Subject: Fwd: General non-confidential input to NomCom

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:08:31 +1200

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: General non-confidential input to NomCom
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:04:05 +1200
From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Organization: University of Auckland
To: [email-masked]

Dear NomCom,

Firstly, thank you for volunteering for this important service to the
community.

Just before you start the task of evaluating the nominees, I'd like to
give you some food for thought about my opinion of what the community
expects from the people chosen to serve in the roles handled by NomCom.
Intentionally, I'm offering this input in public (hence I will forward
this to the IETF mailing list). Since there are quite a few points,
I've posted my input as an I-D:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-carpenter-community-leaders
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-carpenter-community-leaders/

As the draft says, I ask you to consider the issues described when
evaluating all candidates.

Thanks and regards,
   Brian Carpenter

---

From: "Aaron Falk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 17:47:15 -0400

Love this. Thanks for writing it.  --aaron

---

From: Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:08:25 +0100

yes, this is good stuff.  Can we add humility to the list?  There is no 
opinion which should be criticised more harshly than ones own.

Nick

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 00:12:35 +0200

Hi Brian,

Nice piece of work.  I'd suggest one additional section:

Diversity

It's important that the IETF leadership be comprised of individuals who
have diverse genders, cultures and backgrounds.  The blindspots of
monocultures, no matter their dimension, can lead to solutions that
themselves circumscribe the value and relevance of our organization.

Eliot

---

From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 18:33:02 -0400

Eliot, while I agree with you about the value of diversity for our 
various leadership bodies, I read this document as being about 
behavioral aspects of our leadership.
I don't think you intended diversity in terms of behavior (shall we 
require at least one arrogant insulter, and at least one quiet stabilizer?)
So I doubt it belongs in this document.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:15:49 -0700

Precisely because dissent is healthy and consensus is usually rough
   rather than complete, we expect discussions among the leaders to be
   as public, transparent and documented as much as is reasonably
   possible.

could someone who tracks better than i tell me what happened to opening
the iab meetings and reducing inappropriate executive sessions?

randy

---

From: Theodore V Faber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:24:19 +0000

The section on Hubris seems to address humility.

There's no such thing as a one-sided coin.

--
Ted Faber <[email-masked]>
Senior Engineering Specialist
Computer Systems Research Department
The Aerospace Corporation
310-336-7373

________________________________________
From: ietf <[email-masked]> on behalf of Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2018 15:08
To: Aaron Falk
Cc: IETF discussion list
Subject: Re: General non-confidential input to NomCom

Nick

---

From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:55:22 -0400

> the iab meetings and reducing inappropriate executive sessions?

Nothing has happened in public. After the brief discussion after Ted's 
message to this list saying the agendas were being made public, there 
has been silence from the IAB.

I sent an email to the IAB after IETF 102 expressing a desire, like 
others, for their meetings to be open to observers. I have yet to get a 
response, public or otherwise, from the IAB.

Regards,
Brian

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:03:47 +0200

There is this from the IAB September 5th minutes:

>
>       4. Public IAB Teleconferences
>
> The IAB discussed a proposal for public IAB teleconferences and how to
> balance the desire for transparency with the need to have certain
> discussions (e.g. about personnel appointments and liaisons with other
> organizations) under confidentiality.
>
> Melinda Shore suggested that the IAB gather more data to analyze how
> making portions of the IAB teleconferences public would affect how the
> IAB does its work.
>
> Ted Hardie suggested putting the narrative notes from the three most
> recent IAB teleconferences up in the private wiki and having IAB
> members mark whether each topic should have been discussed in a public
> session or a confidential session. The IAB agreed that this would be a
> good way to gather more data. The IAB will also keep this in mind when
> putting together agendas for their future meetings. The IAB will then
> review all of this information and continue the discussion about
> making portions of the IAB teleconferences public.
>

https://www.iab.org/documents/minutes/minutes-2018/iab-minutes-2018-09-05/

On 26.09.18 02:55, Brian Haberman wrote:
> others, for their meetings to be open to observers. I have yet to get
> a response, public or otherwise, from the IAB.
>
> Regards,
> Brian
>
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:01:58 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 00:12 +0200 Eliot Lear
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> It's important that the IETF leadership be comprised of
> individuals who have diverse genders, cultures and
> backgrounds.  The blindspots of monocultures, no matter their
> dimension, can lead to solutions that themselves circumscribe
> the value and relevance of our organization.

Eliot,

While I agree with you about the value of diversity and the
dangers of monoculture, I would urge caution about using this as
a criterion for IETF leadership.  Making a decision between two
otherwise-equivalent candidates on the basis of diversity is
fine and I would strongly encourage it.

However, I've watched a couple of examples recently (neither of
the ones I have in mind had anything to do with the IETF or the
Internet although there is at least one closer to home) in which
diversity has become such a dominant consideration that subject
matter expertise and other job-specific skills are, at best,
secondary or tertiary considerations.  

It seems to me to be particularly important that we avoid
"diversity first" models for the IESG, where the relationship
between Areas (including the General Area/ IETF Chair) and
particular required skill sets is such that, if one person is
weak on required knowledge and skills, there is typically at
most one or two people able to compensate and they are
overloaded.  

I see the IAB as somewhat less critical with regard to
individual positions, but, from experience, if there is not an
adequate balance of technical skills and perspectives and people
able to stand up for them, it leads to a range of troubles, so
diversity should reasonably be part of the mix in
decision-making but should still not dominate.

best,
   john

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:08:05 +0200

Hi John,

I am not suggesting "diversity first" or above all.  Technical
qualifications and experience matter a lot.  Also, diversity means more
than just national origin or skin color or gender.  It means diversity
of experience, diversity of opinion, and diversity of interest,
alongside all that other stuff.  We have always been at risk of a
monoculture forming in our leadership ranks, and it has from time to
time.  It's up to the NOMCOM to keep that from happening.

Eliot

---

From: Riccardo Bernardini <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:48:50 +0200

> > fine and I would strongly encourage it.

I agree.  Taking care of diversity is like trying to avoid offending
people: a good thing, but also a _very_ slippery slope.  I think that they
require action in two directions: for doing the right thing (non offending,
promoting diversity) and contrasting any tentation to go too far ("why
whouldn't you purge the text of 'master/slave', it is almost costless and
make someone happy..."  that's a slipeery slope...)

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 10:12:35 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 15:08 +0200 Eliot Lear
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi John,
> 
> I am not suggesting "diversity first" or above all.

