Subject: Diversity of IETF Leadership

From: IETF Diversity <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 06:22:08 -0400

The letter below was sent to the IESG, the IAB, the IAOC and the ISOC Board
this morning, in an attempt to open a discussion of how to increase the
diversity of the IETF Leadership.  We are sharing the letter here to
encourage community discussion of this important topic.

If you support this letter and would like to be added as a signatory,
please send e-mail to [email-masked], and your name will be added
to the list of signatures.

---

** An Open Letter to the IESG, the IAB, the IAOC and the ISOC Board **

Dear Members of the IETF Leadership,

We would like to call your attention to an issue that weakens the
IETF's decision-making process and calls into question the
legitimacy of the IETF as an International Standards Development
Organization: the lack of diversity of the IETF leadership.

In addition to the moral and social issues involved, diversity of
leadership across several axes (race, geographic location, gender
and corporate affiliation) is important for three practical reasons:

    - It is a well-established fact that diverse groups are smarter
      and make better decisions than less-diverse groups.

    - Lack of diversity in our leadership becomes a self-perpetuating
      problem, because people who are not represented in the IETF
      leadership are less likely to dedicate their time and effort to
      the IETF.

    - The lack of diversity in the IETF leadership undermines our
      credibility and challenges our legitimacy as an International
      Standards Development Organization.

Unfortunately, despite a substantial increase in the number of IETF
leadership positions (from 25 to 32) and increasingly diverse
attendance at IETF meetings, the diversity of the IETF leadership has
not improved.  In fact, it seems to have dropped significantly over
the past ten years.

For example, ten years ago, in February of 2003, there were 25 members
of the IETF leadership (12 IAB members and 13 IESG members).  Of those
25 members, there was one member of non-European descent, there was one
member from a country outside of North America or Europe, and there were
four women.  There were 23 companies represented in the IETF leadership
(out of a total of 25 seats).

In February of 2013, there were 32 members of the IETF leadership
(12 IAB members, 15 IESG members and 5 IAOC members).  Of those 32
members, there was one member of non-European descent, there were no
members from countries outside of North America or Europe, and there
was only one woman.  There were only 19 companies represented (out of
a total of 32 seats).

It is important to the continued relevance and success of the IETF
that we address this issue and eliminate whatever factors are
contributing to the lack of diversity in our leadership.  We believe
that this is an important and urgent issue that requires your
immediate attention.

There are several steps that could be taken, in the short-term within
our existing BCPs, to address this problem:

     - Each of the IETF leadership bodies (the IESG, IAB and IAOC)
       could update the qualifications that they submit to the
       Nominations Committee (through the IAD) to make it clear that
       the Nominations Committee should actively seek to increase the
       diversity of that body in terms of race, geographic location,
       gender and corporate affiliation.

     - Each of the confirming bodies (the ISOC Board for the IAB, the
       IAB for the IESG, and the IESG for the IAOC) could make a
       public statement at the beginning of each year's nominations
       process that they will not confirm a slate unless it
       contributes to increased diversity within the IETF leadership,
       or it is accompanied by a detailed explanation of what
       steps were taken to select a more diverse slate and why it was
       not possible to do so.

     - The ISOC President could continue to select Nominations
       Committee Chairs who understand the value of diversity and are
       committed to increasing the diversity of the IETF.

     - The Nominations Committee could be offered resources or
       training on the value of diversity, techniques to recruit a
       more diverse candidate pool, and/or information about how to
       minimize conflict-of-interest and personal bias in their
       selection process.

We also feel that more substantial and longer-term changes may be
needed to fully address this issue.  Therefore, we request that the
new IETF Chair assemble a design team (with diverse membership, of
course) to determine the causes of this problem and to make
suggestions for longer-term solutions to be considered by the IETF.

We are committed to working within the IETF to make the changes
that are needed to correct this serious issue.

Best Regards,

(In alphabetical order)

Bernard Aboba
Cathy Aronson
Alia Atlas
Mary Barnes
Mohamed Boucadair
Brian Carpenter
Stuart Cheshire
Alissa Cooper
Spencer Dawkins
Roni Even
Janet Gunn
Stephen Hanna
Ted Hardie
Sam Hartman
Fangwei Hu
Geoff Huston
Christian Jacquenet
Mirjam Kuehne
Olaf Kolkman
Suresh Krishnan
Barry Leiba
Ted Lemon
Kepeng Li
Dapeng Liu
Allison Mankin
Bill Manning
Kathleen Moriarty
Monique Morrow
Nurani Nimpuno
Matt Nottingham
Erik Nordmark
Karen O'Donoghue
Iuniana Oprescu
Jaqueline Queiroz
Hosnieh Rafiee
Pete Resnick
Lea Roberts
Simon Pietro Romano
Peter Saint-Andre
Eve Schooler
Rifaat Shekh-Yusef
Larissa Shapiro
Melinda Shore
Barbara Stark
Brian Trammel
Tina Tsou
Justin Uberti
Margaret Wasserman
Renee Wilson-Burstein
James Woodyatt
Lucy Yong
Jessica Yu
Lixia Zhang

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:45:09 -0400

>>>>> "IETF" == IETF Diversity <[email-masked]> writes:
    IETF> The letter below was sent to the IESG, the IAB, the IAOC and
    IETF> the ISOC Board this morning, in an attempt to open a
    IETF> discussion of how to increase the diversity of the IETF
    IETF> Leadership.  We are sharing the letter here to encourage
    IETF> community discussion of this important topic.

Thank you for this.

    IETF> For example, ten years ago, in February of 2003, there were 25
    IETF> members of the IETF leadership (12 IAB members and 13 IESG
    IETF> members).  Of those 25 members, there was one member of
    IETF> non-European descent, there was one member from a country
    IETF> outside of North America or Europe, and there were four women.
    IETF> There were 23 companies represented in the IETF leadership
    IETF> (out of a total of 25 seats).

    IETF> In February of 2013, there were 32 members of the IETF
    IETF> leadership (12 IAB members, 15 IESG members and 5 IAOC
    IETF> members).  Of those 32 members, there was one member of
    IETF> non-European descent, there were no members from countries
    IETF> outside of North America or Europe, and there was only one
    IETF> woman.  There were only 19 companies represented (out of a
    IETF> total of 32 seats).

For nomcoms that had a open list of willing candidates, I wonder if this
analysis could be repeated for the list of candidates for each year.  I
would also like to know what the diversity of the attendance is over the
years, and of ID authorship.

Given the time commitments involved and the need for support from
employers,  I do not believe the IETF will be able to achieve
significantly more diversity in it's leadership than we have in our
participants.  As an over-represented white male north american, I am
upset about this. 

-- 
Michael Richardson
-on the road-

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:52:38 -0400

Thanks for raising this.

I believe an IETF with more diverse participation and leadership would be a stronger IETF. When we have more diverse experiences and viewpoints, our results will be better and more generally applicable. Participants from different places, cultures, men, women, and people in different situations. One of the challenges that I have identified as I am taking the IETF chair task is to make the IETF even more international and more diverse.

I would be very happy to create a design team to come up with analysis of the situation and recommendations for actions that we can take. The first thing that I plan to do is to find a leader or two for the design team. If you think you would be willing to lead this effort, please send me e-mail.

I would also like to make a couple of other observations. First, even if there is plenty of work to do in this area, we should also recognise how much has already happened, and be proud of that progress. IETF documents have authors from roughly sixty different countries from six continents. On some areas we've witnessed a tremendously positive development. But those developments take time. Take China, for example. Participation has gone from 2% to 11% in a couple of years. At the same time, we've seen Chinese participants start from participation and I-D submission and progress to succeeding in publishing RFCs, and becoming a part of the leadership. For instance, in the Internet Area we have two WG chairs from China, and now in March Xing Li has become an IAB member. A while ago Russ moved the Atlanta meeting to IETF-85 to reduce the effects of visa trouble that we kept having in US meetings. We keep training new people for working group chair positions and editors, and in general try to get new participants, companies, and countries involved. ISOC has a program to bring in more participants from new areas of the world, and I look forward to meeting some of them this week. Please chat with the newcomers and get them involved in your IETF work, or help them with the issues they have in the Internet!

I think all this is great. But also a trend that needs to continue. And repeated for others. For instance, what does it take to get South American or African participation up in the same manner as China? While we have some participants from those areas, the numbers are very, very low. As an aside, the IAOC is investigating the possibility of a meeting in South America and we are also looking at running a live connection of the Berlin meeting to another continent to attract additional participants. Obviously, much more needs to be done to make the significant change that is needed.

Also, I think we want to continue with a model where choices for picking people for IETF roles is still done on the basis of picking the best person for the job. I think we should take things like gender and geographical location as inputs to those choices. Just like we already do with many other things, such as specific protocol competence spread, technical/management/governance/communications competence, operator/vendor background, ability to engage with the user and business communities, and so on. I only have personal experience about selecting working group chairs and document editors. But I think we already do take all of these factors into account at least in some cases, but further emphasis on this would be good. I'm sure everyone else who is making personnel decisions in the IETF is also quite aware of the need to support diversity. Of course, we do not always get to make the choices we would like. Sometimes we lack the candidates that we think we need. Sometimes we have a great candidate for some task, but for a business reason they do not have the support to take a full-time leadership position. Sometimes the random appearance of a new business in some part of the world drives the influx of new people from that region. We are not in full control of these external effects. 

Finally, I think we need to take diversity in the broadest sense. It should include at least the following aspects: gender, geographical location, culture, age, and type of background or business where you work in. For instance, I think the IETF would benefit greatly from getting more younger generation participants, and we should work hard to attract them and topics that interest them. And I do not think we can just focus on the leadership. The basis for increased diversity in the leadership is increased diversity in IETF participation in general.

In short - this is very important and deserves further work. That work will be hard, it is about training new people and attracting new participants and convincing new people about taking on leadership positions. But I am sure we will make a lot of progress on this, and the design team would be important in helping the leadership understand what actions we can take. So thanks again for making the suggestion.

Jari Arkko

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:26:08 -0400

> Finally, I think we need to take diversity in the broadest sense. It should include at least the following aspects: gender, geographical location, culture, age, and type of background or business w…

Good point, Jari. 

Since the Nomcom selects the IETF leadership from the IETF community it is necessary to have those people participating in the IETF in the first place. I recall a number of discussions on the IETF mailing list on how to involve younger people in the IETF, more folks from the application layer (in particular the Web) community, more folks from smaller companies, etc. Needless to say that this has been challenging. Looking forward to see proposals on how to improve the situation. 

