Subject: [edu-discuss] DRAFT: Education Team Charter

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 11:02:21 -0400

Hi All,

We have been working on a charter for the education team,
which will eventually submit to the IESG for approval.
Our current working text is attached below, and we would
appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,
Margaret Wasserman
Education Team Leader

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 12:28:41 +0800

Margarent asked me to share this with the edu-discuss list.

These are the points which I proposed to add to the WG Chairs training.

Comments pls.

-James Seng

Consideration for ESL participants (in IETF Meetings)
- Rule of Thumb - Use simple English
- Repeat the question and do a quick summary before moving on to the 
next topic
- Prepare important questions before hand and flash them on the screen 
before taking consensus
- Be patient … they take some time to articulate
   o A translator would help but not encouraged

Consideration for ESL participants (in Mailing Lists)
- Rule of Thumb : Command of English != Technical competency
- Tolerate broken English but never try to guess what they say if it is 
not obvious
- Get to know some friends who is multilingual and ask them to help to 
bridge
   o Never ignore their ideas in the process of building consensus
- If they are writing I-Ds, encourage a co-author who has better command 
of English

Consideration for ESL participants (Culture differences)
- Rule of Thumb: Listen, Ask and Listen
- Don’t believe in what you _think_ you listen
   o Different culture have different choice of words
- Some people considered IETF environment very hostile or aggressive
   o Encourage them to read the Taos of IETF
- Not all likes to voice their opinion in public
   o Speak to them in private after meeting or over emails when building 
rough consensus

_______________________________________________
edu-discuss mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-discuss

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 16:13:55 -0700 (PDT)

Hi James,

Good points!

Two questions: why do you say a translator would not be encouraged?  Do
you mean one would not be required?  Maybe the bullet might be:
 "consider asking someone else in the WG to help translate" ?

>    o Speak to them in private after meeting or over emails when building

The IETF is basically a public forum.  You cannot have "secret consensus"
with a chair saying "well everyone on the list said X, but in my private
conversations, I really know Y is the consensus, but those Y people are
really shy." :)

Also, there is no way for a chair to know who is not voicing an opinion
from someone who simply doesn't have one.

So possibly this could be more along the lines of:

 - Not everyone likes to voice their opinion in public
    o state that you are open to hearing concerns in private conversation
      or in email and work with individuals to help them both to
      understand issues and to express any concerns they have to the
      group.

Btw, isn't "ESL" a very American term?  It seems so, but I don'tk now
really. I would suggest at least spelling out the acryonym the first time.

thanks!
April

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, James Seng wrote:

> - Be patient ? they take some time to articulate
> - Don?t believe in what you _think_ you listen

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 11:57:25 +0800

>  "consider asking someone else in the WG to help translate" ?

I already explained this in the previous email to Spencer. My preference 
is to help ESL participants to be able to stand on their own feet, and 
not rely on others.

Others may disagree with me ... if so, I will amend the slides.

> conversations, I really know Y is the consensus, but those Y people are

I was told that "rough consensus" is a pregorative of the WG chairs. He 
can ask for hum, count hands, throw a dice or pray to god, so long he 
get a "right rough consensus".

In my ex-wg, which incidently have majority ESL participants, I find it 
extremely useful to talk to them in private to get a sense of their 
feeling on the topic of discussion. For those ideas which is debatable, 
I will encourage them to bring them to the list or I will help them to 
od so.

The suggestion is not to ask wg chairs to take secret vote but really 
not to ignore the silence majority. The fact they dont voice their 
opinion in public does not mean they are okay with the decision. 
Sometimes, culturely, they just don't like to do so despite how unhappy 
they are.

> from someone who simply doesn't have one.

Ah, thats where body language and eye contact comes in :-) Watching how 
people shift in the room, how they roll their eyes, how they nod their 
heads etc helps a lot (at least in my experience) to sense who has a 
comment and who has not.

But this is not something I can explain in 3 slides...

>       understand issues and to express any concerns they have to the

Okay, I like your wordings more :-) Our ideas dont defers too much.

> really. I would suggest at least spelling out the acryonym the first time.

Noted.

-James Seng

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 06:55:49 -0500

Dear James,

Thanks for the explanations (to both myself and April). I have a
couple of notes, based on your explanations.

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Seng" <[email-masked]>
To: "April Marine" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 10:57 PM
Subject: Re: [edu-discuss] Considerations for ESL participants

> is to help ESL participants to be able to stand on their own feet,
and

Just a note - your feedback to me went via the edu-team exploder, so
people on edu-discuss may not have seen it - but it was essentially as
you said to April on this list, so nobody missed anything vital!

> Others may disagree with me ... if so, I will amend the slides.

