I shall not return

Sorry for the confusion I caused when I mentioned on Twitter that I am filling in

a NomCom Questionnaire. I didn't say for *which* IETF Area, did I?

So, I need to set the record straight. I am retiring from the Apps Area Area Director

position, sort of (see below).

I was delaying making the public announcement on this for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I had to admit that I had a moment of "ego massaging". When a friend told me

that "people are discussing rumors behind my back", I felt flattered.

I am not nearly as important and not nearly as interesting as many other people

on this planet. But I still have an ego, you know. So, I actually wanted to know

if anybody would notice that I am not running for another term and if anybody thought

I did something useful during my IESG term as an Applications Area Director. If nobody is willing to renominate you for another term, than it is a sure sign that you shouldn't do that again.

Secondly, I didn't want to make the rest of my IESG term ineffective. When I was replacing

Chris Newman on IESG he half jokingly said "I am an outgoing AD, nobody wants to talk

to me anymore: I am not important". While this is likely to be unavoidable, I still

have some plans remaining for my current IESG term and I still have time to implement them.

On the other hand, I actually believe that it is important for the community to know

that I am not running for another term as an Applications AD. So this is my public

announcement.

People might be interested to know my reasons for not running for another term in Apps.

After all, I am running for another IESG position, which means I am still interested

in being on IESG. And it is much easier to stay on IESG by running for the same Area again

(unless one made lots of enemies, which hopefully isn't the case for me).

There are several reasons and some of them should remain private. But here are the main

reasons I can tell you:

1) I am reviewing tons of documents for IESG telechats every 2 weeks. Finding all typical

Apps Area related errors people make is becoming fairly mechanical and I want to do

something new, move on to new challenges.

2) I checked my NomCom answers from a few years back to see what I wanted/promised to

do in the Apps Area. I realized that I've done or at least initiated most of the things

I was planning to do and I have a bit of a hard time thiking of new goals. I am sure I can think of something, but nothing comes to mind right away. So it looks like it's been a productive 1.5 years.

3) I've looked at what I have been doing on IESG for the past 1.5 years and I can see

that most of the things I was doing are quite remote from what my employer is doing.

Isode is doing lots of email related things I am responsible for in Apps (as well as

some security related things (S/MIME & PKIX) and Instant Messaging [but this is RAI Area

and I am not running for RAI :-)]) and most of the new things in the Apps Area are related

to the Web. While Web is cool, Isode is not doing active Web-related development,

and I would like to keep my standards work in close alignment with my day job.

If you are still reading this than I can tell you that I am running for the Security

Area Director position this time, but I also would be thrilled with getting an IAB position. But of course this all is for NomCom to decide.

"Fake Answered Questions":

Q: What will you do if you don't get selected by NomCom as a Security AD?

A: I still have some projects I would like to finish (both related to Applications

and to Security Areas), I also keep a list of Working Groups I would like to chair ;-).

Q: Is this an elaborate plan to subvert NomCom process to make IESG self selected?

A: Gosh no. Don't you dare to think that. This is entirely my decision. People wanted to talk me out of this. Thing is that I have been volunteered for Security Area before, so I wanted to try.