IASA 2.0 IETF 98 Vevey 1 & 2 # Joe Hall - Report from Virtual Workshops Joe described how he and Jean tried to organize issues and rank them in terms of importance. Joe shared an overview of the organizational structure (too many boxes here to summarize). A number of structural issues were described, particularly the relationship between IETF and ISOC.  Joe identified several issues with the delineation between the organizations. Issues with funding sources for IETF activities were outlined.  Joe provided pointers to drafts by Jari and Leslie on these subjects. The staffing issue was raised. Finally, the internal IAOC organizational structure was mentioned. # Olaf Kolkman - ISOC Contributions ISOC gives ~ $2.3M (2017) and covers IETF budget shortfalls on occasion.  About the same amount comes from the other IETF revenue sources. ISOC charges some of its activities back to the IETF. Olaf described the ISOC community diversification and outreach programs, including the IETF journal, ARNP, mentoring. Regional diversification. Miscellaneous other things. # Jari Arkko - IASA Challenges (and Opportunities) Jari made some observation on finances, its health and trends affecting it. He noted that this indicates a need for change. Jari observed that the structure had some problems and he identified some specific problems. # Alissa Cooper - Summary Statement Alissa expanded on the complexities that were not captured in the schematic we were shown. Alissa suggested that we keep funding and administration separate. Alissa contends that the structure doesn’t allow for the sort of accountability we might want. Alissa asked that people try to help formulate ways of approaching solutions to these problems. # Mic Line Lou Berger - Where does the Trust fit in? Alissa - The trust is obviously implicated by this.  There simply wasn’t enough room on the slide to include a box for the trust.  The report from the workshop includes it. Lou - The trust should be part of the discussion. Alissa - Definitely. Andrew Sullivan - Do we make tiny changes, or a big change.  The structure is too weak.  It needs very, very significant changes.  It overloads a number of positions in a way that it shouldn’t.  Someone involved in the original design said that “It has to be the IAB chair because they have all the state”.  My response is that this is a weakness and we should not route all the one person - we would reject a technical architecture that had a magic box at the centre that did everything. Ted Hardie - Focus on the single individual is a risk. The magic box issue is core to this.  Is this the right set of connections.  I say no.  All of our data is coloured as a consequence of the structure of the organization.  We need more than a refactoring, but need restructuring.  This is likely a lot of work. Harald Alvestrand - I like hearing my own voice. The trust was thrust upon us from certain quarters, and we could have added another label to the IAOC. We wanted for a few things to not happen when we set this up.  “If you have to do work, then you are doing it wrong.” was a principle.  We put one person in to handle contracts.  Then that person needed to take orders from someone, other than the community as a whole.  So the IAOC was created for that purpose.  We did not want the IAOC to become a power centre, so we put the chairs in so that there was no question about it being a power centre, it was another chore for those chairs. Jonne Soininen - We were asked if we should consider small tweaks or a bigger overhaul was asked.  Maybe we should talk about the target and let that drive the decision. We need to ask what organization we might want.  It’s a very different scenario to what we had in that time.  We need to ask how the IETF has changed over those years.  Where we used to ask for volunteers, we find more professionals being involved. Jon - What do you think the target should be? Jonne - Some of the things were done in the design of the time, looking at that does that still fit. I don’t know what the target is. The situation warrants review.  It’s 12 years and the target we had 12 years ago doesn’t exist anymore (“do we still have the fate in our hands”). Jon - There is some question about whether we do have the fate in our hands. Cullen Jennings - Speaking for Ward.  We sponsor both the ISOC and the IETF.  We would like those to be very separable.  That’s how we manage things internally. We would like to sponsor the IETF.  We would prefer entirely separate organizations that work together. Leslie Daigle - The reason that the IAB chair is on the IAOC is that they are plugged into all the IAB activities.  The IAB chair and IETF chairs are two peas in a pod.  I don’t think that solving the overloading of those individuals is a responsibility of the body they represent.  I was the first IAB chair on the IAOC, but then had a long gap before I later joined the IAOC.  In that time, the world changed a lot.  We did not have the RFC editor contract, we were only starting with the secretariat contract.  We did a good job in 2005, but that doesn’t need to take anything away from looking at this carefully.  I think we need significant changes.  We didn’t have experience in 2005, we have a lot more now in those more mundane things. Lucy Lynch - Echoing Harald and Leslie.  We need to get a level above this and look at the reasons for the design.  