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Please return to nomcom-2022@ietf.org no later than the end of the day
on November 2, 2022.

This questionnaire is intended to provide the Nominating Committee with
information to help select among nominees for IAB.

We ask that you provide us with a response in English using a plain text
format (Unicode is OK) wrapped to 77 columns.

CONFIDENTIALITY: NOTE that the contents of this questionnaire will remain
absolutely confidential to the Nominating Committee and the confirming body
(the ISOC Board). If you are chosen for a position, the confirming body may
see your responses. Please note that there is a section of this questionnaire
labeled NOT FOR CONFIRMING BODY. That section will NOT be provided to them
during the confirmation process. Anything you enter in that section (it's the
final question), will be kept confidential ONLY to NomCom.

Please review the "desired expertise" for the position, found at the tab with
that name at https://datatracker.ietf.org/nomcom/2022/expertise/ and use that
to guide your responses. You might also find it worthwhile to read the whole
questionnaire first, as some questions are inter-related.

Thank you!

==============================================================

1. Name and Contact Info

Name: Henk Birkholz
Affiliation: Fraunhofer SIT
(Consultants/Contractors, please provide the affiliation(s) of your primary
customer(s))
Email(s): henk.birkholz@sit.fraunhofer.de, henk@birkholz.email
Phone(s): +491773827730
Home Timezone: CET
URL for resume/LinkedIn/etc:
(You may link to your resume, or include it below the text of the form.
Do not use attachments to your email - they may be lost!)

==============================================================

2. Experience

Please explain your current experience related to the job description you are
nominated for. Please cover relevant management training and experience.
(Including: soft skills, conflict resolution, leadership, and intercultural
interactions). Describe your experience working in diverse environments.

If you are the incumbent in this position how would you rate your performance
in your past term against each of the following questions in your responses
to these questions. If you have previously held a leadership position in the
IETF please relate your experience in this position against each of these
questions. Provide that information in the questions below.



I have been representing or participating for the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information
Technology in Standards Defining Organizations (SDO) for 10 years. I had the
chance to participate in trainings, such as team building, lateral
leadership, priority management, anti-harassment, accounting, privacy
awareness, and anti-corruption several times. I've received specific coaching
for Japanese and Chinese etiquette in 2019. My role puts me in charge of
industry project acquisition and coordination of consortium creation, if
multiple global industry stakeholders are involved. I co-chair three publicly
visible working groups: opsawg and iotops WG in IETF, as well as Attestation
WG in TCG. I am a reviewer for iotdir, ENISA, and HSBoost. I am a contributor
to IETF, TCG, 3GPP, NSTAC, and a few government agencies inside and outside
of Germany.

Specific to the IAB nomination, I was in the fortunate position to be able to
learn from stakeholders within and outside IETF; sometimes about the IETF,
sometimes about other SDOs, but mostly about persistent or reoccurring
challenges regarding Internet solutions that are in support of supply
chains. 

As a representative list of industrial cooperation partners I presently
collaborate with, I can name as reference:
American Express, Arm, Amazon, Cisco, GE, Google, Hitachi, HPE, Huawei,
Intel, Interdigital, Juniper, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Telefonica, Toyota, and
Volkswagen

As a representative list of universities that I presently collaborate with,
I can name as reference: Johns Hopkins University, King's College, New York
University, Northwestern University, Monash University, and the University
of Surrey

As a representative list of government bodies or government related bodies
I presently collaborate with, I can name as reference:
BSI(de), BSI(uk), CISA, DIN/DKE, ENISA, ESA, MITRE, NIST, and NTIA

==================================================================

3. Participation, Diversity, and Mentoring

What would you do to improve participation in the IETF? What would you do to
improve the diversity of participation? What would you do to help prepare the
next group of leaders in the IETF?

Typically, an individual participating in the IETF expects some ROI. New work
in the IETF that goes through a dispatch can require new working groups,
which require significant time to produce. Without a mentor with real time on
their hand or well-versed contacts inside the IETF that are willing and
motivated enough to help, trying to manifest work in the IETF sometimes
appears to be a bit of a frustrating experience. Referring to the first
'5434-criteria', maybe the IETF is not the right group to attempt solving a
specific problem - that would be okay. But figuring all that out could be
easier with a more obvious landing pad; maybe something like a set of
'mentor pages' (maybe similar to the existing chair pages) that help mentors 
to guide new contributors in a better structured fashion. Correspondingly, 
dashboard pages for newcomers can help them identify what would be a good 
next step on the path to achieving some result.