Ciao
Hannes

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:57:21 -0500

On 3/10/2013 5:22 AM, IETF Diversity wrote:

I'm listed as a signatory and agree that this is important.

 >         steps were taken to select a more diverse slate and why it was

I'd ask that people think about what the confirming bodies should be 
willing to say, along these lines. It seems a bit strong to me, but I'm 
not sure what the community is comfortable with.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Mar 2013 19:43:06 -0000

>       steps were taken to select a more diverse slate and why it was

That sounds a lot like quotas.  Let's not go there.  It would be
entirely reasonable to tell future nomcoms that increased diversity
(for some definition of diversity) is one of their goals and expect
them to do their job in good faith, as nomcoms have consistently done.

A large point that you've only touched on is that we can't create
diversity by fiat.  While it is admirable in some ways that many of
the people active in the IETF now are the same people who were active
in the IETF and its predecessors 20 or 30 years ago, it's also kind of
scary, since nobody is immortal (although in a few cases it may seem
that way.)

In some senses the IETF is phenomenally open, since anyone with an
e-mail address can sign up for the mailing lists and join the fun, but
in other ways it's really difficult to break in, partly because the
topics can be complex and subtle, partly because of a (not wholly
unreasonable) impatience with people who out of ignorance or otherwise
want to reopen ancient arguments, or who imagine that the way to
define a standard is to create a kitchen sink of everyone's favorite
featurettes.  (No, it's not better to support both XML and JSON than
just one of them.)  These are reasonably straightforward to deal with,
largely by pointing people at list archives, the Tao, and other things
we've written over the years.

What concerns me more is that people who could contribute don't.  Part
of that is because some parts of the IETF have become ossified, which
is an issue I don't want to address here, but a lot of it is that
people still just don't know who we are.  The IRTF's newish ANRP looks
like a good model, it picks promising students who probably wouldn't
pay any attention to us, and waves a small prize and a junket to an
IETF meeting at them.  The quality of the papers has been very good,
but equally important, they go back home and tell their friends about
their favorable experience at the IETF/IRTF.

There's only so many prizes we can hand out, but I think it's worth
thinking about what other modest inducements we might come up with to
get people who would be good IETFers to give us a look.

R's,
John

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:46:35 -0400

One aspect of IETF leadership diversity that seems to have considerably 
decreased over the years that I've been working with IETF is the number 
of people from academic/research relative to the number of people from 
the commercial sector.   I believe that this has been extremely harmful 
to IETF.

Keith

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:50:05 -0400

On 03/10/13 15:43, John Levine allegedly wrote:
> That sounds a lot like quotas.  Let's not go there.  

+1.  We do not want to manage by ideology - consider how well that
serves political parties.

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:04:58 -0500

> serves political parties.

Right.

So is there anything you would like for the confirming bodies to say to 
Nomcom, that doesn't sound like quotas?

Spencer

---

From: Cameron Byrne <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:11:56 -0700

> Spencer

Generally this solution space is most elegantly handled  by increasing the
pool size from which selection is made. This generally involves actively
recruiting under-represented groups to join the pool rather than directly
manipulating a merit based selection process.

CB

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:45:25 -0800

>> serves political parties.

Well, I don't know.  To be honest "The I* should
contain more than one sort of human" doesn't sound *that*
ideological to me.  We've certainly got, I think,
compelling technical management reasons to be getting
more direction from people who, say, don't work for
behemoth manufacturers or who do know something about
network deployment and management practices in east Asia.

And I'll go on record requesting that folks think
pretty carefully before saying that including something
other than white western guys means lowering standards.

Anyway, at this point I'm really not sure how to
proceed with the discussion.  I'm convinced there's a
problem but I'm equally convinced that we can't make
progress on it given current organizational constraints.
I don't know how many people remember the "problem"
working group that Harald got started when he was IETF
chair.  Avri and I co-chaired it.  After nine or so months
of listening to people complain about nearly everything
about the IETF it was a little difficult to feel anything
but despair for the organization, and I think I could very
happily live without a rerun (especially if we start to
see unfortunate comments about affirmative action and
whatnot).

Melinda

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:03:17 -0800

>  was only one woman.  There were only 19 companies represented (out of

Using only two measurement points (February 2003 and 2013) may not 
give an accurate picture, especially given the small population. 
Measuring only I* may not be the best gauge; it might be helpful to 
include document authors/editors, WG secretaries/chairs, nomcom 
makeup, etc.  A broader measurement may be a better tool to let us 
know if we are making progress or getting worse.

>         gender and corporate affiliation.

Perhaps the nomcom might be a place to actively seek to increase the 
diversity of the bodies to which it selects members?

>         steps were taken to select a more diverse slate and why it was

I wonder if such a step might be better kept in reserve if other 
steps don't work?  Especially because one of the later proposals is 
to better understand the causes of lack of diversity in the I* and 
specific measures to increase diversity?  It might be better to take 
that step before this one.

>         committed to increasing the diversity of the IETF.

Sounds good, although I wonder about the already difficult process of 
finding high quality candidates for many positions.  I suppose what I 
am really wondering is if part of the problem of why the I* members 
are not diverse is that it is so hard to find a pool of willing and 
able candidates.

>         minimize conflict-of-interest and personal bias in their

This sounds like a terrific idea.

>  suggestions for longer-term solutions to be considered by the IETF.

I think this is also a very good suggestion.

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning them.
                                                   --Andrew A. Rooney

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:20:58 -0400

On 03/10/13 18:45, Melinda Shore allegedly wrote:
> ideological to me.  

Yes but that's a guideline, not "the Nomcom MUST increase I* diversity
according to the metric defined in section 17.1 every year".

> I'm convinced there's a

An explicit guideline is a big deal.  (But I speculate that every NomCom
does take diversity into consideration anyway.)

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:23:12 -0500

I am glad to see the IETF beginning to have this conversation about diversity. I am concerned that, as an organization, we avoid becoming locked into entrenched, polarizing positions, though. Some of us will take the view that qualified people may not be taking on, or may not be selected to fill, positions of authority within IETF because of structural barriers within the organization. Some qualified people may feel that they personally don't belong, in social terms, or they may be excluded because of economic costs that are greater than they can bear. On the other hand, other members may insist that individuals make their own choices, and that those who currently hold the various positions work very hard and make a range of sacrifices and compromises in order to meet the requirements of the offices. If we look at other organizations that have wrestled with diversity issues, we will see that many people argue that such initiatives may result in less qualified people, and people whose interest is in diversity rather than in technology, making it into positions of authority. Some members of our organization will therefore be concerned that technical decision-making will suffer and that the people who really care about the technical decisions will end up bearing even more of the organization's workload than they already do. Somehow we have to come up with an approach that fosters bringing in the talents of those who may currently be overlooked but also continues to put the organization's mandate first. Our goal as an organization must be to make sure that we are, in fact, welcoming and accessible, so that people who are deeply interested in the technological issues can and will take on an active role and move into positions of authority. The question is how to do this.  

I think we must first understand our own position within the larger social context. There has been a recession, which has hit some parts of the world harder than others and has hit different industries and industry players differently. A couple of years ago, the San Jose Mercury News reported that the workforce in Silicon Valley had in some respects become less diverse in the previous eight years (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14383730). The New York Times reported, around the same time, that women seemed not to be graduating in computer science in as large numbers as they had 15 or 20 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html?_r=1&). It may therefore be the case that in part, membership in our organization is reflecting wider trends. On the other hand, general trends ought not to cause us to stick our heads in the sand and refuse even to examine the issue. We should also consider that increased diversity could come through different pathways: we could increase our international membership, or we could increase the racial and gender diversity of our North American and European membership. It may even be that if we increase our international membership, the percentage of women in our organization may decline, since it may be that women computer scientists and engineers are even rarer outside North America and Europe. I say "may" because I don't know the statistics, but I do think that expanding our reach into the world may lead to results we don't expect as well as results we do.  

One key aspect of our considerations, I think, has to be the broad question of how we draw new people into the organization. Attending the conferences has to be important. If there are barriers to attendance, those barriers would need to be considered. We should think about where we hold our conferences, how long it takes to get to them, how much it costs to participate, and whether we make it possible to be really involved remotely. We should minimize travel time and the cost of travel, in both money and time. Maybe we should think about some mechanism for subsidizing people who travel long distances, especially if they don't work for big companies. Maybe we should offer daycare. It would seem to me that there would be something to be said for looking very carefully at the processes for choosing venues and setting attendance costs. We should meet in different parts of the world. We should not treat meeting in Vancouver or Hawaii as equivalent to meeting in Asia. We should plan our meetings with the dual goal of increasing our attractiveness to new members and minimizing the commitment of time and money for existing members, because these are the goals that we seek to achieve through our meetings that are most important for our organization as a whole. 

Once we have qualified people involved in IETF, we want to draw them into greater roles within the organization. There are serious structural problems here, though. Being seriously involved requires volunteering many hours every week or month - sometimes almost the equivalent of a full-time job. We have to understand that most people who take on positions of authority within IETF have companies paying their salaries, companies that can afford to have them doing much less company work in the short term so that the company can benefit in the long term. It should hardly be surprising that, especially in a recession (when the share prices of smaller outfits and the ambitions of their founders are in a soberer state) it would be large companies that would be willing and able to fund these positions. It may well also be the case that within these companies, it is less likely to be women or racial minorities who are in a position to ask for full pay for part-time work. Since we have rely on voluntary labour, we maybe should think about structuring the time and money issues so that they can be workable for people from smaller companies and other parts of the world.  I don't know how to do that, but I raise the question for discussion.  

I think it is important that we foster on-ramps into the organization, so that we can welcome promising people into worthwhile, flexible work that will be good for their careers as well as good for the organization as a whole. Perhaps the Areas should do some outreach, into regions or new companies or even university graduate programs. I really don't know the answer. It seems to me that maybe a good way to start would be to have an open conversation structured around the question "what drew you to IETF and why did you stay?" The flip side, of course, would be "and where did your colleagues go, the ones who have not come back?" 

I think Jari's proposal to get a group looking at this seems like a good starting point. 

Cullen

On Mar 10, 2013, at 5:22 AM, IETF Diversity <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The letter below was sent to the IESG, the IAB, the IAOC and the ISOC Board this morning, in an attempt to open a discussion of how to increase the diversity of the IETF Leadership.  We are sharing the letter here to encourage community discussion of this important topic.
> 
> If you support this letter and would like to be added as a signatory, please send e-mail to [email-masked], and your name will be added to the list of signatures.
> 
> ---
>

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:32:44 -0500

For what it's worth,

>>> serves political parties.

