Subject: Is the IETF aging?

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:06:36 -0400

A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that 20 years
ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants and 20 years later
that still seems to be the case.

I see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but not as
many as I think there should be. By now at least a third of the
organization should be younger than me, preferably half. That is
certainly not what I see when I attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of
women is also highly noticeable.

If this is the case it should worry us greatly. But first I think we
need to determine if it is the case or not. I suggest an optional
demographic survey of participants in the next IETF meeting to be
repeated at regular intervals (no more than 5 years apart).

People can argue about process, RFC formats and governance but it
should be beyond argument that any institution that cannot recruit
younger members is going to die.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:41:02 +0300

Hi Phil

After each meeting, Ray sends out a survey to all participants. The results from the latest one:

When were you born?

  Before 1950    2.9%
  1950 - 1960   16.6%
  1961 - 1970   33.7%
  1971 - 1980   32.8%
  After 1980    14.0%

I think an earlier survey had the 1971-1980 crowd inch past the 1961-1970 one, but it does seem like the 30-50 age groups dominate. I don't believe you really are among the youngest, and neither am I (I'm 40). There are quite a few WG chairs, and some area directors who are younger than either of us.

20 years ago, was the balance of industry vs government and academia the same as today?  I am guessing that it was not, and that only a small minority came from industry. I am also guessing that doctoral students and post-docs are more eager than tenured professors to publish internet drafts, so the average age of an academic at the IETF is low. OTOH in industry you get to participate in things like the IETF only after you've "been around for a while". How many of the participants from Cisco carry the "distinguished engineer" title? A lot. I think that explains why the average age has moved up. Are things any different in ITU or even W3C?

Yoav 

On Apr 27, 2012, at 5:06 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> Scanned by Check Point Total Security Gateway.

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:59:39 +0100

> that still seems to be the case.

I suspect that there's a marked skew toward the older participants in  
those who actually attend meetings, compared with those who simply  
participate on the mailing lists - but that said, I think the average  
age in both cases is on the up.

I'd posit that there's at least two primary factors in play:

a) Many of the "bright young things" are working in smaller  
organizations which are less likely to foot the (quite huge) bill for  
attending IETF weeks, as well as feeling the pinch when their staff  
are out of the office for nearly a month a year on IETF business. As  
a manager myself, I can barely justify sending one person, let alone  
all those involved in standardization work. (Yet I send four to XSF  
events...). I suspect rather strongly that larger organizations will  
tend toward sending more senior - in rank, and therefore age -  
engineers, and thus it's the smaller organizations that we need to  
bring on board.

It seems possible that if we designated one of the three yearly  
meetings as the "main" meeting, we might focus such smaller  
organizations' attendance.

b) Also, many are working on "web" things, and as such both the  
pressure to standardize is less, and most of all, the pressure to  
standardize *here* is less. I'd note that the XSF does reasonably  
well in recruiting people of all ages to its cause - there, I'm a  
disturbingly ancient greybeard, whereas in IETF terms I'm a young  
whippersnapper.

I think that the XSF does better here because it's maintained a  
closer relationship with implementors and deployers of its protocols.  
In particular, people often do kick off work within the XSF, rather  
than creating the work elsewhere and bringing it to the XSF in whole  
cloth for some mystic process called standardization. People  
regularly ask on its mailing lists (and chatrooms) about protocols -  
both extant ones and ideas for new ones.

I think in general, the way to ensure the IETF is at the centre of  
internet developments is to ensure it is a developer's organization,  
as well as an SDO, and unfortunately it's lost this connection - if  
you want to get some advice for that mail client you're writing, the  
IETF probably wouldn't help if you asked, and certainly wouldn't  
spring to mind as the place to ask.

There's a purist kind of atmosphere at the IETF - we don't do  
interop, we don't sully our hands with development - so we're in  
danger of reducing the benefit we have to developers and the  
organizations they work for. Re-engaging with those communities (and  
in some cases, reinventing them) would, I think, do wonders for  
attendance and interest - and benefit our standards as well, by  
increasing the focus on applied engineering.