To attract a more diverse crowd, the IETF may be in need of some better
advertising channels for their output. Not Twitter or Linkedin,
but via other SDOs and collaboration with Industry Consortia so that existing
solutions for current real-world requirements can be better discovered in a
more transparent network of stakeholders. Channels like subscribing to
ietf-announce or last-call or reading the occasional IETF blog post might not
have the best reach. A strategic approach to maintain mutual communications 
to relevant SDOs should complement the more formal liaison process. These 
approaches already exist to some extent (e.g., for IEEE or via T2TRG), but 
need a more general footing.

Leaders really must effectively prioritize and queue decisions to be made.
Preparing 'the next group of leaders' involves to know how to learn how to
prioritize - and by extension, for example, how to delegate by priority, when
to act fast, or when to be very transparent (or not). Knowledge transfer in
support of this kind of decisions making is vital to render the IETF
processes sustainable and will help individuals taking on leading roles for
the first time to navigate their responsibilities more efficiently. 
A more bite-sized granularity of leadership coaching offerings might make 
it easier to acquire these skills.

==================================================================

4. IETF

What problems is the IETF facing today? What in your opinion are the three
most pressing problems and how would you address them?

1. IETF as a component supplier needs to become a more natural component 
   of a standards supply chain: problems are
   1. time to market:
      * better manage known but unpredictable process blockers
   2. visibility:
      * become known as a reliable supplier for other SDOs
   * both help to improve the positioning and reputation to improve the
     relevance of IETF standards

2. Sharpen the focus on systemic matters, too. 
   Symptom: the datatracker is improved on "Zuruf". 
   (Issues brought up in an ad-hoc manner acquire an unnaturally high priority.)
   * systematic and continuous steering of a datatracker development
     roadmap, similar to the goals of the recent reorganization of the RFC
     production process
   * systematic and continuous survey and assessment of the requirements of
     our volunteer-based organization, e.g. an AD dashboard for other IETF
     roles, such as chairs, draft authors, shepherds, etc.

3. Persistent symptom: IETF "membership" is aging.
   * customers are impressed by the professionality and maturity of the IETF
     and its feedback.
   * inversely, new members need to be actively trained in properly
     interacting with the IETF organization.

=============================================================

5. IAB

What do you see as the major technical challenges for the IETF to address in
the near term future? Which technical area do you want to play a leadership
role in?

* Scalable security
  * starting the long-term process of producing best common practices
    about up-scaling and down-scaling security essentials that are:
    * comprehensible: i.e., like RFC9110 (HTTP Semantics), but less complex,
    * digestible: i.e., not as scarily complex as RFC9052 (COSE), but as
      useful, and 
    * implementable: i.e., like RFC7252 (CoAP), but not like RFC7959 (CoAP
      Block-Wise).
  * consistent and scalable signing and auditing schemes that might warrant
    work on a BCP
  * trustworthiness management that your grandmother could use

* A structured approach to protocol evolution
  * enable continuous and consistent adaptation of protocols and message
    structures to emerging requirements 
  * create "views" of complex protocols for specific audiences: for example,
    to profile COSE rendering it less scary to implementers

* Adding 'Green Considerations' if they apply to IETF work. Premature
  optimization is the root of all evil, premature pessimization is the other
  root of all evil.
  * while time to market is an important factor (see above), balancing
    performance requirements and spit-and-baling-wire expediency is
    incredibly vital

=============================================================

6. Cross-IETF Collaboration

Explain how your role will fit into the IETF as a whole and how you will add
value.

* The most important secret is talking to people. The lists in the answer 
  to 2. provides a starter set of peers, which of course will evolve as
  needed. This includes:
    * creating and maintaining inviting venues to enable people to talk,
    * fostering the development of relevant problem statements before
      relying parties feel the need to do so on their own.

==============================================================

7. Additional Information

If there is any additional information you wish to share with the Nominating
Committee and the confirming body (the ISOC Board), please put it here.

==============================================================

NOT FOR CONFIRMING BODY

8. Additional Information - For NomCom Only

If there is there any additional information you wish to share with the
Nominating Committee that will NOT be shared with the confirming body
(the IESG), please put it here. This may include any of: personal
identifying information, include additional details about employment or work
time issues, opinions or comments on individuals on the various bodies
involved in leading the IETF activities, opinions about the direction of
working groups, areas, or leadership bodies, and the like. These comments may
also include elaborations on any of your above answers, if there are further
aspects you would like to mention that you do not want shared outside of
NomCom.

END OF SECTION: NOT FOR CONFIRMING BODY

==============================================================