My "right" here was in the context of the snipped line above "+1", which 
was

"That sounds a lot like quotas.  Let's not go there."

> contain more than one sort of human" doesn't sound *that*

It doesn't sound *that* ideological to me, either.

My question was

"So is there anything you would like for the confirming bodies to say to 
Nomcom, that doesn't sound like quotas?"

So far, I've seen an observation that confirming bodies inserting 
themselves into the process of achieving a more diverse I* may be 
premature (quoting Randall, "I wonder if such a step might be better 
kept in reserve if other steps don't work?  Especially because one of 
the later proposals is to better understand the causes of lack of 
diversity in the I* and specific measures to increase diversity?  It 
might be better to take that step before this one").

That makes some sense to me. What am I missing?

Thank you,

Spencer

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:47:39 -0800

>  other than white western guys means lowering standards.

I don't think anyone has suggested that.  Rather, the concern regards 
how we get diversity in the I*.  Increasing the pool (both in general 
and among those now under-represented) is one way that has been 
suggested.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        --Arthur C. Clarke

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:08:27 -0800

> "That sounds a lot like quotas.  Let's not go there."

Right, I'm just not sure how we got to quotas and
whatnot.  We can have diversity metrics and measure
whether or not we're doing better or worse, or hitting
those metrics, without instituting "quotas," (so
I'm agreeing with what you're saying) but to be honest
I'm not really sure that I'd throw "quotas" out without
any further discussion.  On the other hand, as I suggested
earlier I'm pretty sure that no constructive discussion
of "quotas" is possible because there's such a strong,
instinctive negative reaction to the term (and possibly
to the idea).

Basically I kind of feel that we've immediately fallen
into the IETF trap of engineering solutions (and discarding
ones that we personally don't like) without agreement on
what the problem is.  Do you feel that what's described
in the letter is an accurate and complete description of
the/a problem?

Melinda

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:20:07 -0700

Hi Jari,
At 09:52 AM 3/10/2013, Jari Arkko wrote:
>I believe an IETF with more diverse participation and leadership 
>would be a stronger IETF. When we have more diverse experiences and 
>viewpoints, our results will be better and more generally 
>applicable. Participants from different places, cultures, men, 
>women, and people in different situations. One of the challenges 
>that I have identified as I am taking the IETF chair task is to make 
>the IETF even more international and more diverse.

Agreed.

I have suggested individual from Asia for IETF work.  These 
individuals were chosen because they are good at what they do.  I do 
not have any concern about their expertise.  For what it is worth I 
do not rate their expertise.  That is subject to peer review.  I have 
not seen any complaints about their work.  I take it that the IETF 
considers that they have the expertise.

Diversity of IETF Leadership begins at the bottom.  It is challenging 
for reasons which I unfortunately cannot describe.  I am supportive 
of the effort.  I am not comfortable with quotas.  My preference is 
to see that the IETF is accessible.  I'll describe that as reaching 
out to individuals at the point of entry and see what can be done for 
them to have a lesser barrier within the IETF.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:34:37 -0500

On 3/10/2013 9:08 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> Do you feel that what's described

Well, sure. I signed it, right? :D

I have some heartburn about the paragraph on the confirming bodies in 
the short-term, within-BCPs section, but I signed it because I agreed 
with the problem statement.

Spencer

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 07:57:56 +0000

On 11/03/2013 02:47, Randall Gellens wrote:
> and among those now under-represented) is one way that has been suggested.

We have to recognise a couple of awkward facts. One is that the people
who participate in the IETF are to a large extent self-selected, or
selected by social and economic pressures that we don't control. The
other is that the same largely applies to those who are considered by
the NomCom - yes, we (the community) can nominate anybody, but they
have to agree, and their employers have to agree.

That makes the problem harder to solve. We *should* try to solve it,
which is why I was happy to sign the letter.

    Brian

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:00:22 -0400

On Mar 10, 2013, at 10:20 PM, S Moonesamy <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Diversity of IETF Leadership begins at the bottom.  It is challenging for reasons which I unfortunately cannot describe.  I am supportive of the effort.  I am not comfortable with quotas.  My preference is to see that the IETF is accessible.  I'll describe that as reaching out to individuals at the point of entry and see what can be done for them to have a lesser barrier within the IETF.

This is an excellent point.  More diversity in top-level leadership begin with more a more diverse set of active participants, followed by a more diverse set of document editors, directorate members and WG chairs.  The diversity of our active participants (as judged by the diversity of meeting attendees) has gone up significantly over the years, but we need to figure out why that has not been fully reflected in diversity among WG chairs, document authors, etc.

I've been thinking, for instance, that one thing we could add to our list of immediate actions is for IESG members to review their directorate membership and, if it makes sense, attempt to increase the diversity of their directorates.  This would have two effects:  the IESG would get better advice, and it would give the people they appoint more opportunity to interact with other senior IETF participants and demonstrate their abilities.

It is important that people realize that if we have a selection process (from beginning to end, not just the NomCom) that is picking a less-diverse group of leaders from a more-diverse group of participants, that selection process _is not_ selecting the best possible candidates.  Figuring out the root cause of that problem is hard -- it is not something we can pin on the NomCom,  because the NomCom may not end-up with the best candidate pool to choose from for various reasons.  It is something we should fix, though, because the result will be _better_ leadership and a more effective organization.

Margaret

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:12:08 -0400

I'm not sure I have enough data to evaluate the comments in this letter.  I don't disagree with the general goal "diversity is good".  I do believe that the proposed actions are not realistic in that they would tend to make the Nomcom process even more moribund.  I will note that Appendix A suggests, but does not require the Nomcom to consider diversity in the appointment of IAB members (and doing diversity on a company basis can sometimes fight with doing diversity on a minority, gender or geographic basis).

But I have a more fundamental set of questions with respect to the data on trend stated by the letter - that we're becoming less diverse.

1) Is there a "statistically significant" difference in the composition of the set of the working group chairs and the set of the members of the IESG and IAB taken together for the 10 years mentioned?   It was pointed out to me that it is pretty much a hard requirement that members of those bodies have previous experience as a WG chair, so THAT  is the set with which the IESG and IAB membership should be compared, not the IETF as a whole.

2) Of the people who signed this letter
   a) Who have been working group chairs?
   b) Who would be willing to volunteer for 
       i) the Nomcom
       ii) the IAB
       iii) the IESG?
   c) Whose employers (or other supporting organization) would be willing to support their participation in 
       i) the Nomcom
       ii) the IAB
       iii) the IESG?

3) Same set of questions for the IETF as a whole.  I'd really like to get an understanding of the size and composition of the intersection of the set of current/past WG chairs and the set of "my employer will support me doing the IESG job".  

I've had a few conversations on this topic already at the current meeting and at least three conversations went:  "I don't have time (or support) for the IESG, but I really think I could be an asset to the IAB".  E.g. the IESG takes significantly more time than the IESG.

My take is that a) WG chair and b) employer support are the two objective criteria in the Nomcom process.  

I would hesitate to eliminate the "must have been a WG chair" as criteria as its one of the few internal-to-the-IETF opportunities to observe or evaluate candidate abilities.  But then we need to figure out if we're doing what we can to diversify the WG chairs without adversely affecting the WGs.

For employer support - we're either stuck with the current situation, or we shrink the job to increase the number of people (and employers) willing to do the job, or we figure out how to get third party support for given positions.  Unless and until we do this, we have to live with the set of candidates for things like the IESG being a lot smaller than the IETF as a whole.

What ever we come up with, I'd really like it to be actionable and objective.

Mike

At 06:22 AM 3/10/2013, IETF Diversity wrote:
>If you support this letter and would like to be added as a signatory, please send e-mail to <mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked], and your name will be added to the list of signatures.
>
>---
>

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:41:24 +0000

On Mar 10, 2013, at 1:57 PM, Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'd ask that people think about what the confirming bodies should be willing to say, along these lines. It seems a bit strong to me, but I'm not sure what the community is comfortable with.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the above statement. Yes, diversity is a good thing, and I'm all for it. However, I don't think it is a fundamental goal; the fundamental goal is (as Jari said) to get the best people for the job from the available talent pool. I don't know that political correctness automatically helps there. 

For the noncom, if there is a choice between two people of equal capability, diversity considerations can be useful in selection (pick the person who is not a north american or european white male). But when it comes to confirmation of a slate, the confirming body is not being asked whether there are enough little green women, it's being asked whether the individuals selected and the resulting committees (the IAB, the IESG, or whatever) will be effective and competent in the role. A statement like "Send us more little green women" from a confirming body to the noncom makes some important assumptions: that there were little green women to choose from, that they were equally or more competent than the person selected, and so on. The confirming body is not privy to the discussions of the noncom, and isn't told why a given individual was not selected, only the arguments for those selected. That makes all such assumptions pretty dubious.

I'd prefer that confirmation processes stick to fundamental goals, not political correctness. If you want to encourage the noncom to consider diversity in its deliberations, fine. But not the confirming bodies.

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:55:39 -0400

> I'd prefer that confirmation processes stick to fundamental goals, not political correctness. If you want to encourage the noncom to consider diversity in its deliberations, fine. But not the confi…

agree completly. Confirming body does have (some) information of one candidate. 

Marc.

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:14:07 -0500

> Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the above statement. Yes, diversity is a good thing, and I'm all for it. However, I don't think it is a fundamental goal; the fundamental goal is (as Jari said) t…

Hi, Fred,

I'm not sure which above statement you're uncomfortable with - my 
original e-mail was saying that I was uncomfortable with the proposed 
actions for the confirming bodies, and was asking if there were any 
other actions that might make sense for the confirming bodies to take.

One possible answer is "no". Another possible answer is "not yet". I've 
seen both of those go past in this thread. I'm just if there are other 
possible answers.

Agreed.

> I'd prefer that confirmation processes stick to fundamental goals, not political correctness. If you want to encourage the noncom to consider diversity in its deliberations, fine. But not the confi…

I'm listening - thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Spencer

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:23:36 -0400

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Fred Baker (fred) <[email-masked]> wrote:>
> Yes, diversity is a good thing, and I'm all for it. However, I don't think it is a
> fundamental goal; the fundamental goal is (as Jari said) to get the best
> people for the job from the available talent pool. I don't know that
> political correctness automatically helps there.
>

So, I said this once before on a previous thread, but I still believe that
this analysis is wrong.  From an organiational perspective, the aim of fostering
diversity isn't "political correctness", it's enabling a larger pool
of candidates.
Here's how I put this before:

"I think the analysis here is subtly wrong.  If you have two candidates
who can clearly do the job, it seems to imply that you should always
still stack rank them and pick the higher ranked.  But that's a very
local optimization.