What do we still want. I still want us to be mostly volunteer.  We need an independent relationship with our funding sources.  How many organizations reorganize every 6 months. Jason Livinggood - Echo Cullen.  Far easier to have separation.  Far easier to explain to finance and accounting. I would echo Lucy, 12 years is a long time for any organization.  If this were an aeroplane, we’d be at the outer limits of the design envelope. We need a clean slate design.  The time is right to do that now. Bob Hinden - This chart reminds me of the analogy of paving the cowpaths.  The structure we have has evolved. The original design was successful in that way.  I’m sure we could do it better, but we need to think hard about what sort of organization we want to be.  Going to paid staff isn’t a good idea, because those staff will run the organization and the community has less of a say.  See how the W3C operates, which is the other extreme, and they are having organizational issues. We wanted to be self-governing, and we got that, but we struggled to get enough volunteers to run this process. Eric Rescorla - Where is the P-CSCF? I was there when this was designed.  It as a reasonable design at that time given those constraints.  The principles haven’t changed, but the environment has. It’s clearly time for some sort of refactor.  There isn’t much danger of the paid staff running things.  The W3C have paid staff as part of the technical mix and the secretariat don’t do that now.  It would be much better (as Cullen said) as a donor, to have separate pots for specific things, rather than donating into some global pool that is then redistributed. Kathy Brown - I sign everything and am legally responsible. The workshops were excellent.  ISOC has deep commitment to the IETF.  We feel that we are partners.  There are deep-seated relationships.  This structure is odd.  You have an activity inside a company that exists inside of a non-profit.  The IETF rightly wants to be independent and also sits inside an organization that makes its own legal decisions, which complicates things.  ISOC are fully committed to be partners as you explore this issue, including the big funding issue. Alissa Cooper - I want to come back to some issues.  Volunteer-lead activity.  Agree with ekr, we can rely on this remaining administrative only.  It seems quite clear that the bulk of the community isn’t interested in taking on the bulk of the administrative tasks.  If we are looking to attract the high quality engineers, those people won’t be suited to admin tasks, nor will be they be inclined to do that.  The participant base isn’t particularly well-suited to that task.  Independence from funding sources.  Are we independent from them now? Lucy - Distinguish between the volunteer org and orgs run by volunteers.  We need to be able to have volunteers to influence the process.  Network setup is volunteers and paid staff, but we have what we have because volunteers are active in the process.  We want self-determination and we need smart hands to help accomplish those tasks.  On funding, I would have to think about that.  When we did this in 2005, we wanted to ensure that we never had a partnership arrangement rather than an ownership arrangement.  Now we have a partnership that needs renegotiation. Leslie - Eric captured my thoughts on the volunteer side of things.  I appreciate how Lucy is characterizing things. We need to rearrange as necessary.  We can’t let that preclude us organizing as we see fit.  I would like to know who is directing our communications plan.  It’s not an IAOC thing.  The IETF chair has to do that now.  The funding challenge is that we understand how we represent ourselves so that others who might engage can understand it so that they can contribute time effort and money. Jari - No one is suggesting that the community would lose control, but more that we have imperfect tools for that.  I think that we will still have a board, and they will still be Nomcom appointed.  What is the goal?  It could be the same goal as what we had way back: gain control of our administrative destiny.  Let’s do the resign so that we keep the control.  We’re already paying people to do this work, but we need control. Dave Crocker - There are lots of issues, which could be overwhelming and we could do badly if we don’t organize the ideas.  We should look for things not to do.  e.g., People over in ISOC that we don’t manage. In some cases, it might be valuable to be involved, but others not. We don’t do performance evaluations for AMS staff, we provide input, but it’s a contractual arrangement.  We hire ISOC for several tasks in the same way.  ISOC is family and family arrangements are interesting. It always produces unexpected effects. Jon - We should talk about the target as a way to overcome the mess of problems. Paul Hoffmannnnnnnnn - Communications struck a chord with me.  If we want the outside world to engage, we need to invest in telling the world about what we do.  ICANN doesn’t understand us very well, for example.  Think about how we communicate this to the community, who might not be engaged in this process, but still care that the IETF continue to exist. Ted - My target here is an effort to change these interfaces so that the people who do the tasks, are doing the tasks that they are best suited to do.  We wasted two years of Andrew’s talent as a former IAB chair.  