[ripe-chair-discuss] RIPE Chair Selection Process

> On 11 Oct 2018, at 14:24, Bijal Sanghani <bijal at euro-ix.net> wrote:
> 
> I’m a bit late to this and apologies for that, but having read and agree with a lot of the discussion I would like to make a suggestion:
> 
> The NomCom is selected randomly by whatever ‘name in the hat’ process, however to volunteer to be on the NomCom you must have been active in the RIPE community over the last x years by either attending y RIPE meetings or being active on a RIPE mailing list (or some defined criteria). 
> 
> The NomCom review and select the candidate who is presented to the community to endorse or reject.
> 
> This keeps the process lightweight, open and removes the wgcc involvement, unless they want to put their name in the hat of course.

I like this Bijal! A lot.

Removing the WGCC would address quite a few of the concerns that have been raised. And get rid of possibly superfluous moving parts. Procedures generally work better when there are fewer actors and fewer steps. So this is all good IMO.

The criterion of participating in X meetings over Y years -- for some definition of X and Y -- might well be good enough to ensure the Nomcom gets people who understand RIPE well. It should also do away with the notion of the WGCC performing some sort of sanity checking on the Nomcom membership (or more): something else that has been flagged as a potential problem. The conflict of interest worries would be eliminated too. If someone serves on the Nomcom, they can’t be considered for RIPE Chair. Simple.

IIUC your suggestion is pretty much how the IETF’s nomcom works. Perhaps we just adopt/tweak that and save ourselves from reinventing the wheel?