Efforts to increase to diversity are a very different optimization--by
making more visible that opportunities are present for all, these
initiatives attempt to increase the pool of talent over time.  If
people who would previously have left a field stay or folks who had
not thought of entering a field do so, that field wins.  The scale of
that win can be the field of  "Science, Technology, Engineering, Math"
or it can be "working group leadership" or "the IETF".  But a bigger
pool of talent to draw from is a big win for almost any sized field."

Note that this is true for many different kinds of diversity--regional,
gender, and company origin all can benefit from efforts to improve
the overall pool size of candidates.  It's also true long before we
get to the point of selecting I* folks--it is just as true for working
group chairs and other positions.  By picking competent candidates
from a variety of backgrounds, we encourage participation by those
with those backgrounds; that can be more important than a strict
stack rack among the competent candidates.

Just my personal two cents,

Ted Hardie

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:32:18 -0800

> diversity isn't "political correctness", it's enabling a larger pool

I tend to think of it as an effort to remove bias from the
system, which is probably consistent with the notion of
enabling more candidates.  I think that right now there's
a far narrower set of perspectives being represented among
the I* than among the IETF participants.  That's necessarily
the case when the I* is 30-odd people and there are several
thousand participants, but notably lacking among the
leadership are people who don't work for large manufacturers
and people who have first-hand knowledge of network
architectures and management practices in non-western
countries.  I think that makes us weaker.

Melinda

---

From: Arturo Servin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:43:15 -0400

Hi,

	I have been reading the comments in the list and although I am not
making a specific reply to any message I would like to make some comments.

	So far I have read "I agree we need some diversity" or "I agree that
more diversity is better". Also I have read "Please no quotas", "do not
let the nomcom do this" or "that".

	My opinion is that we agree we have a situation that we should improve,
but also we shouldn't focus on the nomcom process, the problem is not
about how we select people (it may help but it is not the root problem).
The problem is to bring new people (younger people, women, from more
countries, different languages, etc.) to write RFCs, to participate/be
interested in the IETF and how we involve/prepare these people to become
our leaders and not just participants. If we do that, then we will have
more diversity in our leadership.

Best wishes,
as

On 10/03/2013 06:22, IETF Diversity wrote:
> The letter below was sent to the IESG, the IAB, the IAOC and the ISOC
> Board this morning, in an attempt to open a discussion of how to
> increase the diversity of the IETF Leadership.  We are sharing the
> letter here to encourage community discussion of this important topic.
> 
> please send e-mail to [email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>, and your name will be added to the
> list of signatures.
> 
> ---
>

---

From: "Gorsic, Bonnie L" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:49:00 +0000

This is a great suggestion. 

Bonnie L. Gorsic

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Arturo Servin
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:43 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

Hi,

	I have been reading the comments in the list and although I am not making a specific reply to any message I would like to make some comments.

	So far I have read "I agree we need some diversity" or "I agree that more diversity is better". Also I have read "Please no quotas", "do not let the nomcom do this" or "that".

	My opinion is that we agree we have a situation that we should improve, but also we shouldn't focus on the nomcom process, the problem is not about how we select people (it may help but it is not the root problem).
The problem is to bring new people (younger people, women, from more countries, different languages, etc.) to write RFCs, to participate/be interested in the IETF and how we involve/prepare these people to become our leaders and not just participants. If we do that, then we will have more diversity in our leadership.

Best wishes,
as

On 10/03/2013 06:22, IETF Diversity wrote:
> IETF's decision-making process and calls into question the legitimacy 
> of the IETF as an International Standards Development
> leadership across several axes (race, geographic location, gender and 
> corporate affiliation) is important for three practical reasons:
> 
> 25 members, there was one member of non-European descent, there was 
> one member from a country outside of North America or Europe, and 
> there were four women.  There were 23 companies represented in the 
> IETF leadership (out of a total of 25 seats).
> 
> We are committed to working within the IETF to make the changes that 
> are needed to correct this serious issue.
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> (In alphabetical order)
> 
> Bernard Aboba
> Cathy Aronson
> Alia Atlas
> Mary Barnes
> Mohamed Boucadair
> Brian Carpenter
> Stuart Cheshire
> Alissa Cooper
> Spencer Dawkins
> Roni Even
> Janet Gunn
> Stephen Hanna
> Ted Hardie
> Sam Hartman
> Fangwei Hu
> Geoff Huston
> Christian Jacquenet
> Mirjam Kuehne
> Olaf Kolkman
> Suresh Krishnan
> Barry Leiba
> Ted Lemon
> Kepeng Li
> Dapeng Liu
> Allison Mankin
> Bill Manning
> Kathleen Moriarty
> Monique Morrow
> Nurani Nimpuno
> Matt Nottingham
> Erik Nordmark
> Karen O'Donoghue
> Iuniana Oprescu
> Jaqueline Queiroz
> Hosnieh Rafiee
> Pete Resnick
> Lea Roberts
> Simon Pietro Romano
> Peter Saint-Andre
> Eve Schooler
> Rifaat Shekh-Yusef
> Larissa Shapiro
> Melinda Shore
> Barbara Stark
> Brian Trammel
> Tina Tsou
> Justin Uberti
> Margaret Wasserman
> Renee Wilson-Burstein
> James Woodyatt
> Lucy Yong
> Jessica Yu
> Lixia Zhang
>

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:49:18 -0400

> more diversity in our leadership.

agree.

Marc.

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:53:15 +0000

I'd agree to the more general statement that people from large commercial
organisations are dominating, and I'd argue that this is due to the cost
(in time and finanically) of doing reasonably high level IETF work. This
also restricts the available pool, and furthermore means our leadership is
at most as diverse as those large commercial organisations.

This means that we're not only locking ourselves out of having
comparatively pure academics in leadership positions, but also locking
ourselves out of the kinds of independent web developers doing much of the
practical protocol work these days, which in turn means that the IETF
influences that work less than it might, or indeed should.

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Keith Moore <[email-masked]>wrote:

> decreased over the years that I've been working with IETF is the number of
> people from academic/research relative to the number of people from the
> commercial sector.   I believe that this has been extremely harmful to IETF.
>
> Keith
>
>

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:02:39 +0000

> more diversity in our leadership.

Agree. And so the onus is first on WG chairs to appoint members of these under-represented groups to be document authors, and then for ADs to appoint more of them as WG chairs and directorate members. Once we get to a better balance within those groups, NomCom may have more possible candidates for the I* positions. If at that point we still get only western men in the IESG/IAB, then we can think of how we need to re-engineer the NomCom. Not now.

But both WG chairs and ADs have to work with the people who show up. Going over the WebSec mailing list for the six months, there are exactly zero messages sent by women, and all but one of the few non-Western names are from people who have lived and worked in the west for years. Looking at the room during meetings is pretty much the same.

So if and when the next WG document comes up and we're looking for authors, we don't have much of a pool of candidates from the under-represented groups. We would have to actively seek people who currently don't participate in WebSec (or just participate in the email & powerstrip BoF at the back of every session).

It's possible that WebSec is an extreme example, and that other groups may have a larger pool, but at that level, we have to rely on society outside our control

Yoav

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:03:46 -0400

> more diversity in our leadership.
Agree.  And I suspect that a large part of the answer is "make effective 
participation in IETF substantially less expensive than it is now"

(I didn't say it was an easy problem to solve.)

Keith

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:12:44 -0400

> Agree.  And I suspect that a large part of the answer is "make effective participation in IETF substantially less expensive than it is now"

+1

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:18:55 +0000

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:25:59 -0500

> (I didn't say it was an easy problem to solve.)

Arturo and Keith,

Thank you both for these thoughts.

I've self-funded a couple of IETF meetings, but still think primarily 
about "expensive" in terms of time.

Spencer

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:41:19 -0500

> more diversity in our leadership.
[MB] I don't entirely agree with your conclusion.   There is a problem
with the nomcom process, although it's not entirely the problem of the
nomcom members implementing that process.  The process is designed
such that the nomcom voting members consider community input as to who
should be appointed to leadership positions.  If the community doesn't
have an ample pool of diverse nominees, then certainly, they can't
possibly do anything to improve diversity.  However, when they do have
a pool that does include individuals that are a minority in the
community, then due diligence is required in evaluating the nominees.
This year's set of nominees was far more diverse than in the past and
yet the IESG will still be entirely male and entirely North
American/European.  Of course, only people that bothered to use the
tool to input comments would see that.  So, indeed the nomcom process
is part of the problem.
[/MB]

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:41:55 -0400

Hi Melinda,

I certainly agree that there are challenges in getting those who work for smaller companies to participate in the IETF (for known reasons). I believe the IETF, however, does better than other organizations that have expensive membership fees. 

The country/regional participation is an interesting aspect. If you try to figure out whether the IESG / IAB leadership is dominated from US participation then the question is what do you take as a basis for that analysis.
You could, for example, take a look at Jari's draft/RFC statistics (see http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/countrydistr.html). The stats say that 50.69% of the authors come from the US.

The IETF leadership has more than 50% of persons coming from the US. 

The question is, however, whether this is a good measurement to consider all the published documents as a basis for such an analysis. Also, if you look through the list you see Henning as the first person in that list. Henning is German. Mark Townsley as another example, can be found in the data about authors from France. Mark, like Henning, just moved to another country. 

Ciao
Hannes

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:48:41 -0400

> tool to input comments would see that.  So, indeed the nomcom process

Mary: I believe you would agree with this but your language doesn't seem
to say so: just because the nomcom chose a less diverse set of nominees
from a more diverse set of candidates doesn't mean there is something
wrong with the nomcom or the nomcom process.  It may be that this nomcom
did take diversity into account, and diversity was outweighed by other
factors that are at least as important.  Do you have what you consider
to be proof that the nomcom didn't consider diversity?  I have direct
experience of at least a few nomcoms that did.  Are you looking for
quotas?  Do you think diversity is more important than e.g. demonstrated
ability to lead, at the top level?

Scott

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:49:49 -0500

I signed the letter and my answers to your questions are below [MB].
I would posit that a number of others have answers not unlike my own.

Mary.