That all said, I'd note that whilst the XSF solidly trounces the IETF  
in terms of the numbers of people below 40, it sorely lacks the  
significant benefits of the rest of the age-range - the IETF's  
combined experience is vast, and the ability to tap into that  
expertise is a real plus point.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:05:29 +0200

>  Before 1950    2.9%

Nice bell curve, יואב, but you can't pop that soap bubble of perception with the bluntness of raw data :-)

Maybe just the areas where PHB likes to work in are growing old? :-)

Many of the people doing the real work in CoRE are in their 20s, or have left that age range just recently.  And no, they aren't all academics.  I think we have a healthy age mix, with some pretty good gray-haired input as well.

I'm going to argue for an age column on the blue sheets so we get better data :-)

Grüße, Carsten

PS.: Please, don't take any of this seriously.  Except for the CoRE age statistics.
Dave Cridland's observations also definitely don't apply to CoRE, except that we do have the stunning range of experience that makes the IETF so valuable.

PPS.: Is the overall median really 42?

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:08:23 -0500

Personally, I think that may depend upon the Area in which you are active.
 The RAI area from my perspective has a bunch of youngsters - mid-late 20s
& 30s. And, I'm not as old as some of you all ;)

Personally, I think IETF has far more of an issue when it comes to cultural
and gender diversity than it does with not having enough younger folks.
 This is particularly visible in the leadership.

Regards,
Mary.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:24:05 -0400

Security could very well be an area that faces rather different
challenges to other areas.

It is pretty different to the other areas in that it is rather more
intimidating than most and there are many other forums where decisions
are made. The IETF doesn't even own X.509, that is ITU, it doesn't own
the practices criteria, that is CABForum. New security protocols tend
to be proposed in W3C or OASIS.

It also tends to be inward looking rather than outward. There is a
tendency for the IETF security area to spend its time stopping IETF
proposing insecure protocols rather than developing the security
infrastructure. Not adding to the store of broken-ness is good, but
that is not what the younger security engineers want to spend their
time doing. They want to make changes to the PKI infrastructure they
work on themselves.

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:27:08 +0300

> Nice bell curve, יואב, but you can't pop that soap bubble of perception with the bluntness of raw data :-)

Only 350 out of 1200 people answered the survey, so all caveats about bias apply. It's also possible that the 20-somethings tend to sit in the back more, and go to the microphone less. Maybe them young'uns are too busy clicking "Like" on pictures of LOL-cats :-)

> Maybe just the areas where PHB likes to work in are growing old? :-)

The old people in the security area do tend to look older than the old people in other areas. Maybe the bell curve for the security area is different.

> PPS.: Is the overall median really 42?

Wait a couple of years, and most participants won't get why "42" is funny.

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:28:17 -0400

If I look around me, I see young people developing PHP, AJAX, … almost all of this is not handled in IETF.  If I look at company valuations recently, there are at the same "level" in the stack: i.e. web apps. So I guess the plumbers are getting old, but the designers are younger and not here.

Marc.

Le 2012-04-27 à 11:08, Mary Barnes a écrit :

> Personally, I think that may depend upon the Area in which you are active.  The RAI area from my perspective has a bunch of youngsters - mid-late 20s & 30s. And, I'm not as old as some of you all ;)   
> 
> Personally, I think IETF has far more of an issue when it comes to cultural and gender diversity than it does with not having enough younger folks.  This is particularly visible in the leadership.  
> 
> Regards,
> Mary. 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:16:09 -0400

>>>>> "Phillip" == Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> writes:
    Phillip> A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that
    Phillip> 20 years ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants
    Phillip> and 20 years later that still seems to be the case.

    Phillip> I see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but
    Phillip> not as many as I think there should be. By now at least a
    Phillip> third of the organization should be younger than me,
    Phillip> preferably half. That is certainly not what I see when I
    Phillip> attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of women is also highly
    Phillip> noticeable.

