charter, included the following:
The group then discussed selection and membership of the next Program Committee. There is agreement that there is no strong sentiment for major change being required.
Steve Feldman would like any PC changes in place by November 05. The SC agreed the SC should meet with PC during the October meeting. Dual membership on the SC and PC was discussed. Philip Smith is active in APRICOT and noted that when the Apricot PC is discussed, it is recommended that dual members abstain from voting on this issue. There are three SC/PC members in this position, Joe Abley, Bill Norton and Chris Morrow. Steve reported his only concern is that when SC members are also on the PC, they must honor his role as chair of the PC.
The Charter says that one non-voting SC member will be on the PC, but the Charter assumed there would be no overlap. Jared Mauch believes there is sufficient overlap for now that we don't need to appoint anyone to that role at this point. The committee is in general agreement with this position. Further, the committee consensus on this position indicates that overlap is ok as long as one person does not chair more than one committee.
The SC formally ratified the present program committee.
NANOG mailing list policy (as recently asked by the list admins) was discussed. Randy Bush recused himself from the discussion. Steve Feldman reported that guidelines were developed by mail list admins based on their perception of the needs of the community in February 05. Steve Feldman feels this is a hot-button issue with many valid viewpoints. Joe Abley suggests that there be an appeal process to the SC when a sanction is being recommended/imposed by the mail list admins. Joe Abley further suggests SC members should be treated as normal NANOG community members. Betty Burke recommended there be regular communication between the Mail list administrators and the SC. Bill Norton indicated the mail list admin members have asked how long their term is to be. Betty Burke reported there is no term in the charter, and they serve as appointed by the SC.
The SC formally ratified the current mailing list admin team.
Submitted:
Betty Burke, Randy Bush
Attending: There was no quorum; the charter says we need four people to make decisions, and Steve was present ex-officio.
Attending:
For this first PC selection process, current members of the PC will also nominate themselves, and the selection process will choose a new PC from all available candidates, ensuring that at least eight existing PC members are retained, as per the charter. The precise selection mechanism has yet to be determined.
It was noted that the steering committee do not currently know the policies and process being applied by the mailing list committee.
It was further noted that the mailing list administration team have to date banned one person from the mailing list.
Per the NANOG charter section 7.1.2, members of the list administration team may not also be a member of the programme committee. Susan Harris currently participates in both; the steering committee requests that she excuse herself from the mailing list admin team, since the programme committee has the greater need for her experience and expertise.
Steve reported that the agenda for October is currently a little thin.
The SC would prefer all NANOG lists to require confirmation for subscription and unsubscription, and Merit sysadmin staff will be asked to confirm whether there are any technical issues with making this happen.
Attending:
No one has come up with a really good idea of how to make the decisions. Also have the problem of how to balance SC & PC. Bill suggests that the SC needs to be in the driver's seat. We should choose the 16 best and then make sure it meets the new/old balance criteria of the charter. Diversity in PC membership is important. Steve will put out a straw proposal on how to decide. And a reminder call will be done on Monday.
The Social, transportation, etc. are being arranged. Audio and video on the break room are being arranged. The streaming archive will be available with a four hour lag.
The ML discussion should be part of SC open meeting, not a separate BoF.
There will be visualization of NANOG meeting net traffic available. If it does not identify users, it should not be a privacy problem.
Registration is just starting. 150 registered so far, which is about normal. Some folk have problems with the fact that one is immediately charged for registration. Can't solve this time, but working on solving it for February.
Good sponsor support for snacks, meals, etc.
Someone is negotiating to host February 2007, which would
be a big step in getting scheduling well in advance.
No badges of rank for PC or SC members. Maybe colored badges.
SC open meeting Sunday evening:
We will have about two hours. The meeting should be
broadcast. There should be a way for folk not at the meeting
to send in comments and questions. Openness is a goal.
Bill will draft the SC progress report
Agreed that we need to do something on ML committee
selection process. Philip will try to draft an ML
selection process based on the PC selection process in the
charter. We will refine the proposal and then discuss it
with the membership in LA and on list with the goal of
having it in place in the months after LA.
Agenda for putting on the web site
- SC Progress/Status Report
- Open microphone
- Steve - PC report
- Open microphone
- Betty - finances
- Open microphone
- Mailing List issues
. SC process regarding ML committee, i.e. terms, selection, ...
as this is not covered well in charter.
. ML policy and process
. ML appeal process
. other open issues
- Open microphone
Randy to put out call for agenda items for SC meeting
Attending:
Absent:Joe raised the question of whether those present on the call who were also serving on the PC, and were nominated for the next PC, should properly recuse themselves from the discussion. It was agreed that it was proper for those overlap SC/PC members to participate in the discussion of the mechanism for election of the next PC, since that discussion does not involve decisions about individual candidates.
