Markdown Version | Session Recording

Session Date/Time: 07 Oct 2024 12:00

ARTAREA

Summary

This was an informal Ask Me Anything (AMA) session focused on IETF leadership roles, particularly Area Director (AD) and Working Group (WG) Chair positions. The discussion covered challenges in recruiting new leaders, the time commitment involved, strategies for encouraging participation, managing contentious discussions within WGs, and the recent restructuring of the Applications area into ART and WIT. The session aimed to provide insights for current and potential IETF leaders.

Key Discussion Points

• Informal AMA Session Purpose: The session was an open Q&A without a fixed agenda, relying on participant questions to guide the discussion, primarily concerning IETF leadership roles.
• Recruitment Challenges for Working Group Chairs:
  • Difficulty was noted in finding new WG Chairs, even among experienced IETF contributors with multiple drafts and RFCs.
  • A significant barrier identified was the lack of corporate support or perceived career benefit from employers for IETF leadership roles. Many potential candidates do not see chairing as a path for promotion within their companies.
• Strategies for Encouraging IETF Leadership Participation:
  • IESG "Thank You" Letters: An IESG initiative is underway to create formal "thank you" and congratulatory letters for chairs and individuals in other important IETF roles. The sense of those present indicated these letters, especially if they mention affiliations with other companies, could be highly valuable for inclusion in corporate promotion packets, making IETF service more professionally recognized.
  • Mentorship and Pairing: A recommended strategy is to pair new, less experienced chairs with seasoned ones, enabling the new chair to learn and eventually become an experienced mentor themselves.
  • Stepping Stone Roles: Encouraging individuals to serve as Working Group Secretaries was suggested as a way for potential chairs to gain a full understanding of the WG's operations and the chair's responsibilities before taking on the more demanding consensus-making role.
  • Targeted Recruitment: Actively looking for new individuals, including from underrepresented groups like women, to diversify the pool of WG Chairs.
  • Call for Interest: Utilizing broad "call for interest" announcements to reach a wider candidate pool beyond the "usual suspects."
  • Focus on Process over Deep Expertise: It was noted that chairs don't always need to be the absolute technical experts on a topic; effective process management and conflict resolution skills are often more critical.
• Time Commitment for Area Directors (ADs):
  • The time commitment for an AD can range from a "bare minimum" of 30% to 60% of work time, potentially extending into evenings and weekends for those passionate about the role.
  • Key activities include document review (the most visible but often non-stressful part), follow-up on DISCUSSes and balloting (more time-consuming, requiring detailed checks and author interactions), finding and guiding WG chairs, and monitoring mailing lists.
  • Handling unexpected, high-stress administrative events (e.g., meeting cancellations) also demands significant AD time.
  • Email management, particularly dealing with "bursty" or rapidly evolving discussions on mailing lists, was highlighted as a challenging aspect due to its unpredictable pacing. ADs develop skills in skimming and selective deep reading for efficiency.
• Managing Contention:
  • It was observed that contentious discussions often stem less from purely technical disagreements and more from underlying personal tensions or differing priorities among participants.
  • Effective strategies include:
    • Holding separate phone calls with individuals involved, followed by joint calls. Video calls were preferred to "humanize" interactions and remind participants they are dealing with people, not just abstract arguments.
    • Actively trying to understand and articulate the motivations and underlying constraints behind each side's technical position.
    • Finding ways for parties to compromise while allowing them to "save face" and maintain their reputation.
    • Using active listening and restating a participant's position in one's own words (verbally or via email) to clarify misunderstandings and remove emotional content from the discussion.
    • Being mindful of language choice, especially when interacting with non-native English speakers, to prevent misinterpretation in heated exchanges.
    • Recognizing when specific participants consistently struggle to interact constructively and intervening to mediate or rephrase.
• ART and WIT Area Restructuring:
  • The division of the former Applications (APP) area into Applications and Real-time (ART) and Web and Internet Transport (WIT) was initiated to address load balancing issues, as the APP area had a high volume of new work.
  • WIT generally encompasses web technologies and transport-related working groups (e.g., HTTP), while ART retains responsibility for formats, codecs, email, calendar, and general application protocols with client-server interactions (e.g., REGEXT).
  • This restructuring is viewed as an adaptive measure for the IETF to evolve with the technical landscape and workload distribution, rather than an immutable change. So far, it has reportedly improved load balancing and meeting scheduling.
• Area Director's Role in Working Group Management:
  • ADs aim to oversee without becoming "helicopter managers," respecting the autonomy and responsibility of WG Chairs.
  • Engagement levels with WGs vary based on the group's dynamics and chair preferences; some chairs prefer weekly meetings, while others prefer minimal AD involvement between IETF meetings.
  • It was noted that effective WG Chairs significantly reduce the AD's workload by ensuring smooth operations and thorough document shepherding, making the AD role in such cases more administrative than purely technical.

Decisions and Action Items

No formal decisions were made, as this was an informal Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

Next Steps

• Future Informal Sessions: Similar informal AMA sessions are planned for upcoming IETF meetings (e.g., IETF 120 in Madrid) to continue engaging potential and current leaders.
• IESG "Thank You" Letters Initiative: The IESG is continuing its initiative to develop formal congratulatory letters for IETF leaders.
• Potential for Informational Document: It was suggested that the insights shared about AD and WG Chair roles could potentially form the basis of an informational document or draft.