I suspect your observation is correct, but the real question is: 
Is the IETF aging faster than 
   - the population at large
   - the IT population in general
   - the network engineering population in general

I also think that more and more "IETF" related work is now done at much
larger companies than 20 years ago.   The companies are more mainstream
in their culture, are not startups.  
They run by older people who ignore the contributions of younger people,
and in particular, do not feel a need to encourage their people to
contribute to IETF.   With money being less plentiful, and there being
less low hanging fruit at the IETF, it simply takes more of a business
case for a younger person, earlier in their career to argue for the time
and money expensse of their participation.

Finally, layer-5+ things are now way more cool.
So, given a choice of IETF or RubyConf, a lot of younger people pick
RubyConf...

- -- 
]       He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life!           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
   Kyoto Plus: watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE>
	               then sign the petition.

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:44:56 -0400

> From: Phillip Hallam-Baker [[email-masked]]
> 

Of course -- In most areas, a creative, low-cost solution that works
90% of the time can be the basis of a new company, if not an entire
industry.  In security, a creative, low-cost solution that works 90%
of the time is a disaster.  So security is biased toward careful,
extremely experienced workers.

Dale

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:57:02 -0400

> younger members is going to die.

Well, the Internet as we know it is 30 years old now, and not changing
nearly as fast as it was in its infancy.  IPv4 is being displaced only
because we ran out of addresses -- IPv6 should be good for a couple of
centuries.

It's true that institutions that cannot recruit the young die.  But
most institutions recruit the young when positions of power open up --
that is, when older members start dieing, or there is a huge shift in
the politics or underlying needs of the "customer" population.  The
federal government of the United States was dominated by the clique of
its revolutionary leaders for 40 years, and hasn't had much trouble
recruiting enough new blood to maintain its power (if not its
agility).  Similarly with two of the oldest and most powerful
gerontocracies in the world, the government of China and the Roman
Catholic Church.

Dale

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:40:50 +0000

In addition to agreeing with Marc, I suspect it comes in waves.  I imagine there's a push of new stuff that comes in with new younger people, and then as the Internet digests that, those people follow it along and clean it up over the course of several years, meshing with the greybeards, and the median age increases.  Then with the next new wave, it swings downward again.

Seeing a graph of the median variation since IETF 1 might be interesting.

-MSK

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Marc Blanchet
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 8:28 AM
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker
Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List
Subject: Re: Is the IETF aging?

If I look around me, I see young people developing PHP, AJAX, ... almost all of this is not handled in IETF.  If I look at company valuations recently, there are at the same "level" in the stack: i.e. web apps. So I guess the plumbers are getting old, but the designers are younger and not here.

Marc.

Regards,
Mary.
On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that 20 years
ago I was one of the youngest IETF participants and 20 years later
that still seems to be the case.

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:42:04 +0200

> After each meeting, Ray sends out a survey to all participants. The results from the latest one:
The greybeards talk more. Especially in plenaries.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:13:18 -0800

> The greybeards talk more. Especially in plenaries.

Ain't that the truth.

I didn't go to meetings for some number of years and when I
started going again I saw a *lot* of new faces, not all of
whom are young.  It seems to me that a static participant
base would clearly be more of an issue than age, per se.
There's pretty clearly some churn, whether it's because of
an influx of people from a new (to the IETF) geographic area,
or because  of an influx of people wanting to work on a new
(to the IETF) problem area, and that's a very, very, very
good thing.

Melinda

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:34:11 -0700

> It seems to me that a static participant base would clearly
> be more of an issue than age, per se.  There's pretty clearly
> some churn, whether it's because of an influx of people from
> a new (to the IETF) geographic area, or because of an influx
> of people wanting to work on a new (to the IETF) problem
> area, and that's a very, very, very good thing.

ietf, nanog, ripe, ... meetings all generally have 1/3
newcomers.  janog less so.

randy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:37:45 -0800

> newcomers.  janog less so.

Sure, and organizational stability is good.  But what I'm saying is
that over a period of several years I've noticed the appearance of
new constituencies.  There was probably something similar in the
mid-'90s when the VoIP stuff started going crazy, although I was
part of that wave and would not have noticed.

Melinda

---

From: John E Drake <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:49:34 -0700

Maybe we would do better if we required attendees to dress as furries.  Their conventions seem to attract a younger crowd.

