[NON-OPERATIONAL] Re: NANOG Evolution

Tue Jun 21 07:03:42 UTC 2005

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Hannigan, Martin wrote:

>>> Ultimately, the SC is elected to represent the membership and
>>> carry out it's will and that should be uniformly actionable
>>> across the board in order for the SC to be taken seriously
>>> by the group and by Merit.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean here.
>
> It means that it doesn't make a lot of sense to handcuff
> the SC out of the gate on a supposition that they will do
> 'something bad' to the PC.
>
> Anyhow, it's a window dressing handcuffing. Looks like anyone can be
> removed with a 5 to 7 vote of the SC. You've all read the revised
> Charter, top to bottom? Kind of makes 6.2.1 ceremonial. It should
> be removed based on that alone.

As the charter is currently written, every future steering committee will 
be stuck with a specific half of the program committee, left over from the 
previous year.  The first steering committee gets to decide which of the 
current program committee members are in the half that they're stuck with, 
so they're much more powerful when it comes to program committee selection 
than any future steering committee will be.

In the draft that several of us worked on, the first steering committee 
had even more power than that, as they could have fired the entire program 
committee and started over.  Merit changed that, and gave lots of time for 
people to object, but nobody did.  As a result, we've got a system where 
all program committee members will have been chosen by the steering 
committee immediately, but half of them will have been chosen from a 
limited pool.  A year later, we'll have a program committee that has been 
entirely chosen by the first two elected steering committees.

In the original draft, we staggered the steering committee terms because 
we wanted continuity.  In Merit's version, that continuity was extended to 
the first year.

As Marty points out, a super-majority of the steering committee could 
remove more program committee members.  The super-majority requirement was 
put in to make it hard to do -- something that should happen when there's 
consensus that somebody isn't working out.  I don't think it would be 
appropriate or necessary for the steering committee to use that power to 
override the intent of the charter, nor do I think it would be a good idea 
for the steering committee to get rid of even half of the program 
committee at once.  If Marty is feeling constrained by that section of the 
charter (I'm not sure if he is, or if he's just making noise), then we've 
found at least one difference between two of the candidates. ;)

-Steve