I didn't think you were.

>   Technical
> qualifications and experience matter a lot.  Also, diversity
> means more than just national origin or skin color or
> gender.  It means diversity of experience, diversity of
> opinion, and diversity of interest, alongside all that other
> stuff.  We have always been at risk of a monoculture forming
> in our leadership ranks, and it has from time to time.

Again, agreed.  I have just seen too many situations in which,
after a few iterations, general "diversity is important"
statements and preferences like the one in your previous note
morph into "diversity first" at the same time the criteria for
diversity are narrowed into things that can be easily measured
quantitatively.   Geography, gender, age, differences in
physical abilities, etc. (aka "that other stuff"), have that
property, while the things you list above do not.   In an
industry in which many companies have complex alliances,
hands-mostly-off subsidiaries, and co-ownership relationships
and in which many consulting relationships come with
non-disclosure requirements, even corporate affiliations can be
hard to deduce with confidence, much less quantify beyond a
primary organizational name.  

That perhaps natural human tendency (probably especially among
people with engineering or scientific backgrounds) to reach for
the easily-quantified in preference for hard-to-evaluate more
subjective criteria has often, historically, interacted with
"diversity is important" by narrowing "diversity" to those
criteria that are easily measured and then promoting that more
narrow definition of diversity over other, harder-to-measure,
criteria into "diversity first".

>  It's up to the NOMCOM to keep that from happening.

Yes.  But it is up to us to avoid giving criteria to the NOMCOM
that one or two passionate advocates either for narrowly-defined
diversity or for giving easily-measured factors priority to get
us into situations that neither of us would like.   So, I think
your proposed statement is in need for further explanation.  I
also agree with others that Brian's draft may not be the right
place to put it.

best,
  john

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 10:37:06 -0400

Tomorrow I am speaking on Inclusion, Meritocracy & the Apache Way for
ApacheCon in Montreal.

Any suggestions of things to help improve inclusion that would be good
to add to my presso?

Something you think that would make it just a little easier for someone
to join or lower a barrier to entry?

Prelim slides at
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XnSiwPw2zQYcKhC80qmSjawpxtkYSUSOUXbm2Q7BOCo/edit#slide=id.g42d7232bcf_0_0

Regards,
KAM

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 07:55:13 -0700

To add to the point Eliot made below, the results of that marking exercise
showed that there were some differences in how folks assumed different
aspects of the meetings would be treated.  After some discussion, the
guidance appears likely to be to make everything public that does not have
reputational risk for an individual or group (so personnel discussions and
discussions of the relationships of the IETF to other groups would not be
public, to take two examples).

The IAB is running the next two meetings as if they were public (internally
marking different sections for public/private, etc.) as a kind of dress
rehearsel, and I expect a final plan shortly after that.

Speaking personnally, I've found it a lot simpler to create meetings that
were open by default from the beginning (as we are doing for the new IETF
Administration LLC Board), but I don't we're far out from an agreement on
how to adjust the current practice.

Ted Hardie

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:03 AM, Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote:

> making portions of the IAB teleconferences public would affect how the IAB
> does its work.
>
> recent IAB teleconferences up in the private wiki and having IAB members
> mark whether each topic should have been discussed in a public session or a
> confidential session. The IAB agreed that this would be a good way to
> gather more data. The IAB will also keep this in mind when putting together
> agendas for their future meetings. The IAB will then review all of this
> information and continue the discussion about making portions of the IAB
> teleconferences public.
>
>
> message to this list saying the agendas were being made public, there has
> been silence from the IAB.
>

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:12:26 -0600

On 9/26/18 7:48 AM, Riccardo Bernardini wrote:
> people: a good thing, but also a _very_ slippery slope.  I think that
> they require action in two directions: for doing the right thing (non
> offending, promoting diversity) and contrasting any tentation to go too
> far ("why whouldn't you purge the text of 'master/slave', it is almost
> costless and make someone happy..."  that's a slipeery slope...)

I'm entirely unclear what "too far" means in this context, outside
of your one example, but I would hope that it's generally understood
that we're talking about a group of people responsible for guiding
the work of the IETF.  It's very much in the interest of the IETF
producing work that's actually useful that the people guiding that
work represent a range of experience/communities/areas of expertise/
etc.  Adding a reminder about that to NomCom guidance from the
community seems entirely appropriate to me.

Melinda

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 11:21:07 -0400

Hi Brian,

Thanks for sharing this. It has struck me as strange before that the descriptions of desired expertise are sole-sourced from the roles/bodies themselves. This doesn’t seem strictly required by RFC 7437, though, so I wonder if there might be room to consider changes or improvements to that process in future cycles.

I would also be curious which of the “expectations” you think apply to the community as a whole, given that the “leaders” are all drawn from the community. I would hope most of them apply, optimistically.

Alissa

> On Sep 25, 2018, at 5:08 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 08:52:45 +1200

> Thanks for sharing this. It has struck me as strange before that the descriptions of desired expertise are sole-sourced from the roles/bodies themselves. This doesn’t seem strictly required by RFC…

Yes, possibly. There are other issues such as diversity and communication skills that don't really fit in my draft but should be covered somewhere.

> I would also be curious which of the “expectations” you think apply to the community as a whole, given that the “leaders” are all drawn from the community. I would hope most of them apply, optimist…

Let's say "aspirationally" and I agree with you. Of course all my text is at the disposal of the IETF; some of it might fit in the Tao, for example.

Regards
   Brian

> .

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 08:58:43 +1200

> community seems entirely appropriate to me.

However, we'd better face an ugly truth, which is that if the
composition of the IETF as a whole isn't diverse, the NomCom will
not be able to do much with that guidance. So IMHO a serious approach
to diversity has to start at the input (who participates in the IETF),
not at the output (who is nominated for the leadership).

   Brian

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:17:20 -0600

On 9/26/18 2:58 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> owever, we'd better face an ugly truth, which is that if the

Right, but the slide said that the way to get diverse leadership
is to have a diverse participant base.  That's necessary but by no
means sufficient (the statistics on this are very clear).

Melinda

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 23:20:21 +0200

> to join or lower a barrier to entry?

Trying to mix fun with hard analysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Hruska#Mediocrity

For Apache, would Mediocrity in a person count as a merit because it
represents an important part of the user basis, if not community,
or could it only be counted as an inclusion factor, or would that
factor be a sure aspect leading to exclusion and discrimination ?