Sent from my iPhone

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Phillip Hallam-Baker
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 7:07 AM
> To: IETF Discussion Mailing List
> Subject: Is the IETF aging?
> 
> A question arose on the RFC-interest list, I observed that 20 years ago
> I was one of the youngest IETF participants and 20 years later that
> still seems to be the case.
> 
> I see some grad students and some postdocs in their 20s but not as many
> as I think there should be. By now at least a third of the organization
> should be younger than me, preferably half. That is certainly not what
> I see when I attend IETFs. And yes, the lack of women is also highly
> noticeable.
>

---

From: Robert Raszuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:52:46 +0200

Hi John,

Who proposes does !

Can't wait to see you in Vancouver ;)

Cheers,
R.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:53:02 -0700

>results from the latest one:

These are the results from 2006:

   Before 1950    6.8%
    1950 - 1960   24.0%
    1961 - 1970   33.9%
    1971 - 1980   33.6%
    After 1980     1.8%

And 2010:

   Before 1950    3.8%
    1950 - 1960   21.0%
    1961 - 1970   30.7%
    1971 - 1980   37.0%
    After 1980     7.6%

>I think an earlier survey had the 1971-1980 crowd inch past the 
>1961-1970 one, but it does seem like the 30-50 age groups dominate. 
>I don't believe you really are among the youngest, and

Yes.

>as well as an SDO, and unfortunately it's lost this connection - if

Yes.

>spring to mind as the place to ask.

The IETF likes having a bad reputation.

At 08:05 27-04-2012, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>Many of the people doing the real work in CoRE are in their 20s, or 
>have left that age

  Age       = 100 - port_num

  HTTP/CoRE  20
  DNS         47

>Dave Cridland's observations also definitely don't apply to CoRE, 
>except that we do have the stunning range of experience that makes 
>the IETF so valuable.

I would say that new protocols in one area tends to attract younger 
folks.  For existing protocols, there is the aging factor shunning 
the younger folks away.

At 08:08 27-04-2012, Mary Barnes wrote:
>Personally, I think IETF has far more of an issue when it comes to 
>cultural and gender diversity than it does with not having enough 
>younger folks.  This is particularly visible in the leadership.

   IAB  12 M / 1 F
   IESG 15 M
   IAOC  8 M / 1 F
   RSOC  9 M

   RTG WGs -  4 F
   INT WGs -  2 F
   OPS WGs -  2 F
   RAI WGs -  2 F
   SEC WGs -  1 F
   TSV WGs -  1 F
   APP WGs - all M

Mary Barnes is the only participant who mentions the gender 
problem.  As such, I gather that the IETF does not have a gender problem. :-)

>recruiting enough new blood to maintain its power (if not its

Based on the above, it could be said that the IETF will keep aging 
for the next 10 years.

>base would clearly be more of an issue than age, per se.

Yes.

A static participant base encourages the privatization of working 
groups.  Instead of age, one could look at the number of meetings attended:

In 2005:

  1         6.6%
  2 - 5    18.2%
  6 - 10   16.8%
  > 10     58.4%

In 2010:

  1         8.8%
  2 - 5    20.0%
  6 - 10   16.3%
  > 10     55.0%

If over 50% of the attendees is static, there is an aging 
process.  Newcomers may be around 15%.  Someone mentioned that there 
is a feeling of exclusion instead of inclusion.

>younger members is going to die.

An institution that cannot recruit younger members is called a retirement home.

Some time back, a saying was posted to this mailing list:

   "Please be patient with the old folks"

Regards,
-sm

P.S. Phillip made a second comment.  There are some parallels with 
Operation Legacy.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:23:01 -0400

> newcomers.  janog less so.

In my capacity as possibly the second or third oldest character
still actively doing protocol development work in the IETF, I
defer to Randy (who is older :-)).  But let me suggest that the
problem isn't numbers or ratios.  It is what we do about
leadership development, including how we use whatever expertise
and perspective the geriatric contingent represents.

