Subject: New Chair and game plan.

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:40:56 -0700

Howdy,

First off, I'd like to thank Lisa and Joe for their service as chairs of
the working group.  I very much appreciate the time and effort they've
put in, and I'm glad that they'll be available as working group participants
full time now.

During the discussion of the working group's future, several folks active
in the group volunteered to serve in various capacities; I'd like to thank
them as well.  At this point in its life cycle, my feeling is that the working
group has a small enough number of active editors/reviewers/implementors,
that it makes more sense to concentrate the active members on
those roles.  For the Chair role, I think the group needs someone who
has a strong sense of how to manage the IETF process and how to gauge
consensus within it, but whose technical role is limited to identifying areas
in the specs where new readers might have difficulty following the 
intent.  This is
sometimes called a "process chair" or an "outside chair", but I think my
own mental model is that of a baseball "closer"--a pitcher you bring in
to handle a small number of outs near the end of the game.  I've
asked Cullen Jennings, who also serves as Chair for BEHAVE and IPTEL,
to take on this role, and he's agreed.

During the discussions with Cullen, one of the most important questions was
how close to the end of the game we think we are.  Here, I believe Jim
Whitehead has said it best--the group has a small number of projects that
can be completed in about a six month time frame.  In order to make that
more concrete, Cullen and I would like to set forth the following work
plan:

0) The big deliverable is RFC 2518bis, and though this work plan contains
other deliverables, they can be sacrificed to the independent-submission
tracks to get 2518bis out.

1) Institute clean-slate new WG Last Calls on any drafts that have already been
last called or are otherwise asserted to be done (BIND, QUOTA, REDIRECT).

2) Doc bugs in those get fixed immediately, along with any technical 
issues for which
there is essentially immediate consensus.

3) If any big-picture issues arise or technical matters that cannot be resolved
quickly, the doc for which the issue exists will go to the end of the working
agenda.  It will get further working group attention only when 2518bis is
out of the WGs hands.

4) At the end of the WG Last Calls for these documents, the working group will
go into a concentrated period of work on 2518bis.   An issues list 
will be maintained
by Cullen, who is responsible as Chair for calling consensus on when an issue
has been resolved.  The editors will be expected to make rapid changes in
response to issues-list decisions.

5) The working group will probably not use face-to-face meetings during this
period, but it may host jabber chats or conference calls for the working group
or design/editing teams assigned to specific sections.  Those must be minuted
to the WG and decisions ratified through the normal process.

The aim is to have the WG enter FIN_WAIT by January of 2006 by having 
all of its
documents at or through IETF Last Call prior to that point.  I 
believe that is possible,
with concentration and effort on all of our parts.  I hope you will join me
both in welcoming Cullen to the team and in committing to the effort that
this will require.
			regards,
				Ted Hardie

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 13:52:21 -0700

Thanks for involving me in this and I'm happy to be helping get this work
finished as I know there are people that want to use the standards we are
defining. I understand how weird it is to have a chair that is not one of
the leading technical experts on the subject but I believe I can help get
the documents from where they are not to being RFCs. I'm sure no one on this
list will be shy about helping me stay on the right path and I'm going to
need the help. Email works, my mobile is +1 408 421 9990, IM is
[email-masked] or I can provide IM addressed on any of the
other common IM systems.

Let me know what you can contribute to get these documents to RFC. Providing
a careful read of the documents in the upcoming working group last calls and
text on how to fix any issues is always appreciated.

Thanks, Cullen