Minutes of the 2021-12-01 IAB Business Meeting

1. Administrivia

1.1. Attendance

Present:

• Jari Arkko
• Ben Campbell
• Lars Eggert (IETF Chair)
• Wes Hardaker
• Cullen Jennings
• Mirja Kühlewind (IAB Chair)
• Zhenbin Li
• Jared Mauch
• Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Administrative Manager)
• Karen O’Donoghue (ISOC Liaison)
• Tommy Pauly
• Colin Perkins (IRTF Chair)
• Amy Vezza (IETF Secretariat)
• Martin Vigoureux (IESG Liaison)
• Russ White
• Greg Wood (IETF Director of Communications and Operations)
• Jiankang Yao

Regrets:

• Deborah Brungard
• David Schinazi

Observers:

• Warren Kumari
• Daniel Migault

1.2. Agenda bash and announcements

An executive session on the the ISO/TC 154 Liaison Manager interviews was added to the agenda.

1.3. Meeting Minutes

The following meeting minutes were approved:

• 2021-11-17 business meeting – (posted 2021-11-17)

1.4. Action item review

Done:

• 2021-11-17: Cindy Morgan to follow up and announce the ICANN Technical Liaison Group appointment.
• 2021-11-17: Cullen Jennings to prepare slides for a discussion on finding candidates For IAB-appointed positions.

On Hold:

• 2021-04-07: Wes Hardaker (with Cullen Jennings, Colin Perkins, and Russ White) to come up with a list of subjective tags that define common characteristics of good RFCs.

In Progress:

• 2021-05-26: Russ White and Jared Mauch to review the IAB discussion on “The Internet of Three Protocols” and draft a problem statement to see if there is work that the IAB can do in this space.
• 2021-08-25: Mirja Kühlewind and the Liaison Coordinators to set up a formal liaison relationship with ISO/TC 154.
• 2021-09-01: Jari Arkko to continue editing the document on the role of discovery in ensuring that Internet technology is broadly
  applicable.
• 2021-09-08: Liaison Coordinators to come up with a list of potential candidates to reach out to for future IAB-appointed
  positions.
• 2021-10-06: IAB and ISOC to coordinate via email to set up a group to agree on some high-level guidelines about how ISOC can talk about IETF at WTSA.
• 2021-10-27: Cullen Jennings to talk to David Schinazi about the ISE job description.
• 2021-11-17: Mirja Kühlewind and Cindy Morgan to put together some options for the IAB Website revamp for the IAB to review.

New:

• 2021-12-01: Liaison Coordinators to start an e-vote on the ISO/TC 154 Liaison Manager.

1.5. IAB Document Status Update

Datatracker: https://datatracker.ietf.org/stream/iab/

• draft-arkko-iab-path-signals-collaboration
  IAB State: Active IAB Document
• draft-iab-mnqeu-report-00
  IAB State: Active IAB Document
• draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-05
  IAB State: Active IAB Document
• draft-iab-use-it-or-lose-it-04
  IAB State: Sent to RFC Editor
  RFC Editor State: RFC-EDITOR

1.6. WG Chartering in Progress

Datatracker: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/chartering/

(No new initial chartering efforts)

2. IAB Announcements

Wiki: https://www.iab.org/wiki/index.php/Sending_Announcements

The IAB reviewed the different kinds of announcements it makes, and what gets sent to various lists. Mirja Kühlewind proposed that the following be sent to the important-news list:

• IAB Report to the Community (sent before each IETF meeting)
• Calls for nominations, feedback, and announcement of appointments
• Workshop calls for papers
• Request for feedback on administrative matters
• On a case-by-case basis: Other administrative announcements, e.g. new mailing lists or policies

Colin Perkins asked whether the appointment-related emails should go to important-news, since there are so many of them.

Tommy Pauly noted that workshops might have very focused audiences that might not rise to the level of important-news.

After discussion, the IAB agreed to send messages about appointments and workshops to the important-news list on a case-by-case basis, rather than as a default.

3. ISE Appointment

Cindy Morgan reported that interviews have been scheduled with six candidates for the Independent Submissions Editor. The call for feedback will be sent to the IETF-Announce list later today.

4. Finding candidates For IAB-appointed positions

Cullen Jennings said that the IETF as a whole has a pipeline problem with bringing new people into leadership positions. Most WG chairs are people who have previously written an RFC. Most people selected for the IESG or IAB have previously been WG chairs. Cullen suggested broadening that and trying to make a list of people who could potentially be suitable for all roles, sorted by readiness.

Ben Campbell said that he had tried something similar to that when he was an ART Area Director, but when he asked the chairs in his Area who potential candidates might be, the response he got was a list of the existing chairs.

Cullen Jennings replied that there could be some kind of metric (e.g. RFC authoring or document shepherding) that could be used to generate lists of candidates automatically.

Mirja Kühlewind said that she had also tried something similar to this when she was a TSV Area Director, but the problem she ran into was that there were very few new WGs created, and changing out existing chairs when things are going well can be disruptive.

Warren Kumari said that he did not like this idea because it implies that WG Chair or AD is a role that one can be promoted into, thus placing too much importance on the role. He also noted that the people who are willing to be chairs are not always the people who would be good at chairing.

Cullen Jennings conceded that these were some good points, but that there are also people who are capable of doing the jobs but are never asked.

The IAB will continue to discuss this topic with the IESG.

5. Bringing new work to the IETF

Mirja Kühlewind noted that there was some feedback at the IETF 112 plenary about what the IAB does to bring new work into the IETF.

The IAB charter (RFC 2850) says:

IAB members pay special attention to emerging activities in the
IETF and to “Birds of a Feather” sessions at IETF meetings. The
IAB assists the IESG in evaluating such activities and in
determining whether an IETF or an IRTF group is more
appropriate.

Currently, the IAB does several things around new work:

• RFC 2850: “When a new IETF working group is proposed, the IESG will forward a preliminary version of the charter to the IAB for review of architectural consistency and integrity. The IAB shall review these proposed charters and give feedback to the IESG as appropriate.”
  • At their meeting on 2021-10-20, the IAB discussed ways to
    streamline this and improve the feedback provided to the
    IESG.
• RFC 2850: The IAB reviews proposed IRTF groups
• Joint IAB/IESG BoF coordination call & provide BoF reports
  • This works well but mainly supports the IESG rather than supporting proponents of new work
• IAB BoF shepherds
  • Shepherds are assigned at the request of the IESG; does that work as well as it could?

Mirja Kühlewind proposed several other things that the IAB could do to support new work, such as:

• Offer BoF-slide review sessions
• Offer IAB-BoF support office hours
• Add an IAB BoF shepherd request deadline to the important dates
• More actively monitor activities in side meetings

Mirja Kühlewind also suggested that the IAB could create a New Work Support Group. Lars Eggert advised caution around that, as some people might interpret it as the IAB trying to actually do technical work rather than the IAB trying to support the proponents of new technical work.

The IAB will continue to discuss this topic with the IESG, as well as think about ways to get earlier awareness of upcoming new work.

6. Executive Session: ISO/TC 154 Liaison Manager

The ISO/TC 154 Liaison Manager interviews were discussed in an executive session.