At the risk of repeating something about which various ADs and
others have gotten an earful, unless there are very special and
unusual circumstances [Note 1], it is unwise to, e.g., have us
chair a WG or assume many other leadership positions.   It is
easy to say "So-and-so should chair this WG because, based on a
dozen before it, she knows how to do that".  Instead, it is
better to find someone more junior and, if appropriate, appoint
the more senior people to advisory and support roles.  

We probably don't follow that principle often enough.  Perhaps
there are properties of our procedures and how we designate
roles that discourage it.  If so, we should fix that.  

As long as a significant number of newcomers are appearing,
signs of an aging leadership are almost certainly a leadership
development problem (which could include insufficient
advancement of people with several years, but not several
decades, or experience) and not merely an aging population
problem at the top.

Just my opinion while striking my white beard (which I'd
probably be doing loudly at the microphone if this came up in a
plenary).

    john

[Note 1} I believe that my current co-chair role in EAI and Vint
Cerf's recent role in IDNABIS were, indeed, special
circumstances.  And I'm looking forward to completing EAI and
dropping out of that role almost as much as I think Vint was
looking forward to completing IDNABIS.

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:24:30 -0400

On Apr 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, SM wrote:
> Mary Barnes is the only participant who mentions the gender problem.  As such, I gather that the IETF does not have a gender problem. :-)

The rest of us are too busy struggling to succeed in this male-dominated regime to have time to read these threads.  :-)

Seriously, though...

I don't think that the relatively low numbers of women in the IETF leadership are necessarily indicative of a problem, because I think they roughly match the low percentage of women among IETF attendees. 

I don't even know if the lack of female attendance at the IETF is a problem, because I don't know how our percentages map to the percentage of female networking engineers in the industry, or to the percentage of females who attend other major standards organizations, like the IEEE or the 3GPP.  We are an engineering organization, so I wouldn't expect us to be half women, because there are a lot more male engineers than female ones.

If IETF meetings are attended by a lower percentage of women than IEEE or 3GPP meetings, and/or if we feel that our attendance is not proportional to the number of women in our industry, then we might want to explore why that happens, and consider some changes in our culture to address the causes.  We shouldn't try to fix this particular aspect of our organization if it isn't broken, though.

Margaret

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:29:08 -0400

I have been taking a look at the series and the problem is that the
brackets are just not granular enough.

If you were born in 1970 you would be 25 in 1995, the year the dotcom
bubble started to inflate. That was a really good time for someone
with networking experience to be starting out.

If you were born in 1979 then you would have been finishing your
degree right around the time of the dotcom bubble bursting. Not that
that deterred everyone.

What I am getting at here is that the structure inside the 1970s
bracket may be rather significant. The survey results are consistent
with two separate interpretations:

1) There is a nice bell curve and nothing to worry about.

2) There is a large cluster aged 35-45 and a couple of bumps at 21-25
(grad students) and 55-65 (aging Cerf era grad students)

Another problem with the survey is that there is clearly a lot of
self-selection going on. We know how many people are on the IAB and
IESG so we can work out their response rate (>80%). Working out the
number of WG chairs that attended is a but trickier but there are 130
WGs and this would suggest a max of 260 chairs attending but not all
WGs meet and not all chairs attend yadda yadda. 80 chairs responded to
the survey. If we posit a number of 160 WG chairs attending (probably
high) then that would imply a 50% response rate.

Those figures suggest that the people with a greater investment in the
organization are more likely to respond.

Now I remember why I gave up as an experimentalist: You ask for
figures and then when you have them you find they don't answer your
question.

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:39:51 +0000

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Margaret Wasserman
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 12:25 PM
> To: SM
> > Mary Barnes is the only participant who mentions the gender problem.
> As such, I gather that the IETF does not have a gender problem. :-)
> 
> The rest of us are too busy struggling to succeed in this male-
> dominated regime to have time to read these threads.  :-)

"tm;dr"?

-MSK

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:24:24 -0700

> the more senior people to advisory and support roles.  

So in addition to "Secretary" and "Technical Advisor", we can start listing "Designated Greybeard". This is progress?

