Re: Comments on Composition and Comportment of the IETF Nominating Committee draft

Although I volunteered every year, my only involvement with NomCom was as Chair in 2022 and therefore as advisory past Chair (for Martin) in 2023. During my term I sat in for almost all the roughly four-dozen interviews, and in 2023 I attend perhaps 15-25% of the roughly five-dozen.

The following is my opinion based on what I saw.

As the written questionnaires are now common practice (if not de rigueur), having only a fixed set of questions for the interviews severely​ limits the information that the voting volunteers can collect. Sometimes I wondered what’s the point of that, just add it to the questionnaires. I realize that some people are more verbally oriented, but the IETF produces documents, so compensating for that might not be an important goal. For non-native speakers, it seems that generally written is easier/better for them then a stressful spoken interview.

I have also been interviewed by NomCom several times and never selected. I think that is an important perspective that has not been raised yet. In my interviews, I could tell when they were just going through the motions and writing down what I said. (Perhaps the apotheosis of that was when someone used AI to summarize; ugh.) I know that I felt most engaged when I was asked follow-up questions related to what I had just said. It also helps unsure that people understand the point being made. Particularly when you recall that most of the voting volunteers (usually three-fourths) will not be at the interviews and will have to rely on the notes. They are not recorded..