Oh, I agree, I just didn't get this point from the original wording.
What you're saying is, "*relying on* a translator is not as effective
as participating in English".

> Sometimes, culturely, they just don't like to do so despite how
unhappy

If I understand your point (and it matches my limited experience, so I
believe you), April's feedback is about a chair responsibility to help
participants voice private concerns in a public way, so that those
concerns are clearly coming from working group participants and not
just from the chair. I'm not sure what the best way to do that is.

Perhaps the chair could publically state a concern raised privately,
and ask for agreement - are we talking about cultures where it's less
inimidating to agree with someone who takes one of two positions than
to be the first to take the second position? The critical thing here
is that the chair NOT come into a room, or onto a mailing list, and
say "the public consensus was TCP/SCTP transport, the private
concensus was UDP transport, more people supported the private
consensus than the public consensus, but they won't say so in any way
that lets you know who they are, and engage in a dialog about why they
prefer UDP." If I understand April's point, it's about avoiding this
situation, with decision reversals announced "from above".

But you are identifying another chair "balancing act" responsibility -
making sure that a vocal minority "hears" a less vocal majority. Like
several other "balancing acts", this is always important, it's just a
little more important in the presence of cultural and language
differences.

> But this is not something I can explain in 3 slides...

It may be worth spending a minute or two on a four-box matrix, where
the axes are "native English/ESL" and "comfortable with a contentious
process/uncomfortable". As you point out, it's not just that people
aren't native English speakers, it's that there are cultural
differences re: "noisy public opinionated North American males"! Some
of the most uncomfortable IETF participants I've talked with have been
women who speak English as their primary language!

The relevant point here is probably an explicit mention that, just
because everyone in the WG *understands* everyone else, your job as WG
chair isn't done yet - it's looking for signs of unspoken disagreement
and ensuring public discussion on the relevant points. Having two
thirds of a WG leave a meeting or a mialing list and do "something
else" beside WG "consensus" isn't just bad for the IETF, it's bad for
interoperability as well.

How to do this? Would more frequent mentions during meetings that
"this isn't WG consensus yet, that happens on the mailing list, if
we're headed into the weeds, please let me know" help? But April and
others ("Margaret?") would have more background here than I do.

> Okay, I like your wordings more :-) Our ideas dont defers too much.

As above - balancing the responsibility to the vocal minority that
they understand that the lack of consensus is with other WG
participants, not just with the WG chair.

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 22:54:06 +0800

> you said to April on this list, so nobody missed anything vital!

Oops :-( Pardon me...(kind of confused with the two list).

> as participating in English".

Actually not quite. I mean if they really face a problem, by all means 
ask a friend to help and translate. But in the long run, this is not 
feasible and it is better to try to survival on your own.

Encourage behavior: non-English speaker stood up to say something and 
got stuck because he don't know how to express himself on the mike. He 
paused, speak to his friends in his native language to get a quick 
translation (or the word which he trying to use) then continue.

Discourage behavior: non-English speaker stood up, together with his 
translate. Speak in his native language while the translator repeat 
after him in English to the room.

The first is slow and needs a lot of patient but would help him to fit 
into IETF faster. We are trying to get people permanent into IETF, arent we?

> just from the chair. I'm not sure what the best way to do that is.

Well, if I do help them to raise this to the group, I would say "Some 
have feedback to me privately that ..." and then open the discussion on 
it. If the point of discussion is important, it shouldn't matter who is 
the person who raise it.

> to be the first to take the second position? 

Well, some people find it very difficult to say "no" to any answer. 
("I'll get back to you" is probably as the rude as they can get). How 
you going to use this knowledge...well...

> women who speak English as their primary language!

I am interested to hear whats other feels about this before I voice my 
own comments :-)

> interoperability as well.

Yes, indeed! This goes beyond ESL I suppose...if a wg chair achieve 
consensus by driving away the dissent, then obviously he is not doing 
his job.

-James Seng

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:15:50 -0700 (PDT)

> Others may disagree with me ... if so, I will amend the slides.

Oh, forgive me if I missed the earlier exchange/explanation to Spencer.
Given the further exchanges, my inclination would be to suggest that you
just leave off the bullet about translators and just talk about the pros
and cons (as you did in the email).

> >>   o Speak to them in private after meeting or over emails when building

[much snipping of useful thoughts...]

> Okay, I like your wordings more :-) Our ideas dont defers too much.

I agree that our ideas are not far apart in the end.  In this case, I
think, the point you bring up is a good one to tie into the more general
"how do you, as chair, know what consensus is?" question, which of course
goes beyond language, as Spencer noted.  While it is up to the chair to
gauge consensus, I really think it must be done with information that is
generally available to the entire group otherwise, well, we don't want to
think about otherwise. :)

thanks!
A.