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:32:34 -0400

On Apr 27, 2012, at 3:24 PM, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> I don't even know if the lack of female attendance at the IETF is a problem, because I don't know how our percentages map to the percentage of female networking engineers in the industry, or to the percentage of females who attend other major standards organizations, like the IEEE or the 3GPP.  

I don't think the meeting survey hasn't asked about gender in the past. Maybe it should.

---

From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:38:04 -0700

On 4/27/12 13:32 , Alissa Cooper wrote:
>> I don't even know if the lack of female attendance at the IETF is a
>> problem, because I don't know how our percentages map to the
>> percentage of female networking engineers in the industry, 

Not a lot of people attending the IETF are what I'd call network engineers.

>> or to
>> the percentage of females who attend other major standards
>> organizations, like the IEEE or the 3GPP.
>

---

From: "Robin Uyeshiro" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:35:37 -1000

A recent perspctive on that:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/video/blog/2012/04/college_president_discu
sses_wo.html

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Margaret Wasserman
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 9:25 AM
To: SM
Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List
Subject: Re: Is the IETF aging?

On Apr 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, SM wrote:
> Mary Barnes is the only participant who mentions the gender problem.  As
such, I gather that the IETF does not have a gender problem. :-)

The rest of us are too busy struggling to succeed in this male-dominated
regime to have time to read these threads.  :-)

Seriously, though...

I don't think that the relatively low numbers of women in the IETF
leadership are necessarily indicative of a problem, because I think they
roughly match the low percentage of women among IETF attendees. 

I don't even know if the lack of female attendance at the IETF is a problem,
because I don't know how our percentages map to the percentage of female
networking engineers in the industry, or to the percentage of females who
attend other major standards organizations, like the IEEE or the 3GPP.  We
are an engineering organization, so I wouldn't expect us to be half women,
because there are a lot more male engineers than female ones.

If IETF meetings are attended by a lower percentage of women than IEEE or
3GPP meetings, and/or if we feel that our attendance is not proportional to
the number of women in our industry, then we might want to explore why that
happens, and consider some changes in our culture to address the causes.  We
shouldn't try to fix this particular aspect of our organization if it isn't
broken, though.

Margaret

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:39:19 -0800

On 4/27/12 11:24 AM, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> percentage of female networking engineers in the industry, or to the
> percentage of females who attend other major standards organizations,
> like the IEEE or the 3GPP.  We are an engineering organization, so I
> wouldn't expect us to be half women, because there are a lot more
> male engineers than female ones.

Well, that's a problem.  It's a problem that's out-of-scope for
the IETF, but it's a problem.

I've generally found the IETF to be a positive environment for
women (remember Allison's women's lunches?) and in lo, these many
years I've been participating I can only think of one incident that
was clearly sexist (and that was just a few months ago) and only
think of one that made me wonder.  Other than that it's been
copacetic, mostly, I think, because the leadership does seem to
try to be mindful about this stuff.  It's easy not to be, so
all honor to whom honor is due, etc. etc. etc.

Melinda

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:45:28 -0700

Yes.

At 12:24 27-04-2012, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
>leadership are necessarily indicative of a problem, because I think 
>they roughly match the low percentage of women among IETF attendees.

It's hard to say (see above).

The question might be whether the culture perpetuates the gender 
and/or other issues.

>A recent perspctive on that:

The STEM workforce in China is 40% and 24% in the U.S.

>development problem (which could include insufficient

The newcomers may be appearing and disappearing.  It isn't possible 
to assess that from the figures I posted.  If the leadership is 
static, it affects the breath of perspectives.  It can also lead to inertia.

>probably be doing loudly at the microphone if this came up in a

I suggest that the IETF publishes a BCP with the following rules for 
the mic line:

   Attended 1 meeting  -  5 mins
   Attended 2 meeting  -  4 mins
   Attended 3 meeting  -  3 mins
   Attended 4 meeting  -  2 mins
   Attended more than 4 - 1 min

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:05:45 +0200

>that still seems to be the case.

I had my first Internet-Draft published in my teens, as one data point.

>women is also highly noticeable.