In more boring words: Your presentation inclusion section does not answer hard
questions like "why would we not have natural diversity, and here is how
much of a problem exists" ? Does your org think it needs affirmative
action to fix it, and if so, why does it think that would
work ? Which of the inclusion factors really need to be considered
because we do not see natural diversity for it, and can it really be
effective ? How much does the capability to communicate in english
come into play - written?//verbal? ?  etc. pp.

I always have problems looking at boilerplate text about inclusion,
because to me it sounds like the promise to to explicitly do
something good - without ever stating what exactly that is, why it is
needed and why it can be efficient and effective.

I think its a lot easier to start rephrasing "do no evil against diversity":

- exclusion or discrimination due to (insert list)  is in
  violation of the community standards
- we reflect on our possible biases to minize acting on them.
  (insert good reading on self examining and avoidance of biases)

I think thats i think as much as anybody can promise to do towards
inclusion unless harder questions are being answered first and more
explicit inclusiveness action is well defined. 

Cheers
   Toerless

P.S.: Nice slides otherwise!

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Padmadevi Pillay Esnault <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 21:33:28 +0000

Brian

On 9/26/18, 1:59 PM, "ietf on behalf of Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:
<snip>
<snip>

Your comment on the input brings into light an interesting perspective… 

How much diversity we can expect at all levels of IETF process if we do not factor the type of input in?
If we want to be really serious about diversity at all levels then we should ensure the NomCom interview panel itself has enough diversity to avoid any unconscious bias.

Thoughts?

Padma

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 18:06:41 -0400

> means sufficient (the statistics on this are very clear).
Agreed. I've added that it's a start.

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 18:17:53 -0400

> P.S.: Nice slides otherwise!
My goal is not to hijack an IETF thread but I am always looking at how
to improve diversity and for me improve inclusion is a key factor.

I don't have all the answers.  We don't even collect data or require
data to measure improvement.  What I have is anecdotal data and my
industry knowledge.  So what I'm trying to do is discuss tips I've seen
that help.  If you have any tidbits to add, they are always appreciated. 

Maybe you are right and a survey of our committers and members is a good
step to take.  I'll mention it to our board.

Regards,
KAM

---

From: Padmadevi Pillay Esnault <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 22:21:29 +0000

My email is acting up a bit and this got sent out too quickly … 

Here is the correct version. 

On 9/26/18, 2:33 PM, "Padmadevi Pillay Esnault" <[email-masked]> wrote:

    Brian

    
    How much diversity we can expect at all levels of IETF process if we do not factor the type of input in?
    If we want to be really serious about diversity at all levels then we should ensure the NomCom interview panel itself has enough diversity.
    There has been some discussion on unconscious bias on the list but may be one way of tackling it is more inclusion at all levels.
    
    Thoughts?
    
    Padma

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 00:54:08 +0200

> to improve diversity and for me improve inclusion is a key factor.

Definitely interesting both ways to look at what other orgs are doing,
so i certainly appreciate that you brought your slides and asked.

My feedback was as much directed to you as it is to IETF re. inclusion: 
short of listing more explicit agreed upon actions together with their
reasons, effectiveness and efficiency, the easiest way to get started
putting some action to inclusion is to state how it implies not
to discriminate, and that the foremost form of discrimination is
unconscious bias, and that working against that is something
everybody can try to do.

> that help.  If you have any tidbits to add, they are always appreciated. 

Not much to add. What i said is what i understood first when i was in
NomCom a few year back when i think diversity/inclusion was first
brought into the discussion large scale in the IETF (6 years ago ?).

> step to take.  I'll mention it to our board.

Well.. Make a cost benefit judgement upfront before delving into it.

A more efficient way to get more insight is to ask
the community to file explicit bug reports re. diversity/inclusion.
Ideally with a suggested patch in pseudocode that is detailled enough
for review of effectiveness and efficiency.

I was just quickly looking and couldn't find something: Does Apache
have well defined/documented methods to report these type of issues
confidentially ? ombutsteam, specific confidentiality expectations
against specific roles in the community, etc. pp. ? Aka: work out
the most important organizational prerequites that allow you to
determine, review  and fix the top actually concerning diversity/inclusion
issues. 

Cheers
    Toerless

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:54:02 -0700

> how to adjust the current practice.

thanks for the progress

randy

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 19:33:47 -0500

Hi, Alissa,

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 10:21 AM Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi Brian,
>
> Thanks for sharing this. It has struck me as strange before that the
> descriptions of desired expertise are sole-sourced from the roles/bodies
> themselves. This doesn’t seem strictly required by RFC 7437, though, so I
> wonder if there might be room to consider changes or improvements to that
> process in future cycles.
>

I think this point may be relevant - when I joined the IESG in 2013, we
remembered that

   - The bodies under review provide descriptions of positions to the
   Nomcom, but
   - The Nomcom uses the provided descriptions as part of determining what
   the requirements for those positions are, and works to meet those
   requirements.

That was the last time I remember an IESG talking about that (we were very
aware of the 2012-2013 Nomcom's problems in identifying a candidate for TSV
that met the description they got from the IESG, which they treated as
requirements). But at least one fairly-recent IESG certainly had the
expectation that Nomcoms also take input from the community in determining
the requirements for positions under review.

I noticed at the time that https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp10#section-5.12
says that the Nomcom is responsible for assessing the community's consensus
on the actual requirements (although I hadn't looked that up in a while).

5.12.  Candidate Selection

   The nominating committee selects candidates based on its
   understanding of the IETF community's consensus of the qualifications
   required to fill the open positions.

   The intent of this rule is to ensure that the nominating committee
   consults with a broad base of the IETF community for input to its
   deliberations.  In particular, the nominating committee must
   determine if the desired expertise for the open positions matches its
   understanding of the qualifications desired by the IETF community.

I hope that's helpful. I also hope the community thinks about that to
assist future Nomcoms.

Spencer

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 20:47:34 -0400

Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
    >> I'm entirely unclear what "too far" means in this context, outside of
    >> your one example, but I would hope that it's generally understood that
    >> we're talking about a group of people responsible for guiding the work
    >> of the IETF.  It's very much in the interest of the IETF producing
    >> work that's actually useful that the people guiding that work
    >> represent a range of experience/communities/areas of expertise/ etc.
    >> Adding a reminder about that to NomCom guidance from the community
    >> seems entirely appropriate to me.

