Second call for nominations
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The NomCom has been asked to fill the Transport Area Director position now
vacant as a result of Jon Peterson's nomination to Real-time Applications and
Infrastructure Area Director and resignation from his position as Transport Area
Director. Therefore, the NomCom is now accepting nominations for Transport Area
Director, to fill the remaining one year of the term of the vacant Transport AD
position.
Nominations will close at 1700EST on Friday, March 3.
The requirements for the Transport Area Director position are included below.
Please send nominations, including the nominee's name, e-mail address and
telephone number (if available) to nomcom05@ietf.org.
- Ralph Droms
Chair, NomCom 2005-2006
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Transport Area:
The technical areas covered by the Transport area are those with data transport
goals or with transport design issues and impact on congestion in Internet. To
illustrate the latter: the Pseudowire Emulation Edge to Edge working group
(PWE3) was initially in Transport until the architecture was developed, and then
moved to the Internet area. The major topics in Transport are protocols (TCP,
UDP, SCTP, DCCP), congestion control, multicast transports, QOS and reservation
signaling, performance metrics, NAT regularization, NFS, and Internet storage.
Transport is considering future work in generalized forward error correction,
overlay multicast, very high bandwidth traffic, and peer to peer protocol
transport.
A Transport AD should have a good understanding of congestion control, flow
control, real-time transport protocols and other transport-level issues that
affect application layer protocols. These basic transport skills should also be
augmented by strong interest and skills in such issues as NAT and identity.
The Transport area intersects most frequently with Internet Area, the
Applications Area, the RAI Area, and the Security Area. So, cross-area expertise
in any of those areas would be particularly useful.
The Transport area has a strong management tradition. Although the technical
areas are many, a Transport Area Director should have not just technical skills
but also strong management and communication skills. Two of the critical skills
that the Area values especially:
o Guiding working groups to follow their charters closely o Nurturing new
talent for the area's leadership
Generic Requirements:
IESG members are the managers of the IETF standards process. This means that
they must understand the way the IETF works, be good at working with other
people, be able to inspire and encourage other people to work together on a
volunteer basis, and have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its
relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
ADs select and directly manage the WG chairs, so IESG members should possess
sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage ~15-30 part-time
people. Most ADs are also responsible for one or more directorates or review
teams. So the ability to identify good leaders and technical experts and recruit
them for IETF work is required. Having been a WG chair helps in understanding
the WG chair role, and will help in resolving problems and issues that a WG
chair may have.
In addition, all IESG members should have strong technical expertise that
crosses two or three IETF areas. Ideally, an IESG member would have made
significant technical contributions in more than one IETF area, preferably
authoring documents and/or chairing WGs in more than one area.
IESG members are expected to make sure that every document coming before the
IESG is properly reviewed. Although IESG members may delegate the actual review
to individuals or review teams, the IESG members will need to understand and
represent the reviewers'
objections or comments. So the ability and willingness to read and understand
complex information quickly is another important attribute in an IESG member.
(Note that this does not mean that every AD must review every draft personally -
but they must be satisfied that adequate review has taken place.)
It is helpful for an IESG member to have a good working knowledge of the IETF
document process and WG creation and chartering process.
This knowledge is most likely to be found in experienced IETF WG chairs, but may
also be found in authors of multiple documents.
IESG members must also have strong verbal and written communications skills and
a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse
groups.
A few comments on the IESG role:
Serving on the IESG requires a substantial time commitment. The basic IESG
activities consume between 25 and 40 hours per week (varying by area and by
month, with the most time required immediately before IETF meetings). Most IESG
members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further
increasing the time commitment for those individuals. Even if they do not occupy
formal liaison positions, ADs may also need to interact with external bodies
such as other standards organizations, which may require travel. It is also
imperative that IESG members attend all IETF meetings and up to two additional
IESG retreats per year.
Because of the large time and travel commitments, employer support for a full
two year stint is essential for an IESG member. Because of personal impact
including awkwardly timed conference calls, an IESG member's family must also be
supportive.