The public comment period had started and we had received input from a few people. We planed to start the decision process on Monday 2005.10.03.
Bill wondered how well known the candidates are? We would have a problem judging if we do not know them. Steve noted that the SC is diverse, so one of us is likely to know any candidate. But we were not sure if the coverage was total. It was thought that there were enough quality folk in the pool, so if we missed someone who was not known, we still would have a good PC.
Steve noted that we have contact details for all the candidates, and so it is possible to contact individual candidates in the event that people need more information about them.
Steve wanted to vet the new candidates to come up with a short list. He envisioned each picking their top eight, or maybe alternatively a ranking.
Randy asked why we would treat the two pools separately, the goal being to get the best 16 under the retention constraint. Steve replied that the issues was the overlapping current members needed to be excluded from discussions of the current PC re-volunteers.
Joe suggested that input and rankings be drawn from all PC, and that only a subset of the SC, {SC-{SC^PC}}, discuss new volunteers.
Randy should set up a mailing list of SC members not on PC to do the hard part of the decision. Current PC members should be strongly encouraged to send their rankings of current and new volunteers to this small list.
There will be a SC con call on Monday 2005.10.10, usual time, 23:00 gmt, unless Philip has a serious issue.
It was discussed if four people would be too small a group to make the decision. But we should not have PC members on the committee deciding about current PC members. And we can not drag people in from outside as that would be SC members appointing new SC members, even pro tempore, which would be bad precedent. So four it will be.
Bill was not comfortable with only four people selecting the PC. He was asked for suggestions. He suggested that the three Overlap folk would un-volunteer from the PC. The problem is that losing all three would be very hard on the PC.
The problem was that that there are 12 volunteers from the current PC, and if three more un-volunteer, we are left with choosing at least eight of nine, which is not good.
It was suggested that the dual-members might help decide only on the new volunteers.
Three alternatives: 1) Subgroup {SC-{SC^PC}} of four to make total decision 2) Overlappers resign from PC and all SC makes decision 3) Subgroup makes decision on who to keep from existing PC and then overlappers join full-SC call to make decision on who to choose from the pool of new volunteers. The decision was to take the third alternative.
A PC+SC combined call will be Friday 2005.10.07, 19:00 gmt, so the SC can get input from, and exchange views with, the current PC.
The ML appointment/policy issues can be decided openly and put in place by the SC this year, and let the charter formalities be done more calmly and prudently over the next year.
The joint PC/SC membership issue will need to be resolved.
Removing Steve's name from the charter would be a good thing.
SubSC (SC members who are not also PC members) call attended by:
SubSC met for ten minutes and chose from the existing PC per charter:
Randy reviewed who the SubSC had chosen from the existing PC.
A general discussion of new volunteers ensued. It was very difficult to decide. There was much effort to get a balance of talents, industry, etc. The lack of candidates from large enterprise and content providers was notable. After much discussion, the SC as a whole converged on:
The SC strongly encourages the candidates and current PC members not selected to continue to be involved in the process. Their work, willingness, and interest has been and is greatly appreciated.
Steering Committee email address: steering@nanog.org.
Attending:
On vacation:There was some discussion of survey forms, whether we actually use them and what we have learned from them. The data are posted publicly. Perhaps we should review survey results in the next open SC community meeting?
The open SC community meeting was felt to have gone very well. People seemed constructive and comments were extremely useful. We need to encourage more folk to speak.
A few people, led by Ren Provo, are working on mini-BoFs for next meeting. Ren and crew should discuss and plan this on the nanog-futures list. They should figure out what is needed and the PC and logistics folk will try to provide the needed facilities.
It was thought to be very desirable if the ML Panel, in
cooperation with Merit, could periodically post statistics
something like the following:
o number of subscribers
o number of posts
o distribution of posts per subscriber
o number of warning issued
o list of threads that required intervention
o number of bannings, and for how long
But we do not want to create too much manual work beyond the
normal work flow.
Attending:
Apologies received:On vacation: Joined by guest artists from ML Panel: Missing:
Steve Gibbard noted that it took MERIT intervention for him to get the group rate from the hotel.
Steve wanted an A/B video switch on the podium. Also, the MERIT laptop was a bit slow and will be replaced.
Bill asked what the content would be. Steve suggested a short introduction to NANOG, meeting structure, introduction to socializing, pushing old timers to mingle and take on mentoring. Total time might be an hour, followed by half an hour before community meeting.
Bill was specifically looking to get lunch sponsorship. in exchange for speech and signage. Steve noted that we have already gone down this road with hosted parties. He noted that it was critical that these must be open to all NANOG attendees.
If NANOG space, time, name, or other resources are used, any event should be open to all NANOG attendees.
Attending:
Apologies received:
Attending:
Apologies received:
The Steering Committee email address is
steering@nanog.org.
Back to the Steering Committee Activities page.