    > composition of the IETF as a whole isn't diverse, the NomCom will not
    > be able to do much with that guidance. So IMHO a serious approach to
    > diversity has to start at the input (who participates in the IETF), not
    > at the output (who is nominated for the leadership).

Yes exactly.  But, are other levels of management that you need to
progress through.  The only really well defined "level" below AD is of course
WG chair, but there are other "achievements" that also matter in the
progress, including WG document editor, publishing-RFC, shepherding a
document, etc.

If you want to know who could be an AD, look at the WG chair list.
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/photos/

Due to some of the unwritten criteria, if you haven't been a WG chair,
you essentially can not be confirmed as an AD.    Even a person who has had
significant leadership roles in another SDO, or wrote a few very widely
implemented and cited protocols (even with multiple books about them).
Are these things reasonable?  Debatable, but there is some reason behind it.

The conversation a few weeks about how to fund AD positions is particularly
relevant.  From the list above, remove anyone who is self-employed/employed
by a small company, (semi-)retired, has already been an AD/IAB...  the list
is unfortunately quite short, and not as diverse as the participants of the
IETF.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 20:49:17 -0400

Padmadevi Pillay Esnault <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > How much diversity we can expect at all levels of IETF process if we do
    > not factor the type of input in?  If we want to be really serious about
    > diversity at all levels then we should ensure the NomCom interview
    > panel itself has enough diversity to avoid any unconscious bias.

The set of interviewees is not diverse enough yet for this to matter.

---

From: Padmadevi Pillay Esnault <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 01:03:45 +0000

Michael

On 9/26/18, 5:49 PM, "Michael Richardson" <[email-masked]> wrote:

But how come it is not diverse?    
Well, it might well be that the set of interviewees is short because many may not want to throw the hat in the ring only to get rejected.
Per your other email on unwritten rules then this not only narrows the pool of candidates but creates even more lack of diversity.
 
Intuitively, to broaden the set and have the diversity then it must be accompanied by some willingness to change and creating a 
bigger pool by mentorship or accepting that there is a ramp up period.

If there is a will there is a way ….

Padma

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 19:21:19 -0600

> Are these things reasonable?  Debatable, but there is some reason behind it.

Well, I can see that with people from other SDOs (because of
structural and process differences) but I do think that one
way we can expand the pool of nominees (plus possibly address
the diversity problem) would be to be willing to appoint people
who may not have been chairs but who've done significant work
in the IETF.  I would definitely support appointing someone
with excellent skills and a history in the IETF but without
AD experience.

Melinda

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 00:52:31 -0700

Hi Padma,
>Thoughts?

The following might be of interest: 
http://www.sigcomm.org/sites/default/files/ccr/papers/2014/January/2567561-2567572.pdf

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 09:25:41 +0100

> not at the output (who is nominated for the leadership).
Not that I have many solutions, here - as as an English-first-language
white male I don't really have a good insight - but I think your final
conclusion is wrong.

The diversity of the IETF as a whole will be very heavily influenced by the
perceived diversity of its leadership - or at least, I'd expect that. A way
to test that hypothesis would be to plot the number of female members of
the IESG and IAB versus the female participation and attendance. One could
also compare Working Groups' chairs with the diversity of their
participants. Obviously we must have people at the input in order to
produce them at the output, but I strongly suspect a very strong feedback
loop is in effect here.

The best I can say as far as solutions go is that while I don't hold with
positive discrimination, as such, it is worth noting that "diverse" is a
feature worth balancing against others nonetheless.

As for the question raised elsewhere about whether we pick leaders with WG
Chair experience, I'd posit that the qualities we want in the IESG, in
particular, are the combination of high technical expertise and management
ability. The technical expertise is probably best proven within the IETF,
but the management experience could come from anywhere. That's not to say
that WG Chair experience is useless - but I don't think every IESG member
needs journey through the same IETF "career" path.

Dave.

---

From: Padma Pillay-Esnault <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 02:04:54 -0700

Hello SM

My open question was actually to poll the thoughts of the community on
creating more diversity on NomCom
and other levels in IETF.

There is a plethora of articles/blogs... out there about diverse interview
panels being key to achieving diversity.

Today, AFAIK (I may be wrong or unaware of unwritten rules)  it seems that
company affiliation is the main diversity factor.
Undoubtedly, this is a good start but surely it can be augmented for other
diversity considerations as well such as gender parity...

If we are committed on diversity and enlarging the pool of candidates then
possible starting points could be
1. More diversity on the interview panels and other levels contributing to
key selection criteria
2. Mentorship to build a pool of future candidates
3. Rotations to create more opportunities to qualify for key selection
criteria

Padma

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 04:27:57 -0700

Hi Padma,
At 02:04 AM 27-09-2018, Padma Pillay-Esnault wrote:
>My open question was actually to poll the thoughts of the community 
>on creating more diversity on NomCom and other levels in IETF.

Several years ago there were discussions on this mailing list about 
the above.  There were a few Area Directors who responded positively.

>There is a plethora of articles/blogs... out there about diverse 
>interview panels being key to achieving diversity.

I read some articles about the topic.

>Today, AFAIK (I may be wrong or unaware of unwritten rules)  it 
>seems that company affiliation is the main diversity factor.

Affiliation is part of the (written) selection criteria.

>Undoubtedly, this is a good start but surely it can be augmented for 
>other diversity considerations as well such as gender parity...

There are issues on which I would have to seek advice from a 
person(s) who has a better perspective; gender might be a consideration.

>If we are committed on diversity and enlarging the pool of 
>candidates then possible starting points could be
>1. More diversity on the interview panels and other levels 
>contributing to key selection criteria
>3. Rotations to create more opportunities to qualify for key 
>selection criteria

The first point would be challenging.  There is an existing 
mentorship programme (point 2).  As for point 3, please see 
draft-klensin-nomcom-incumbents-first-00.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 15:48:40 +0100

> secondary or tertiary considerations.  

Diversity is a competency and an asset. Diverse perspectives *are*
subject matter expertise and job-specific skills.

Something to think about:
https://www.theengineroom.org/diversity-is-a-competency

-Mallory

-- 
Mallory Knodel
Head of Digital :: article19.org
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9  B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780

---

From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 11:01:12 -0400

If I am reading that article correctly, he is referring to diversity as 
a core competency of his (and other) organizations.  That is an odd 
linguistic use, but one I can understand.
 From an individuals perspective (or equally from the perspective of 
evaluating individuals for something) diversity is a property but not a 
competency.  A person can change their receptivity to diversity in 
others, but can not change their own diversity.  Going further, as far 
as I can tell it is not meaningful to ask "is this individual diverse?"