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I'm not sure I have enough data to evaluate the comments in this letter.  I
> don't disagree with the general goal "diversity is good".  I do believe that
> the proposed actions are not realistic in that they would tend to make the
> Nomcom process even more moribund.  I will note that Appendix A suggests,
> but does not require the Nomcom to consider diversity in the appointment of
> IAB members (and doing diversity on a company basis can sometimes fight with
> doing diversity on a minority, gender or geographic basis).
>
> But I have a more fundamental set of questions with respect to the data on
> trend stated by the letter - that we're becoming less diverse.
>
> 1) Is there a "statistically significant" difference in the composition of
> the set of the working group chairs and the set of the members of the IESG
> and IAB taken together for the 10 years mentioned?   It was pointed out to
> me that it is pretty much a hard requirement that members of those bodies
> have previous experience as a WG chair, so THAT  is the set with which the
> IESG and IAB membership should be compared, not the IETF as a whole.
>
[MB] I've chaired RAI area WGs since 2006.  I have chaired DISPATCH WG
since 2009 and CLUE since 2011.
>    b) Who would be willing to volunteer for
[MB] I served as Nomcom chair in the past. [/MB]
>        ii) the IAB
[MB] I currently serve as IAB executive director. [/MB]
>        iii) the IESG?
[MB] I have been a nominee for RAI (and other areas) at least 6 times. [/MB
> support their participation in
[MB] Obviously, I have had employers that have supported in all the
roles and currently support me in the roles in which I am currently
serving. [/MB]
>        i) the Nomcom
>        ii) the IAB
>        iii) the IESG?
>
> 3) Same set of questions for the IETF as a whole.  I'd really like to get an
> understanding of the size and composition of the intersection of the set of
> current/past WG chairs and the set of "my employer will support me doing the
> IESG job".
>
> I've had a few conversations on this topic already at the current meeting
> and at least three conversations went:  "I don't have time (or support) for
> the IESG, but I really think I could be an asset to the IAB".  E.g. the IESG
> takes significantly more time than the IESG.
[MB] I think you mean IESG takes more time than IAB.  I would
certainly agree with that but I do not believe there was a shortage of
nominees/volunteers to serve in IESG positions this year. [/MB]
> I would hesitate to eliminate the "must have been a WG chair" as criteria as
> its one of the few internal-to-the-IETF opportunities to observe or evaluate
> candidate abilities.  But then we need to figure out if we're doing what we
> can to diversify the WG chairs without adversely affecting the WGs.
>
> For employer support - we're either stuck with the current situation, or we
> shrink the job to increase the number of people (and employers) willing to
> do the job, or we figure out how to get third party support for given
> positions.  Unless and until we do this, we have to live with the set of
> candidates for things like the IESG being a lot smaller than the IETF as a
> whole.
>
[MB] My personal opinion is that these are not our biggest issues in
increasing diversity, with the exception of corporate/sponsor
diversity.  They are certainly general issues and challenges that we
are faced with as a whole. [/MB]
> If you support this letter and would like to be added as a signatory, please
> send e-mail to [email-masked], and your name will be added to the
> list of signatures.
>
> ---
>

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:03:12 -0500

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Scott Brim <[email-masked]> wrote:
> to be proof that the nomcom didn't consider diversity?
[MB] I think I do - the process was quite inconsistent in terms of how
certain nominees were treated during interviews, etc.  Also, as I said
in another email, Nomcom has a tough job as the process is based upon
them considering community input.  When there is a bias in that input,
then of course, there may be bias in the process. [/MB]
I have direct
> experience of at least a few nomcoms that did.
[MB] In my Nomcom experience I do not believe we did as good of a job
considering this as we should have.  Some of the community comments
about female nominees were disrespectful and showed ignorance of the
fact that women are different - yes women are more likely to shed
tears when we are upset than to yell or curse or physically push
someone around (which I have been at these meetings).  To suggest that
someone is not qualified to be an AD because they shed tears in a
contentious situation is unacceptable IMHO. Lack of respect for the
most basic diversity that exists both between genders and cultures is
a big problem IMHO.  [/MB]

Are you looking for
> quotas?
[MB] Absolutely NOT!!!
  Do you think diversity is more important than e.g. demonstrated
> ability to lead, at the top level?
[MB] Absolutely NOT!!!  What I'm looking for is for IETF to recognize
that there may be a bias in how these decisions are made and to make a
conscientious decision to be aware of how this bias may impact their
decisions.  I realize that this is a rather bold expectation given
that this is not a problem unique to IETF:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html?_r=0
But, again, as an international open organization, I would expect the
IETF to at least make an effort.
[/MB]

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:06:13 -0400

On 03/11/13 15:03, Mary Barnes allegedly wrote:
> [MB] ... What I'm looking for is for IETF to recognize
> decisions.  

Sounds good.  +1.  Thanks.

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:30:38 +0000

A person's sex is of course only one of the recognized "protected 
characteristics".

*http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/new-equality-act-guidance/protected-characteristics-definitions/*

The full set is:

Age
Disability
Gender ressignment
Marriage and civil partnetship
Pregnancy and maternity
Race
Religion and belief
Sex
Sexual orientation

If we formally recognize one of the "protected characteristics" we 
surely have to formally recognize and make provision within our rules 
and operating procedures for all of them.

Although I point to a UK site my understanding is that these protected 
characteristics are enacted in European Union law and thus apply across 
the whole of the EU.

Stewart

---

From: Arturo Servin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:33:28 -0400

ISOC is doing a great job with the fellowship program. There is just a
few people each meeting but it is a good start.

	Now, we need to figure out how to bring more people and prepare them to
write RFCs and being leaders.

	Not easy at all as Keith said.

Regards,
as

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:57:12 -0400

Ted,

> initiatives attempt to increase the pool of talent over time. 

Thanks for your thoughts. I thought the above was an important observation.

Jari

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:02:02 -0500

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]> wrote:
> http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/new-equality-act-guidance/protected-characteristics-definitions/
>
> The full set is:
>
> Age
> Disability
> Gender ressignment
> If we formally recognize one of the "protected characteristics" we surely
> have to formally recognize and make provision within our rules and operating
> procedures for all of them.
>
> characteristics are enacted in European Union law and thus apply across the
> whole of the EU.
[MB] I fully agree.  My experiences certainly only reflect a subset of
the characteristics you identify and I fully agree they all should be
equally considered in terms of ensuring that bias is minimized.

However, I would never, ever advocate Affirmative Action programs or
any decision making process that does not appoint the most qualified
individual.

[/MB]

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:02:25 -0700 (PDT)

>       and make better decisions than less-diverse groups.

  I would really like to see this statement either backed up by
peer-reviewed apolitical scientific research or withdrawn by the
signatories of the open letter. It is highly offensive.

  While it should be self-evident that a group whose homogeneity
was of corporate affiliation might not make the best decisions for
the IETF as a whole, to say that a racially homogenous group is
somehow dumber than a racially diverse group smacks of racism.

  The group comprised of winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics is
overwhelmingly north american and european males. Just the makeup
that is being asserted as a "problem" here in the IETF. But it is not
viewed as a problem, and for good reason because science would
suffer if it was subordinated in any way to any other consideration.

>       leadership are less likely to dedicate their time and effort to

  Another ipse dixit fallacy! A mere assertion masquerading as a
sociological fact. As if we are just sheeple who are motivated to only
join groups whose makeup resembles us.

  We are supposed to be individuals here engaging in consensus-based
work to get the best technical solution to the Internet's problems.
Disparate impact theory has no place in the IETF.

  Dan.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:03:23 -0400

On 3/11/2013 3:03 PM, Mary Barnes wrote:
> yes women are more likely to shed
> someone around (which I have been at these meetings)

I was on the Nomcom that Mary chaired.  Nomcom's internal activities are 
confidential.

In spite of that, I believe it within bounds for me to disclose that 
during Mary's chair<person>ship, she never pushed anyone, nor did she 
cry (that I saw, though I'd claim we gave her plenty of cause.)

On the other hand, she was frighteningly better organized than most males...

d/
-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

---

From: Rhys Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:39:10 -0400

> signatories of the open letter. It is highly offensive.

I'm in no way an expect in any of this, but I've heard it said (in other contexts than this discussion) that diversity increases the quality of decision making in groups. Your message piqued my interest as to whether there is valid evidence for whether this was actually the case or not.

To cut a long story short, after a bit of investigation, I'd have to say that current scientific thought definitely leans towards this in fact being the case.

A selection of references that seem to appear quite often in the various bits of literature I've had a browse around for anyone who is interested:

Jackson, S. E. May, K. E. & Whitney, K. (1995) Understanding the Dynamics of diversity in decision 
making teams in R.A. Guzzo et al, (1995) Team effectiveness and decision making in organisations: 
San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Johnson, W. B. & Packer, A. E. (1987) Workforce 2000, Work and workers for the 21st century: 
Washington DC: Department of Labour12.

Krause, S., James, R., Faria, J. J., Ruxton, G. D. and Krause, J., 2011. Swarm intelligence in humans: diversity can trump ability. Animal Behaviour, 81 (5), pp. 941-948.

Lumby, J. (2006) Conceptualizing diversity and leadership: evidence from ten cases: Educational 
management and administration, Vol. 34, (2), 151-165.

Phillips, Katherine W., Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale. 2009. Is the pain worth the gain? The advantages and liabilities of agreeing with socially distinct newcomers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35: 336-350.

Mohammed, S., Ringseis, E., Cognitive Diversity and Consensus in Group Decision Making: The Role of Inputs, Processes, and Outcomes, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 85, Issue 2, July 2001, Pages 310-335,

Sommers, S.R. ( 2006). On racial diversity and group decision making: Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 597-612.

Watson, W. E. & Kumar, K. & Michaelsen, L. K.(1993) Cultural Diversity impact on interaction 
process and performance: Comparing homogenous and diverse task groups, Academy of 
management Journal, 36, 590-602.

Best,
Rhys.
--
Dr Rhys Smith
Identity, Access, and Middleware Specialist
Cardiff University & Janet - the UK's research and education network

email: [email-masked] / [email-masked]
GPG: 0xDE2F024C

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:51:00 -0700

At 4:41 PM +0000 3/11/13, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:

>  If you want to encourage the noncom to consider diversity in its 
> deliberations, fine.

If the nomcom itself is diverse, this should help with some forms of 
selection bias.  But, as several people have noted, if we grow the 
IETF pool as a whole, that helps, and if we remove barriers to 
serving on I* that helps as well.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.                                       --Winston Churchill

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:56:47 -0700

At 9:32 AM -0800 3/11/13, Melinda Shore wrote:

>  notably lacking among the

So what do we do to improve this?  We probably need some set of 
measurements (e.g., some set of diversity measurements for various 
sets such as I*, WG chairs/secretaries, document authors/editors, 
nomcom members), some idea of contributing factors, and some set of 
things we can do to try to improve.  We can then try implementing 
some and remeasuring to see if they helped.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages
women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft,
destroy capitalism and become lesbians.  --Pat Robertson on equal rights

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:59:20 -0700

>  more diversity in our leadership.