We wasted his time on something for which he was not selected for.  This hasn’t been good for our organization, or the individuals. Refactoring the organization so that we can make selections that fit the roles. Pete Resnick - This started in 2003/2004 as a problem of family.  We had a falling out with the part of the org that did admin.  We don’t want that to happen again.  No one thinks of the IETF in the way that Kathy described.  We need to restructure this so that we are clearly a family but so that we don’t have any part subservient is important.  I have no problem with professional staff doing admin, as long as we have people who are able to oversee this. Olaf - Everyone at the mic was around in 2005.  Where are the new people? Glenn Dean - As a global host separating the names on the cheques would definitely make this easier.  There is a shift in the industry that is leading to declining attendance.  The pool of volunteers is shrinking.  We can no longer make up the gap.  The number of people here is dwindling.  We need to execute the administrative side so that onboarding is much easier so that we attract and keep new people. Joe Hildebrand - I don’t count as new any more.  We have a lack of bench strength for leadership positions.  We need to accept new work to do that.  We need to own our part in how we treat people who come to use with new work. Alissa Cooper - I wasn’t here in 2005.  But I appreciate the perspectives of those people who were.  Some other principles regarding the target.  Most people who participate in the IETF just want this to work, they don’t care how it is done.  And that is fine. We need to ensure we get as much input as we can, but can’t expect those people to provide much help.  We need to ensure that what we produce is governed by the community.  We need to ensure that we can continue to raise money and attract new participants to the IETF. These are all areas in which we can improve upon. Richard Barnes - Also post-2005.  I find this baffling, but the family metaphor works.  Lots of arrangements are informal in a family.  I write a contract when I loan money to my family.  Making good fences makes for good neighbours.  We need to know where those fences - the needs - are.  That is the first step here.  I don’t have a good answer to this. Alia Atlas - I was here in 2005, but wasn’t involved in IASA.  We have lots of ways to grow technical management (chairs, ADs).  We do apprenticeship and mentoring there.  We have nothing for these administrative tasks.  A lot of our community includes senior engineers with management experience.  If we don’t nurture and mentor, we won’t get people.  I also share the need for outreach and growth. We’re losing institutional knowledge as people retire. Ray Pelletier - I am the IAD.  HELP!  We need to look at the IETF trust.  I can’t watch everything, which is why I suggested we split IAOC chair from the trust chair.  The IAOC always has trouble selecting a chair with so many ex-officio members that we have very few valid candidates.  Mission critical support is what we do, like Meetecho and tools development.  I think we have done a pretty good job.  Sometimes we step on toes, but that is why we have oversight from the community.  Every time I ask the IETF: what do you need?  I’m not getting an answer.  …  IETF is an activity of ISOC.  I had a similar arrangement, where the activity had a divorce from its parent. That was successful, they got more attendance, more money and were more successful.  …  I don’t want to die on the job, I don’t want to die from the job.  So help. Dave - Asks for hands >10y: lots.  3y were mostly ISOC staff, and Joe Hall.  We need to avoid delegating our culture so that we maintain our culture.  Sometimes we don’t delegate where we should, we’re not always good at that. Eric - I’m hearing a lot of the same things from a lot of people.  I’m looking to close out . Gonzalo Camarillo - The target should be separation of concerns. ISOC/IETF relationship is confusing.  The ISOC board is working on this.  We have trouble explaining this to the non-IETF members on the ISOC board.  ISOC is looking at reorganizing to improve how they can better support the IETF.  The split is hard to explain.  My budget at Ericsson goes to ISOC, but ideally some other division would send money to ISOC and my budget would go to the IETF.  Let’s get to next steps Randy Bush - Newcomer badge.  As the Internet becomes successful it becomes vendor backed.  It all comes down to economics.  Sending someone to attend on a finance committee is hard to justify.  We pretend that this ISOC/IETF relationship is a partnership, but without the IETF, ISOC doesn’t last 3 years.  We need to take more responsibility at the IETF for the things that ISOC is doing.  We don’t even know if these things happen until Olaf tells us. Alissa - Thanks for being frank everyone and helping.  I heard a lot of the same things over and over.  People seem to be roughly aligned around the framing questions.  It sounds like there is openness to changes.  ¾ of global hosts mentioned that.  We should continue to talk about Jonne’s question about targets, on the list.  We can at the same time think about the shape a solution might take.  I think we should continue to run this in a workshop style and keep momentum up on the list.  In terms of driving, this is on me, but I will be reaching out to people to ask for help.