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:36:07 +0100

> as I can tell it is not meaningful to ask "is this individual diverse?"

Hi Joel,

Yes that's very close. She is writing specifically to flip this notion
that diversity is not a property, but a competency. It's exactly trying
to challenge the existing notion and create space to discuss it in terms
of competency.

I should have written in my first message that I would support Eliot's
suggestion to add diversity into the draft by Brian, expressed as a
competency of leadership.

-Mallory

---

From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 09:11:26 -0700

> to challenge the existing notion and create space to discuss it in terms

I have heard that theory many times during various "diversity training"
exercises. The proposition is that a product development team will not
successfully address the needs of a specific class of customers if there
are no members of that class of customers in the team. It is a theory
that sounds appealing, but that does not necessarily make it true. To
give two counter examples: Nintendo games are very successful with young
children, yet I am pretty sure that there are very few young children if
any in their development team; Toyota successfully developed the Lexus
brand to sell luxury cars in America, yet the original development team
was all Japanese. The common point in these two counter examples is that
the development teams cared a lot about the population of customers that
they were addressing, and went to great lengths to study their needs. It
seems to me that as far as product development is concerned, the key to
success is not so much who you are as who you care for.

Of course, that does not mean that having multiple perspectives is not
important. A team in which everybody thinks alike is very likely to
engage in group-think and be blind to events. For example, if I had
mostly nerds in a team, I would want to add artists. If my team members
cared mostly about engineering and performance, I would want to add
advocates for usability and design. We have many dimensions of that in
the IETF, security, performance, privacy, ease of use, maintenance,
operations, scaling, internationalization. Different people have
different priorities. We should try to select for this kind of diversity
in the leadership.

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: Padma Pillay-Esnault <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 10:06:38 -0700

See below 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 27, 2018, at 04:27, S Moonesamy <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Padma,
>> My open question was actually to poll the thoughts of the community on creating more diversity on NomCom and other levels in IETF.
> 
> Several years ago there were discussions on this mailing list about the above.  There were a few Area Directors who responded positively.
> 
>> There is a plethora of articles/blogs... out there about diverse interview panels being key to achieving diversity.
> 
>> Today, AFAIK (I may be wrong or unaware of unwritten rules)  it seems that company affiliation is the main diversity factor.
> 

That we know it is the unwritten ones that would be great to ink.

> 
>> Undoubtedly, this is a good start but surely it can be augmented for other diversity considerations as well such as gender parity...
> 
> There are issues on which I would have to seek advice from a person(s) who has a better perspective; gender might be a consideration.
> 

>> If we are committed on diversity and enlarging the pool of candidates then possible starting points could be
>> 1. More diversity on the interview panels and other levels contributing to key selection criteria
>> 3. Rotations to create more opportunities to qualify for key selection criteria
> 
> The first point would be challenging. 

Challenging should not be a reason for not trying...

> There is an existing mentorship programme (point 2).  

Earlier on this thread.. There should be mentorship for leading positions.

> As for point 3, please see draft-klensin-nomcom-incumbents-first-00.

You miss my point, it was not about the rotation of incumbents appearing before noncom but about creating a larger pool of diverse candidates by allowing to get pass key selection criteria. For example if being wg chair or directorate in the area is such a criteria that reduces the pool of candidates to a few.  If there was more rotation that would naturally increase the pool of candidates. 

We can talk about diversity or about lack of candidates having the required skills all we want but nothing will change unless we have the willingness to address why the pool is small.

Padma

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:25:16 +0200

Christian:

On 27.09.18 18:11, Christian Huitema wrote:
> mostly nerds in a team, I would want to add artists. If my team
> members cared mostly about engineering and performance, I would want
> to add advocates for usability and design. We have many dimensions of
> that in the IETF, security, performance, privacy, ease of use,
> maintenance, operations, scaling, internationalization. Different
> people have different priorities. We should try to select for this
> kind of diversity in the leadership.

I largely agree.  There are two ways to look at all of this:

  * reactive: what people end up doing based on events; and
  * advocative and aspirational: what people want to do when they get
    into a role.

Our immediate future rests with our leadership's ability to have enough
breadth and depth to handle the former well; and our long term future
depends on having people who have a good vision.

Whether that extends all the way to artists and usability experts, I'm
not sure, but it can't hurt to try.

Eliot

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:25:29 +0000 (UTC)

Hi Christian,

I would argue the IETF is a lot more like a community or movement than it is like a car company. 

Since consensus on protocols across a wide and growing technical community is the goal, diversity is a key element of that. So if we’re not succeeding at community diversity, we’re not succeeding. Period. (To steal the punchline in Alix’s post). 

-M

----- Original Message -----
From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
To: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>, Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Sent: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:11:26 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Diversity considerations

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 08:46:33 +1200

> different priorities. We should try to select for this kind of diversity

OK. I'd buy:

We expect our leaders to value and promote diversity of all kinds.

(We also expect NomCom to do the same, but since the NomCom is selected
at random from the existing active participants, on average NomCom will
be no more diverse than the IETF as a whole.)

     Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 08:58:41 +1200

On 2018-09-27 20:25, Dave Cridland wrote:
> perceived diversity of its leadership - or at least, I'd expect that.

There are at least two aspects to that:

1) How do potential participants perceive things?

2) How do the managers of potential participants perceive things?

> A way

I'm not so sure. I think the male domination of high tech is a much broader
issue and provides a background signal that is much stronger than the number
of female members of the IAB+IESG. So while I'm sure there is such a feedback
loop and I'm sure that the IETF should do what it can, the problem is much
broader than we can fix alone.

Do we even *know* the gender of all participants? We are diverse enough already
that I can't tell just by looking at people's given names.
 
> needs journey through the same IETF "career" path.

I agree. On the other hand, WG Chairs are known to a significant number of
other participants, so NomCom can expect meaningful feedback about them.
That's less likely for raw recruits.

   Brian

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 17:18:34 -0400

> determine, review  and fix the top actually concerning diversity/inclusion

We don't have it.  Thanks for the feedback.  This is a good idea.