What would they be doing in the IETF that they have been brought up to
try to achieve?
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:49:47 -0400

--On Friday, April 27, 2012 13:24 -0700 Paul Hoffman
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> others have gotten an earful, unless there are very special
>> and unusual circumstances [Note 1], it is unwise to, e.g.,
>> have us chair a WG or assume many other leadership positions.
>> It is easy to say "So-and-so should chair this WG because,
>> based on a dozen before it, she knows how to do that".
>> Instead, it is better to find someone more junior and, if
>> appropriate, appoint the more senior people to advisory and
>> support roles.  
> 
> So in addition to "Secretary" and "Technical Advisor", we can
> start listing "Designated Greybeard". This is progress?

Actually, Paul, I'd consider the "Technical Advisor" title/role
to be completely adequate and appropriate if we were using it
better and more often.

   john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:56:24 -0400

--On Friday, April 27, 2012 15:29 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 55-65 (aging Cerf era grad students)

The "aging Cerf era grad students" and the rest of that cohort
are all over 65.  I'm probably the youngest of that group who
are still visible in the IETF and am older than that.  And I
think Bob Braden is on the high side of 70.

 john

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:25:56 -0500

One response below [MB].

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 1:53 PM, SM <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  I think an earlier survey had the 1971-1980 crowd inch past the 1961-1970
>> one, but it does seem like the 30-50 age groups dominate. I don't believe
>> you really are among the youngest, and
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> Many of the people doing the real work in CoRE are in their 20s, or have
>> left that age
>>
>
>  Age       = 100 - port_num
>
>  HTTP/CoRE  20
>  DNS         47
>
>
>> Dave Cridland's observations also definitely don't apply to CoRE, except
>> that we do have the stunning range of experience that makes the IETF so
>> valuable.
>>
>
> I would say that new protocols in one area tends to attract younger folks.
>  For existing protocols, there is the aging factor shunning the younger
> folks away.
>
>
>> cultural and gender diversity than it does with not having enough younger
>> folks.  This is particularly visible in the leadership.
>>
>
>  IAB  12 M / 1 F
>  IESG 15 M
>  IAOC  8 M / 1 F
>  RSOC  9 M
>
>  RTG WGs -  4 F
>  INT WGs -  2 F
>  OPS WGs -  2 F
>  RAI WGs -  2 F
>  SEC WGs -  1 F
>  TSV WGs -  1 F
>  APP WGs - all M
>

[MB] Yet again my point is being proven.   The reason others don't mention
it is because they don't want to become the target of this sort of attitude
AND they likely feel they have worked too hard to risk not being taken
seriously. You might also consider this isn't the first time this issue has
been raised.  I raised it in my Nomcom report in March 2010 and it was in
the slides at the plenary. But, again, we are a very small minority here,
so it really is hard to get recognition of this issue. [/MB]

> Based on the above, it could be said that the IETF will keep aging for the
> next 10 years.
>
>
> A static participant base encourages the privatization of working groups.
>  Instead of age, one could look at the number of meetings attended:
>
> In 2005:
>
>  1         6.6%
>  2 - 5    18.2%
>  6 - 10   16.8%
>  > 10     58.4%
>
> In 2010:
>
>  1         8.8%
>  2 - 5    20.0%
>  6 - 10   16.3%
>  > 10     55.0%
>
> If over 50% of the attendees is static, there is an aging process.
>  Newcomers may be around 15%.  Someone mentioned that there is a feeling of
> exclusion instead of inclusion.
>
>

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:53:57 -0400

Mary,

I have to agree.  As is common, gender imbalance can be treated as a
joke only by those who
aren't affected.

For those of us without "male privilege" (or other types of course)
who have experienced the effects of subtle or blatant discrimination,
it is no joke.

Nor is it caused by a lack of interest or ability in technology - but
it is always easier to claim that
the issues are caused by women instead of the prevailing tech culture.
 Luckily, tech culture can vary significantly by organization.

This thread is the worst example I personally have seen in the IETF.

Alia

> the slides at the plenary. But, again, we are a very small minority here, so
> it really is hard to get recognition of this issue. [/MB]