Don't forget we also need a broader set of people willing to serve. 
It's hard for many people to devote essentially full time to the 
IETF.  Working for a company that sees the value in sponsoring this 
helps tremendously, which might be part of why employees of such 
companies dominate the I*.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
DEFINITION: Computer -- A device designed to speed and automate errors.

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:50:15 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
> 
> wrong with the nomcom or the nomcom process.

That is true, but this message of Mary's is one of the few items of
*data* we have on the subject:  The diversity of the selected people
(along the dimensions we are considering) is noticably smaller than
the diversity of the pool from which they were selected.  So we can
conclude that there is some factor operating within the Nomcom process
that we should examine and analyze and may wish to change.  (As
opposed to the possibility that the output of Nomcom has the same
diversity characteristics as the input of Nomcom, in which case,
trying to fix the Nomcom process would probably be ineffective.)

In regard to data, I see that the statistics on nation of authorship
for "recent RFCs"
(http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-countrydistr.html) is even
more US-heavy (~70%) than the statistics for "all RFCs"
(http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/countrydistr.html) (~50%).  It's
possible that IETF participation even at the purely technical level
has become less diverse over the past decade.

In regard to data, I expect that there are several levels of
participation which may have very different statistics due to the
difference in time/money costs involved:

1. participants in WG mailing lists

2. authors of drafts

3. regular attendees of the meetings

4. WG chairs

5. AD/IESG/IAB members

My guess is that groups 3 and 4 are fairly similar, but that group 3/4
may differ strongly from group 5 and groups 1 and 2.

Dale

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:54:14 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, March 11, 2013 1:39 pm, Rhys Smith wrote:
> I'm in no way an expect in any of this, but I've heard it said (in other
> contexts than this discussion) that diversity increases the quality of
> decision making in groups. Your message piqued my interest as to whether
> there is valid evidence for whether this was actually the case or not.

  Well, you snipped the part where I copied the explicit mention of
race and gender as being axes of diversity.

> To cut a long story short, after a bit of investigation, I'd have to say
> that current scientific thought definitely leans towards this in fact
> being the case.

  I detect a bait and switch here. We're told that there is a lack of
diversity at the IETF involving race, gender, geographic location and
corporate affiliation and that this is a problem because diverse groups
"are smarter" than non-diverse groups. Yet these studies talk about
diversity in a much broader sense that includes things like "formal
credentials" and "attention and recall" and "seeking and receiving social
information and support" as well as age, membership in a formal religion
and, yes, race.

  So unless this diversity "problem" at the IETF also involves the makeup
of Catholics, teenagers, people with just a grammar school education,
and those with attention deficit disorder, in the general IETF population,
I don't think these studies lean towards the statement in the open letter
as being a fact.

> A selection of references that seem to appear quite often in the various
> bits of literature I've had a browse around for anyone who is interested:

  I don't want to go through all of these but the first one presents a
framework with which to understand the dynamics of diversity. It says,

    "Our discussion in this chapter is guided by the heuristic of a
     theoretical framework that identifies primary constructs and
     connects them to form a meaningful territorial map. Within this
     framework, diversity is placed as a construct that appears early in
     the causal chain of phenomena considered."

What happens if diversity is placed as a construct that appears later in
the causal chain of phenomena? Dunno. But it should be unremarkable
that "diversity" strongly affects the causal chain of phenomena because
it has been designed to be that way.  Not very scientific.

  Scanning down to the one study that mentioned race, I see the abstract
describes confirmation bias:

       "Deliberation analyses supported the prediction that diverse
        groups would exchange a wider range of information than
        all-White groups."

And the finding is not anything that would lead us to the conclusion
that a racially diverse group is "smarter" than a racially homogenous
group as it was related to the willingness to discuss racism and was
"not wholly attributed to the performance of black participants versus
all-white groups."

  In other words, the statement that gender and racial diversity in
groups makes them "smarter" has no basis in fact. Do you feel that
an all-female group is stupider than a similarly sized group that is
equal parts male and female? Really?

  Dan.

> Krause, S., James, R., Faria, J. J., Ruxton, G. D. and Krause, J., 2011.
> Swarm intelligence in humans: diversity can trump ability. Animal
> Behaviour, 81 (5), pp. 941-948.
>
> Phillips, Katherine W., Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale. 2009.
> Is the pain worth the gain? The advantages and liabilities of agreeing
> with socially distinct newcomers. Personality and Social Psychology
> Bulletin 35: 336-350.
>
> Mohammed, S., Ringseis, E., Cognitive Diversity and Consensus in Group
> Decision Making: The Role of Inputs, Processes, and Outcomes,
> Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 85, Issue 2,
> July 2001, Pages 310-335,
>
> Sommers, S.R. ( 2006). On racial diversity and group decision making:
> Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations.
> Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 597-612.
>

---

From: Arturo Servin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:11:23 -0400

OK, I'll bite.

	I would by no means use the word "stupider", but I do think that a
group of females and males would take better decisions that a group of
only-males or only-females.

/as

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:08:57 -0400

> equal parts male and female? Really?

Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded academic studies that show that groups that contain women are smarter than all-male groups, regardless of the relative intelligence of the group members.  Surprising, perhaps, but true.  Here is a pointer to a discussion of one of them:

http://www.antonioyon.com/group-intelligence-and-the-female-factor

There are also numerous studies, of various types, that show that  more diverse groups make better decisions and/or perform better than less diverse groups.  Here is a description of one such study:

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/better_decisions_through_diversity

So, as illogical as these statements may seem on the surface, they are well-established facts.  Both of the articles I've sited give some insight into why this is true.

Margaret

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:57:56 +0000

> signatories of the open letter. It is highly offensive.

Speaking for myself, I do not find this statement in the least offensive.

It turns out that there's a book on the topic, for anyone who can
get hold of it:
http://books.google.co.uk/books/princeton?hl=en&q=&vid=ISBN9780691128382&redir_esc=y

   Brian

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:56:31 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, March 11, 2013 10:08 pm, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded academic studies that show that
> groups that contain women are smarter than all-male groups, regardless of
> the relative intelligence of the group members.  Surprising, perhaps, but
> true.  Here is a pointer to a discussion of one of them:
>
> There are also numerous studies, of various types, that show that  more
> diverse groups make better decisions and/or perform better than less
> diverse groups.  Here is a description of one such study:
>
> So, as illogical as these statements may seem on the surface, they are
> well-established facts.  Both of the articles I've sited give some insight
> into why this is true.

  I will readily admit that a group whose members have diverse backgrounds,
diverse experience, and diverse opinions will generally produce better
decisions than a group whose members are all of the same background,
experience, and opinion.  That is generally what the Northwestern article
promotes (and what the papers that Rhys pointed me to earlier) say. But
that is far different from saying that having less white males would make
for a better IETF.

  In fact, the makeup of the IESG is already diverse. If it was entirely
comprised of security people it would make horrible decisions. It's not,
and that's because "diversity is good".

  Regarding the CMU/MIT study, that is very provocative. There is
"converging evidence" from 2 studies of groups of 2-5 people who
scored higher in "general collective intelligence" when social sensitivity
was higher in the group, when group conversation was done in turns,
and there were more females in the group. OK. We can all draw our
own conclusions about that and "more women = smarter" certainly
does get your study reported in Forbes and Business Weekly et cetera.

  I believe there is also a bell curve of human intelligence that shows
a preponderance of men at both ends-- i.e. there are more male idiots and
male geniuses. Which would seem to suggest that adding women to a group
of men would, on average, increase the group's intelligence. That study
also showed that east asians scored higher than whites and whites scored
higher than blacks on IQ tests. An that current immigrants to the USA are
less hard-working and less imaginative than past immigrants. Also very
provocative.

  Now before anyone accuses me of any more -isms, let me say that these
studies make very bad social policy recommendations. I don't think we
should strive to make groups more east asian or less black or to favor
past immigrants over recent immigrants. That would be wrong, and I hope
we are in agreement there. It would also be wrong to strive to make groups
more female for exactly the same reason.

  While these studies are interesting and thought provoking, I think it is
wrong, and very dangerous, to use these studies to justify blanket
statements about intelligence, group or otherwise.

  If there's some bias involved in the Nomcom's selection process then
point it out and let's address it. The mere fact that there are is
preponderance of white males being selected does not mean bias exists
and the notion that a cherry-picked study (or selectively interpreting
the results of a cherry-picked study) justifies imposing bias on the
selection process to derive some ideal diversity is crazy.

  regards,

  Dan.

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:54:41 -0400

Speaking as a successful by-product of the american Affirmative Action 
and Equal Opportunities programs of the 70s and early 80s, I would 
suggest the IETF needs to work two small baby steps:

    - Improving its Marketing,
      - What is its products?
      - What will attract all/any groups?
    - Reaching out to diverse groups.
      - Don't assume they will come to you. Recruit!

--
HLS

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:19:03 -0400

As a minority raised thru the corporate rank, as stated below I think it 
is offensive too and unfair to historical facts. But overall, I think it 
is just the wrong choice of words.  All it could suggest is that there 
are more different views and experiences in the "synergistic" effect of 
final results, and not necessarily imply that wrong decisions were made 
by less diverse groups or in fact, in history where non-diversity was 
the norm.

--
HLS

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:54:09 -0000

I kind of promised I would not get sucked into this particular rat hole, but...
The problem is with the poorly scoped use of the word "diversity".
It is clear from some research that certain types of increased diversity do increase the quality of decision-making. 
It is also clear from rational thought that the diversity has to be scoped by "obvious" criteria such as ability to be informed about the issues, ability to express opinions, and ability to make decisions. 

One could argue that increasing "diversity" on the IESG by appointing a few rocks and a mollusc would improve the current IESG (and you might not find me arguing), but I don't believe this type of diversity is what was intended by the signatories. I think that the intention was to increase diversity within a set of unmentioned parameters. It might be helpful if the signatories could set out their thoughts on those parameters.

Adrian

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Brian E
> Carpenter
> Sent: 12 March 2013 08:58
> To: Dan Harkins
> Cc: [email-masked]

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:00:05 -0400

>statements about intelligence, group or otherwise.