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 23:42:57 +0200

https://www.ietf.org/contact/ombudsteam/
http://www.olddog.co.uk/anti-harassment-process.htm

Started out as anti-harrassment, not sure if they make a line re
diversity based discrimination, but best to touch base with them
to learn more about the IETF processes. ADs are also most often the
first line of reporting confidential issues. I'd think ombutsteam
might be a good place to ask if/what explicit confidentiality processes
IETF has about that. Given how this is the IETF we might even have
even more RFCs about it than what's on the above URLs.

Cheers
    Toerless

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 17:56:45 -0500

> it is like a car company. 

Community.  It's not a political or cultural movement at all.  It is
decidedly not like a car company.

> Since consensus on protocols across a wide and growing technical
> community is the goal, diversity is a key element of that. So if we’re
> not succeeding at community diversity, we’re not succeeding. Period.
> (To steal the punchline in Alix’s post). 

[I'm assuming that 'diversity' here means diversity of racial, ethnic,
 and national make-up of the community, as well as diversity of sexual
 orientation, sex / gender identification, and so on.  I specifically
 assume that diversity of technical background of participants is not in
 scope.]

We, IETF participants, are mostly self-selected.  That is, we each have
some personal motivation to participate, and so we do.  Many of us
participate in part because our employers want us to, but even so, we're
often self-selected anyways in that we sought or developed positions
where we are expected to participate in the IETF, or we sought
management approval of our participation.  Others of us are consultants
and participate on behalf of customers.  Yet others are participants
independent of compensation by any third parties.  Some participants are
remote-only, thus making it difficult to observe their diversity.

The IETF does not choose its participants.  Its participants are the
ones choosing to participate in the IETF.  Thus it is difficult to see
what policies the IETF could adopt that might increase participant
diversity.

The IETF does choose its officers (using the term loosely), such as IESG
members.  Any claims of illegal discrimination in this should be
addressed immediately, of course.

There are basically only four policies I can think of that might have an
effect on IETF participant diversity:

 - targeted advertisement for participants
 - selective exclusion of participants
 - ask employers to help by doing one, the other, or both of the above
 - ask non-diverse participants to consider self-exclusion

I'll note that normally we only exclude participants for cause.  I doubt
existing participants are keen to self-exclude in order to increase the
diversity of the remaining community.  That doesn't leave a lot of
options.  Perhaps an expert can propose other possible policies?

I would say that we are in fact quite diverse, in at least one way:
we're a very international community because a) we are a very technical
community that attracts interest from companies and individuals in many
countries, b) we work hard to host meetings outside the U.S. and Canada.
We have participants from many countries.  Some of us who participate
from the U.S., are ourselves diverse in a variety of ways, such as being
immigrants, for example.

Has the Internet Society/IAOC/IAB/IESG/IRTF/IETF studied the diversity
of these communities?  Have there been surveys or censuses of IETF
participants?  Have we identified specific axes of diversity where we're
coming up short?  How are such things being measured?  Is there an RFC
setting out yardsticks for measuring IETF diversity?  How do we measure
the diversity of remote-only participants?  Is there any data available
on these matters?

I, for one, have never been surveyed as an IETF participant.  Nor have I
ever heard of a survey of IETF participant diversity.  I assume we have
no data as to our diversity.  Can you confirm this?  If so, perhaps we
should strice to acquire such data.

We do seem to be more diverse today that in years past, though that
would be a subjective and personal assessment given the lack of hard
data; others might disagree.  Yet I would not say that the IETF has
failed in the past for having been less diverse than it is today, and I
would not blame any technical failures on the IETF not being diverse
enough, unless the only thing we consider when referring to IETF
successes/failures is participant diversity (in which case see above
commentary about the community's self-selection nature).

To quote you again:

> Since consensus on protocols across a wide and growing technical
> community is the goal, diversity is a key element of that. [...]

How is diversity a key element of technical success?  Did TCP/IP fail
because its authors were not diverse?  Or did TCP/IP succeed in spite of
its authors' [presumptive!] lack of diversity?  Or are we talking about
something other than the success of our protocols?

I wouldn't say that "consensus on protocols ..." is "the goal".
Consensus is a *tool* by which we develop protocols.  As such consensus
is a goal during development.  But ultimately, the protocols -or perhaps
their functionality- alone are the goal.

The community itself is also a goal, of course, because it is a means to
the end producing more/better Internet protocols, and because many of us
derive personal pleasure from the community and our participation in it.

I would agree -who wouldn't?!- that a community should be welcoming,
friendly, non-discriminatory, and aware of biases, which should
hopefully lead to a diverse community (though again, being
self-selected, there can be no guarantee of this).

In particular, no one should fear participating in the IETF!

But I would be very careful of implying that a) we're not diverse
[enough], and b) we're failing to produce successful protocols because
of (a).  (a) requires hard _data_, and (b) need not follow from (a).

Now, if you'd said that we should have inclusivity as a goal, I would
agree.  And if you could point to ways in which we're not inclusive, I
would agree that must address those issues.  Absolutely, no doubt.  And
if you wanted us to pursue reasonable, non-exclusionary policies to
perhaps increase our diversity, I would approve wholeheartedly.

We don't have to believe that lack of diversity implies failure of our
technical products in order to develop a more welcoming community
(assuming it isn't already).  I think we'll all agree work on making our
community as welcoming as possible without having to believe that it is
a fundamental prerequisite of protocol design and writing technical
documents.

Thanks,

Nico
--

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 22:08:18 -0300

Hello, Kevin,

> Any suggestions of things to help improve inclusion that would be good

I apologize for the timing of my feedback.

Here are some comments:

* Slide 5: Unless your audience is expected to be exclusively
US-centric, you shOuld probably include some sort of note and/or
reference to the legislation that defines the aforementioned
organizations besides noting that the ASF is registered in the US.

* Slide 32: With analogous considerations to those for slide 5, please
note that many countries have no concept of "April fools day". In some
cases, there might be analogous "celebrations" (such as "Dia e los
Inocentes" in at least some spanish-speaking countries).

Thanks!

Cheers,
-- 
Fernando Gont
e-mail: [email-masked] || [email-masked]
PGP Fingerprint: 7809 84F5 322E 45C7 F1C9 3945 96EE A9EF D076 FFF1

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 03:13:46 +0000 (UTC)

"Did TCP/IP fail because its authors were not diverse?
Or did TCP/IP succeed in spite of its authors' [presumptive!]
lack of diversity?"

Vint Cerf, Jon Postel and Steve Crocker went to the same high school.

if this is taken as an argument against arguing for

diversity, well, so did David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Diversity demands that we include more technically incompetent
people who are uninterested in protocol designs, from other,
lesser, high schools.

Lloyd Wood [email-masked] http://about.me/lloydwood

________________________________
From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
To: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]> 
Cc: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
Sent: Friday, 28 September 2018, 8:57
Subject: Re: Diversity considerations

Thanks,

Nico

--

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 03:53:05 +0000 (UTC)

Hi Nico,

My messages in this thread have not criticised the IETF for diversity. I’ve been arguing the point that diversity is competency, only, and why that should matter (everywhere, but in particular) at the IETF. 

-M

----- Original Message -----
From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
To: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Cc: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Sent: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 22:56:45 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Diversity considerations

Thanks,

Nico
--

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 04:05:22 +0000 (UTC)

Diversity is *cultural* competency.

Diversity is not technical, managerial, or any other form of competency.

Now, technical and managerial competency are clearly needed.But those are not diversity.
 Lloyd Wood [email-masked] http://about.me/lloydwood

      From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
 To: Nico Williams <[email-masked]> 
Cc: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
 Sent: Friday, 28 September 2018, 13:53
 Subject: Re: Diversity considerations
   
Hi Nico,

-M

----- Original Message -----
From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
To: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Cc: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Sent: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 22:56:45 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Diversity considerations

Thanks,

Nico
--

---

From: Ole Troan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 11:07:09 +0200

Diversity:

- Values: Bell-head versus packet head. State versus stateless, intelligence in network versus intelligence in hosts.
- Layerists: network-layer vs some upper-layer
- Tussle-field side: Vendor, End-user, Service-provider or Content monopolist
- Open source vs proprietary code
- Software vs hardware
- Router, end-host, content or applications
- Language C, LISP or some other obscure language that must be protected
- Purist vs middlebox NATter
- Tourist vs Retired
- Corporate drone vs Volunteer for a better world
- NSA operative vs …

I have never worked in an organisation more diverse than the IETF.
Is it perfect, and does so much diversity make reaching consensus easy? No, but I think we should be darn proud of ourselves.

Ole

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 07:28:09 -0400

> people who are uninterested in protocol designs, from other,
So what you are trying to establish here is that if someone doesn't
attend the right school, you're technically incompetent?

Is that tongue in cheek or do you seriously agree with that statement?
In either case, for me, the more you focus on improving inclusion and
being open to help from all walks of life, the better your diversity
will become.

Regards,
KAM

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 09:01:44 -0400

> On Sep 27, 2018, at 6:56 PM, Nico Williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Since a couple of people have asked about what data we have: At https://datatracker.ietf.org/stats/ you can find statistics about document authorship broken down by the author’s country, continent, and affiliation and meeting attendance broken down by attendee’s country and continent residence. The statistics included in the datatracker are based on the requirements published in RFC 7760. Attendance by country of residence is also reported at every IETF plenary. See, e.g., slide 10 at https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-ietf-sessb-ietf-101-plenary-chair-slides-00

We collect optional gender information on our meeting registration form. We have not been publishing these statistics as far as I know, but the secretariat has been working on a broader overall statistics dashboard where this could be included, or we could potentially fold it into the datatracker statistics and/or the plenary slides. From IETF 87-101, the response rate on the meeting registration gender question averaged 90% — that is, on average 90% of those who registered for the meeting chose to answer it. On average for those meetings, 89% of respondents were male and 11% of respondents were female. The total number of respondents averaged 1,094 across those meetings.

As of IETF 102 we changed the way the question about gender was phrased on the registration form to be more neutral, which resulted in a significantly lower response rate. Alexa and I have been thinking through the implications of this and trying to figure out if there are further changes we might try to make there.

All of the above obviously represents a rather limited universe of data to evaluate the diversity of the IETF participant base, but it is what we have now AFAIK.

Alissa

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 11:05:54 -0500

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 09:01:44AM -0400, Alissa Cooper wrote:
> Since a couple of people have asked about what data we have: At
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/stats/ you can find statistics about
> document authorship broken down by the author’s country, continent,
> and affiliation and meeting attendance broken down by attendee’s
> country and continent residence. The statistics included in the
> datatracker are based on the requirements published in RFC 7760.
> Attendance by country of residence is also reported at every IETF
> plenary. See, e.g., slide 10 at
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-ietf-sessb-ietf-101-plenary-chair-slides-00

Thanks.

How is country of origin determined?  I'm guessing it has to be by the
authors' addresses on their RFCs.  But that says very little about their
country of origin.  Names say nothing about that (or anything else) as
well.

> We collect optional gender information on our meeting registration
> form. We have not been publishing these statistics as far as I know,
> but the secretariat has been working on a broader overall statistics
> dashboard where this could be included, or we could potentially fold
> it into the datatracker statistics and/or the plenary slides. From
> IETF 87-101, the response rate on the meeting registration gender
> question averaged 90% — that is, on average 90% of those who
> registered for the meeting chose to answer it. On average for those
> meetings, 89% of respondents were male and 11% of respondents were
> female. The total number of respondents averaged 1,094 across those
> meetings.

This, on the other hand, seems like very reliable data.  Thanks.

> As of IETF 102 we changed the way the question about gender was
> phrased on the registration form to be more neutral, which resulted in
> a significantly lower response rate. Alexa and I have been thinking
> through the implications of this and trying to figure out if there are
> further changes we might try to make there.

What is the exact question now?

> All of the above obviously represents a rather limited universe of
> data to evaluate the diversity of the IETF participant base, but it is
> what we have now AFAIK.

I agree that it is limited.

Thanks,

Nico
--

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 19:59:29 +0200

> people who are uninterested in protocol designs, from other,

How can you say ? I can not remember from this thread anything more
than non-actionable boilerplate text about diversity. If i was NomCom i 
could make anything i want out of that text. I did write in this thread 
a bit of what i think could be actionable, but nobody was
biting/expanding.

Diversity: "insert magic code here. You know what to do".
Can we just make than a BCP please ? No review needed.
Seems like that's what the thread is arguing about.

I really enjoy the relief that this threads rants provide
given some nasty debugging at work, but if anybody would
like to see actual progress on diversity in the IETF, then
i would suggest pundits provide more explicit problem statements
and actionable recommendations how to solve them with explanations as
to why that action is efficient and effective.