I'm laughing a bit about this thread.  For example, there's also "substantial evidence" that young women and young men do better in gender segregated schools because the women's IQs plunge due to primping and displaying and men's IQs plunge due to testosterone if they're kept together.  Unfortunately, there's also "substantial evidence" that doing things this way can lead to some socialization issues (where both groups tend to have warped views of the members of the other groups).  (I myself doubt both versions of the "substantial evidence")

Seriously - diversity is generally good.  I think we all get that.  Going off and trying to support that general statement with (Dan's words, but I think I agree) "cherry picked" data isn't going to advance that cause much.

Mike

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:19:19 -0500

> I'm laughing a bit about this thread.  For example, there's also "substantial evidence" that young women and young men do better in gender segregated schools because the women's IQs plunge due to p…
[MB] I too find your response and some others laughable.  I would
agree that some of your statements with regards to all boys and girls
schools are wrong, however, there is indeed research highlighting that
girls do better in all girls schools due the fact that they are given
the attention that often goes to the boys in math and science classes.
The rest I  is untrue based on my experiences, but I would certainly
welcome someone pointing out research supporting your statements.
Both my sons have gone to or go to all boys schools (since first
grade).  Their girlfriends go to all girls schools. There is no
socialization issues in general. That all said, my sons' school has
some of the geekiest kids in the DFW area, so it is likely that there
may be *slightly* more issues with socialization than the average
public school.   [/MB]
> Seriously - diversity is generally good.  I think we all get that.  Going off and trying to support that general statement with (Dan's words, but I think I agree) "cherry picked" data isn't going t…
[MB] The data isn't cherry picked - there has been *lots* of research
on this topic over the past decade (and even those previous).  Such
studies are doubted because I am sure they are not of any interest to
the folks that suggest they don't exist. So, these wouldn't have been
on your radar.   Not surprising, those that are doubting that IETF has
any issue with diversity are folks that aren't in the minority- it's
really hard to understand an issue if you haven't dealt with it
yourself.  There's lots of research showing lots of bias in our
society - the fact that many have never chosen to read any of it does
not mean it doesn't exist.  [/MB]

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:24:09 -0400

> may be *slightly* more issues with socialization than the average

I think we are going out of scope of the problem we are trying to address.

Marc.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:41:23 -0400

>>>>> "Randall" == Randall Gellens <[email-masked]> writes:
    Randall> selection bias.  But, as several people have noted, if we
    Randall> grow the IETF pool 
    Randall> as a whole, that helps, and if we remove barriers to
    Randall> serving on I* that helps 
    Randall> as well.

I think that finding ways to remove employer support as a limit would
give us the biggest bang towards increasing and diversifying the pool of
candidates.  There are significant risks towards funding ADs directly:
specifically with avoiding a move towards "professional" non-technical
standards people, but if we a source for such funds, I think that we 
are smart enough as a community to set up/formalize certain things like
term limits, so that it wouldn't have to be a problem.

-- 
Michael Richardson
-on the road-

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:45:10 -0400

On 3/12/2013 11:00 AM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> Seriously - diversity is generally good.  I think we all get that.

One of the ironies about this topic in the IETF is that our philosophy 
of open access to our documents and open participation in our activities 
is predicated on the belief that real /and unpredictable/ diversity is 
of benefit to our work.

That anyone would believe in local optimization along one or two 
specific diversity parameters, such as technical expertise or company 
affiliation -- rather than seeking diversity along many different axes 
-- runs counter to that premise.

d/

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:59:01 -0400

+1

There lies the fine line of conflict of interest that I believe the IETF 
has done a tremendous job in keeping in control with diverse disciplines 
and philosophies well considered.  The RFC format by definition, its 
style, the open WGs, is all geared towards diverse audiences.

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:02:24 -0400

On 2013-03-12, at 12:59, Hector Santos <[email-masked]> wrote:

> There lies the fine line of conflict of interest that I believe the IETF has done a tremendous job in keeping in control with diverse disciplines and philosophies well considered.  The RFC format by definition,

Were you referring the fact that the RFC series by definition is only written in English, or that it is restricted to US-ASCII?

Joe
(running away)

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:07:55 -0700

At 2:03 PM -0500 3/11/13, Mary Barnes wrote:

>  To suggest that
>  contentious situation is unacceptable IMHO.

I'm confused as to why that would be considered a reason not to 
appoint someone, regardless of gender.  Is it because tears makes 
others uncomfortable or is it seen as an inability to be tough when 
needed?  It doesn't make sense to me.

Especially because we've had ADs who screamed, yelled, threw things 
in WG meetings.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat,
plausible, and wrong.                            --H.L. Mencken

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:17:31 -0400

> few people each meeting but it is a good start.

I'm glad they are doing it but it is a drop in the bucket.   Our 
processes are considerably biased against anyone who is not funded by a 
large company, and is not independently wealthy.

It's not just people on certain continents who are under-represented, 
it's the vast majority of the Internet developer and user community.

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:26:13 -0500

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Randall Gellens
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> I'm confused as to why that would be considered a reason not to appoint
> someone, regardless of gender.  Is it because tears makes others
> uncomfortable or is it seen as an inability to be tough when needed?  It
> doesn't make sense to me.
>
> Especially because we've had ADs who screamed, yelled, threw things in WG
> meetings.
>
[MB] I made a comment earlier in this thread that we have received
input to past nomcoms suggesting that would be the reason not to
appoint female nominees as opposed to males.  And, I highlighted that
the behavior you note is more typical (although not exclusive)
behavior of men when they get upset.  I do believe it is because tears
make many here far more uncomfortable then the screaming which seems
to be far more the norm here in my experience. [/MB]

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:35:51 -0700

At 3:54 PM -0700 3/11/13, Dan Harkins wrote:

>  Do you feel that
>  equal parts male and female?

Based on my own experience, I believe that a broad range of 
background and experience improves the quality of decision making of 
a group.  This is not to say that administering a standardized IQ 
test to a group would result in outcomes predictable by gender 
diversity of the group.  But it is to say that, for example, having 
some people with implementation experience is a good thing in 
protocol design discussions.

We've been veering into narrow discussions of race and gender 
diversity, but earlier messages in this thread discussed diversity 
along other lines, for example, type of employer (large, small, 
equipment vendor, university) and operational experience with 
networks in different geographic regions.  Let's not fall into a 
rat-hole of narrow considerations of diversity.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
[C]reativity [requires] the discomfort of confusion, uncertainty,
anxiety and ambiguity.
        --Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman, in 'Creativity Inc.'

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:16:43 -0800

Hi -

> From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Margaret Wasserman" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 3:56 AM
...
> preponderance of white males being selected does not mean bias exists
...

If I understand this thread correctly, the result of the process has been
consistently less diverse than the pool from which the process has been
making selections.  I can only see three interpretations:
   (1) that white males are more likely than other participants to be
        sufficiently qualified
   (2) that the selection process (or the Nomcom) itself functions
        (unintentionally, unconsciously) to favor white males.
   (3) that past performance is just a massive statistical fluke

I doubt that it's (1) or (3).  Think a little about social networks and
(2) becomes even more plausible.   I suggest concentrating on
how the system *functions*, rather than inferring hidden accusations
of evil intent.

Randy

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:24:06 -0700 (PDT)

> protocol design discussions.

  I share your belief that diversity of background and experience
makes a group function better. I'm glad you mentioned implementation
experience. The small corner of the IETF that I lurk in seems to be
becoming less diverse in that respect and I think it's to the detriment
of our protocols.

> rat-hole of narrow considerations of diversity.

  The problem was stated in the open letter thusly:

"In February of 2013, there were 32 members of the IETF leadership
a total of 32 seats)."

  Out of 32 members there's only 1 who is of non-European descent
(i.e. not white) and only 1 woman. So the "problem", aside from corporate
representation, is that the IETF leadership is too white and too male.

  I'd love to get out of this rat hole. Perhaps the signatories of the
open letter can restate the problem they see so it isn't made in terms of
race and gender.

  regards,

  Dan.

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:50:51 -0700

At 1:08 AM -0400 3/12/13, Margaret Wasserman wrote:

On Mar 11, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Dan Harkins
<[email-masked]>
wrote:

In other words, the statement that
gender and racial diversity in

groups makes them "smarter" has no basis in fact. Do you
feel that

an all-female group is stupider than a similarly sized group that
is

Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded
academic studies that show that groups that contain women are smarter
than all-male groups, regardless of the relative intelligence of the
group members.  Surprising, perhaps, but true.  Here is a
pointer to a discussion of one of them:

When I started reading that I thought that it was
counter-intuitive that having smarter people in the group doesn't make
it smarter, but having more women (regardless of individual
intelligence) does.  Reading further, I see that the apparent
counter-intuitiveness was really a difference in the meaning of
"smarter" as applied to groups.  The link seems to be
only to an abstract, so I don't know if an all-female group would be
smarter than, say, one that was 75% female or 95% female.

The abstract did discuss specific attributes that females seemed
to bring to groups that resulted in the smarter outcomes (body
language differences, more openness, more effort to draw out unpopular
opinions, fostering greater trust).  I suppose there must be
studies looking to see if people (including males) can be specifically
trained to do better in these areas.  I wonder if the linkage
between these traits and women is equally valid for engineering
disciplines, given the widely accepted stereotype of engineering types
rating low in these areas?  I wonder if some training along these
lines might be good for WG chairs and ADs?

--

Randall Gellens

Opinions are personal;    facts are
suspect;    I speak for myself only

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the

Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no

spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil

influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for

they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and

perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and

under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved

up all their atoms, then they  put them all together, and if one

didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just

fine....                                            --Stanislaw Lem

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:01:04 -0700

Hi Margaret,
At 06:00 AM 3/11/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
>I've been thinking, for instance, that one thing we could add to our 
>list of immediate actions is for IESG members to review their 
>directorate membership and, if it makes sense, attempt to increase 
>the diversity of their directorates.  This would have two 
>effects:  the IESG would get better advice, and it would give the 
>people they appoint more opportunity to interact with other senior 
>IETF participants and demonstrate their abilities.

The directorate I know about has individuals from approximately ten 
countries.  There are now a few women.  It is not easy to find 
volunteers.  The opportunity is there.  The problem is that nobody 
steps forward.

I'll use the word "perspective" instead of diversity.  If you ask me 
what it means, it means individuals who can bring in ideas, and who 
can look at problems from different angles, and who can get the work done.

I would set the target date for results as two years from today.  The 
question I'll ask is what are the next steps?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:04:32 -0400

>the attention that often goes to the boys in math and science classes.