Cheers
    toerless

> > community is the goal, diversity is a key element of that. So if we???re
> > not succeeding at community diversity, we???re not succeeding. Period.
> > (To steal the punchline in Alix???s post). 
> 

-- 
---
[email-masked]

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 14:15:19 -0400

Hi Nico,

> On Sep 28, 2018, at 12:05 PM, Nico Williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> authors' addresses on their RFCs.  

Yes, I believe. That is why I think “country of residence” is the better approximate descriptor.

> But that says very little about their

There is now a free-form field only with no labeled radio buttons. See https://www.ietf.org/registration/ietf103/ietfreg.py

Alissa

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2018 08:50:44 +1200

Ole,

Yes, although the sample is biased, I think that diversity along the
technical, commercial and geographical axes hasn't been lacking. The bias
is economic - people from larger, richer, more successful organzations
can get time and funding to participate.

But lack of diversity along the human axis is a problem.

Some data points (to consider in relation to Alissa's gender data):

In 2018, we have 5 women out of 27 IAB+IESG seats (*not* counting the IETF Chair twice).

In 2008, it was 1 out of 27.

In 1998, it was 2 out of 24.

Regards
   Brian

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 21:35:06 -0300

On 09/28/2018 05:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> technical, commercial and geographical axes hasn't been lacking.

Based on the stats at tools.ietf.org, there doe not seem to be a lot of
geographical diversity (or.. well, that depends on how we "count").

> The bias

Agreed.

> In 1998, it was 2 out of 24.

And that is one axis. Consider also academia vs private vs government
sector, geographical diversity, and others...

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: [email-masked]
PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2018 12:04:30 -0700

Hi Toerless,
>come into play - written?//verbal? ?  etc. pp.

I find it useful, in an entity I am affiliated with, if there are 
people who can communicate in languages other than English.  If the 
IETF was working on internationalization and I was asked to work on 
that, I would try to get people from other countries to help 
out.  The reason is that, in my short experience, that is useful to 
produce results.

>needed and why it can be efficient and effective.

I agree that the usual statements are not convincing when they aren't 
any metrics.  Let's take the example of an organization operating in 
a community where harassment might be an issue.  The organization 
could publish statistics as indicators about the extent of the issue 
and to assess whether its policies in relation to that issue are effective.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2018 11:41:59 -0800

On 9/29/18 11:04 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> any metrics.  Let's take the example of an organization operating in a
> community where harassment might be an issue.  The organization could
> publish statistics as indicators about the extent of the issue and to
> assess whether its policies in relation to that issue are effective.

That is possibly a poor example, as harassment tends to be
underreported, plus there may be confidentiality considerations.
These issues are not easy.

Melinda

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2018 12:44:16 -0400

Nico is right in saying we don't choose who decides to participate. But we
do influence that choice.

In particular, we can decide which communities to approach to invite
participation from and we can encourage or discourage people who come to
participate. We are not the passive captives of fate that some folk seem to
suggest.

I first started participating in IETF 25 years ago but I have not
participated here continuously. One of the reasons for that was that I did
not find IETF an inviting place to work. Folk would proclaim with great
certitude 'facts' about the nature of URLs and explain how it was necessary
to 'fix' the 'broken' architecture of the Web.

It is really easy to drive people away, all you have to do is to make it
clear that you are not listening to them or interested in their input.
Rather too often, I see people put in the position that they can only get
their point across in ways that are interpreted as 'shrill' and
'emotional'. [Though it should be noted that we recently witnessed in
another venue the very people who denounce such behavior from those
punching up immediately endorsing and supporting such behavior in an
individual punching down.]

Listening is really difficult and the IETF organization is not particularly
well suited to listening. While we do make some use of use cases and
requirements analysis these days, I don't think we do it honestly. WGs
select the use cases that support the implementation they have already
decided on rather than allow the use cases to inform design. The tell is
that the criteria for accepting the use cases is whether the implementation
supports them.

Finally, unless you happen to be Dave Clark or Vint Cerf and you happen to
be designing a packet switching protocol to support a WAN of 10-1000 nodes
using 1970s technology, attempting to emulate their mode of work is
irrelevant. We are not re-designing IP. We are trying to manage the social
and technical consequences of the network scaling to ~10 billion users and
~1 trillion nodes in the coming decade.

We are attempting to solve different problems and we need to consider
different approaches.

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2018 12:09:15 -0700

Hi Kevin,
>Any suggestions of things to help improve inclusion that would be good

I suggest considering whether xCLA should be covered in some 
presentations.  Please note that I am not looking at this from a 
"Note Well" perspective.

Is 
https://pycon.blogspot.com/2018/06/pycon-2018-code-of-conduct-transparency.html 
aligned with the objectives of your organization?

>to join or lower a barrier to entry?

The economic hurdle is an issue which people may be reluctant to ask 
about.  Did you get questions about that during the presentation?  It 
may happen that once a person has joined, a bad experience puts 
him/her off.  At some point in the lifespan of a organization which 
is based on volunteer work, the "bad experience" increases the 
barrier to entry.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2018 15:32:41 -0500

> participate. We are not the passive captives of fate that some folk seem to

I made this point too.  Right now we don't advertise to get
participants.  People end up having a reason to participate, and
then they do (maybe; sometimes they have a reason and then don't).

> to 'fix' the 'broken' architecture of the Web.

That's to be expected.  We're going to have opinionated people.  That's
not really a problem.

The biggest problem here is how slow everything is.  That's because
we're volunteers and we're not fully funded to do things like review
other people's I-Ds.  People who want to create would prefer to write
code and screw standardization at IETF.

> ~1 trillion nodes in the coming decade.

We don't work the same way that they did, and we're not trying to
emulate them.

However, it's hard to make a volunteer organization work on a basis
other than consensus seeking, if that's what you mean.

Nico
--

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2018 19:40:34 -0400

Nico Williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > other people's I-Ds.

We don't even adequately and consistently credit people for reviews, and in
particular, we don't do so in a way that is machine readable and therefore
easily summarizable.   This could be made to matter to tenure and promotion
committees, we could find new volunteers, but also we would make ourselves
relevant to a new generation of students and academics.

(You may not like the Chinese social credit system's criteria and how the
information is (ab)used [I don't], but the concept of rewarding desireable
behaviour definitely has some merit.)

    > People who want to create would prefer to write

Yes, and thus yet-another-messaging-protocol was invented :-)

    > other than consensus seeking, if that's what you mean.

+1