I somewhat agree with this, but other studies have indicated that this has quote a lot to do with the specific teacher and general disciplinary environment of the school than being an absolute characteristic of gender divided studies.  

>some of the geekiest kids in the DFW area,

Sorry - geekiness *is* a socialization issue.  I say that as one of the more geeky people at my school.

With respect to supporting research - didn't you note the quotation marks? And the statement "I myself doubt both versions of substantial evidence" I've read a few main stream press articles on the gender divided schooling issue and "socialization" was mentioned pretty much in the same breath (paragraph?) as the "girls do better in all girl schools".  I considered both of the statements somewhat suspect for the same reasons.  But I mentioned them - with the quotation marks - to indicate that cherry picking data to support a conclusion is generally problematic.

Here's where I'm at:  The school studies were done with random (e.g. public school) and non-self-selected (e.g. parent selected) groups as the subjects.  AFAIK the IETF is pretty much a completely self-selected group of people and most especially the women are self-selected - and I wouldn't consider that the school study applies much given those difference.  I mentioned it because its conclusion - that women and men are "smarter" when separate (yup - paraphrasing) seems to be at odds with the other mentioned conclusion that "groups are smarter the more women in them".

 For the other study mentioned by Margaret (Wolley et al) it actually said this:

>Finally,c was positively and significantly correlated with the proportion of females in the group (r=0.23,P=0.007).However, this result
>appears to be largely mediated by social sensitivity (Sobel z=1.93,P =0.03),

Which actually says that "the more sensitive people in the group, the better the result, and by the way women tend to be more sensitive".

But the problem set for the study bears not a lot of resemblance to the problem set for the IETF. So again, I'd claim it's mostly inapplicable, hence cherry picking.

> so it is likely that there

I've read it (them) or things like it.  What I've gleaned from each and every study is that their conclusions are suspect when you try to generalize them to groups not constituted like the study group or to problem sets not tested by the study.  If you want to convince me via objective standards that an IETF WG with more women in it does a better job than a WG with few women (or even the reverse of that where an IETF WG with more women does a worse job than a WG with few women), you'll need to do the study on the IETF and publish the criteria for "better" before you start.  Or find a group that has been studied that has a population and work mode much more similar to ours than the studies that have been pointed to.  

I don't disagree with desire for more diversity, I just don't think the case needs to be made by citing studies that don't necessarily have anything useful to say about the IETF.

Mike

---

From: Will Slack <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:31:31 -0500

I see some rough consensus that more diversity/a wider spectrum of  
viewpoints (across various metrics) in various ISTF groups would be  
helpful, with support for Arturo's language:

> our leaders and not just participants.

This is a goal that everyone can help carry out, and there's no  
reason not to start working individually at this now - especially if  
you are a company that understands the IETF's work. However, the  

>       Standards Development Organization.

It's telling that the third point wasn't mentioned by anyone else, as  
far as I saw - in fact, the words "credibility" and "legitimacy" have  
not appeared in this thread since it's inception. The "governance of  
the internet" has been an recent topic of international discussion  
(as far as I can see as a news consumer), and this group's leadership  
composition may be a relevant aspect of that discussion. It makes  
Arturo's point even more compelling.

-Will

PS:

> The school studies were done with random (e.g. public school) and  
> non-self-selected (e.g. parent selected) groups as the subjects.   
> AFAIK the IETF is pretty much a completely self-selected group of  
> people and most especially the women are self-selected - and I  
> wouldn't consider that the school study applies much given those  
> difference.  I mentioned it because its conclusion - that women and  
> men are "smarter" when separate (yup - paraphrasing) seems to be at  
> odds with the other mentioned conclusion that "groups are smarter  
> the more women in them".

In fact, the random nature of the participants is the reason we can  
generalize studies across broad populations. The standard you set  
would render pretty much any study applicably irrelevant unless it  
was made of IETF participants.

But I think that entire discussion leads us astray - this is not a  
listserve of social scientists, and these issues and their citations  
are charged in various ways across the world, along with ways we can  
define diversity. We all also carry some of our own viewpoints into  
these discussions; for example, I would initially treat a less  
diverse slate of chosen leaders from a more diverse pool of  
candidates as suspect. I would be happy to engage anyone 1-on-1 if  
they have further questions about this area (or point #2) from my own  
experience as a student on several hiring and governance committees  
with university administrators, dealing with the exact issues raised  
on this thread, or as a young person that joined up thanks to the  
open membership policies and legitimacy discussed elsewhere.

---

From: "Fleischman, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:25:24 -0700

I suspect that the often-subtle differences in technical perception on IETF technologies between sexes, races, and languages are much less pronounced than the substantial differences in technical orientation between vendors, ISPs, academics, governments, and end users. If we are consistently seeing individuals from the same corporation or governmental entity dominating processes then that is a Red Flag. Do we have a Red Flag? If not, then I will resume hoping that this email thread will end soon.

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:54:47 -0700

At 1:54 PM +0000 3/12/13, Adrian Farrel wrote:

>  increasing "diversity" on the IESG by appointing a few rocks and a mollusc

OK, that is funny.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
[Y]ou must clear out old thinking in order to make room for new
thinking. The ability to unlearn and the ability to forget some
of what has been taught are fundamental skills for creative
thinking.          --Elaine Dundon, in 'The Seeds of Innovation'

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:59:45 -0400

> open letter can restate the problem they see so it isn't made in terms of

The letter specifically mentioned the axes of race, gender, geographic location and corporate affiliation, so the letter was not only about race and gender.  Other people have mentioned other pertinent axes in the e-mail discussion, such as industry segment and background/experience.

I don't think it is possible for remove race and gender from the list of axes, though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those areas.

Margaret

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 06:04:48 +0000

> I don't think it is possible for remove race and gender from the list of axes, though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those areas.
As I pointed out on an earlier thread, the relevant EU policy body, 
which I assume has a lot of expertise on this, defines the following 
protected characteristics, i.e. characteristics that you are NOT 
permitted to discriminate on in the EU:

Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Marriage and civil partnership
Pregnancy and maternity
Race
Religion and belief
Sex
Sexual orientation

If we are going to have an itemized list of diversity characteristics, 
we should not pick and choose, we should include the full list.

Stewart

---

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:14:53 -0700

On 03/19/2013 11:04 PM, Stewart Bryant wrote:

Margret this is the IETF, it regularly sets aside law to create its own 
lies about what it is and is not capable of in a legal context - but 
that is all about to change I think...

Todd

>> The letter specifically mentioned the axes of race, gender, 
>> geographic location and corporate affiliation, so the letter was not 
>> only about race and gender.  Other people have mentioned other 
>> pertinent axes in the e-mail discussion, such as industry segment and 
>> background/experience.
>>
>> I don't think it is possible for remove race and gender from the list 
>> of axes, though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those 
>> areas.
>>
>> Margaret
>>

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 06:53:53 -0400

Hi Stewart,

> Marriage and civil partnership

The U.S. has a similar (although not identical) list, and it may vary a bit state-by-state.
> 
> If we are going to have an itemized list of diversity characteristics, we should not pick and choose, we should include the full list.

While I certainly wouldn't suggest we start discriminating based on _any_ of these factors, it is very difficult to measure our results in some of these areas, as we do not collect this information from IETF attendees, nor do we publish the age, disability status, gender status, marital status, religion or sexual orientation of our I* members.  

I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing this information, just saying that it makes it hard to tell whether our leadership is reasonably representative of the community in some of these areas.

Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important to the IETF that are not on this list, like geographic location, corporate affiliation and industry segment (vendor, operator, researcher, etc.).

Margaret

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:31:48 +0000

On 20/03/2013 10:53, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> .
There are methods of anonymously determining the profile of the IETF in 
the above terms, but to preserve the anonymity of such information, and 
understand its statistical significance this should probably be gathered 
by a specialist organization outside the IETF but on our behalf.

The extended list needs further review and consideration. For example, 
perhaps  we should take a leaf from the IEEE and consider who funds work 
items rather than simply use current affiliation as we do today. This 
makes things more transparent both at the corporate and the consulting 
level.

Stewart

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:33:28 +0100

Let's not play Internet lawyers about this.  How Jari's design team
bring in real lawyers at the appropriate time?

---

From: Riccardo Bernardini <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:10:26 +0100

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>wrote:

> While I certainly wouldn't suggest we start discriminating based on _any_
> of these factors, it is very difficult to measure our results in some of
> these areas, as we do not collect this information from IETF attendees, nor
> do we publish the age, disability status, gender status, marital status,
> religion or sexual orientation of our I* members.

> I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing this
> information, just saying that it makes it hard to tell whether our
> leadership is reasonably representative of the community in some of these
> areas.
>
>
I would say that in this case we are almost surely automatically fair:
 while one can suspect that gender or geographical origin could add a bias
(even an unwanted one), if I do not know the, say, sexual orientation of a
candidate, I cannot discriminate (even on a subconscious level) using that
information.

> Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important to the IETF
> that are not on this list, like geographic location, corporate affiliation
> and industry segment (vendor, operator, researcher, etc.).
>
> Margaret
>
>

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:13:45 +0100 (CET)

Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> The letter specifically mentioned the axes of race, gender, geographic
> location and corporate affiliation, so the letter was not only about
> race and gender.  Other people have mentioned other pertinent axes in
> the e-mail discussion, such as industry segment and background/experience.
> 
> I don't think it is possible for remove race and gender from the list of
> axes, though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those areas.

The monetary and time resources necessary to fill an I* position adequately
appear quite significant to me, and I believe it would be hard to fill
them without strong support from an employer which covers the monetary
investment.

Any "lack of diversity" in the IESG/IAB/IAOC of the IETF leadership
is IMHO related to the "lack of interest" in longterm planning in
the majority of management of large companies--those which can reasonably
expect to still be around and still sell products in some area a few years
into the future.

-Martin

---

From: Dhruv Dhody <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:57:32 +0530

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 5:40 PM, Riccardo Bernardini
<[email-masked]>wrote:

>  if I do not know the, say, sexual orientation of a candidate, I cannot
> discriminate (even on a subconscious level) using that information.
>
>
Hi Riccardo,

I hope you are not suggesting candidates to remain in closet, to not be
discriminated? :D

Dhruv

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:30:15 -0400

--On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 06:53 -0400 Margaret Wasserman
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing
> this information, just saying that it makes it hard to tell
> whether our leadership is reasonably representative of the
> community in some of these areas.
> 
> Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important
> to the IETF that are not on this list, like geographic
> location, corporate affiliation and industry segment (vendor,
> operator, researcher, etc.).

Margaret,

While I am very much in favor of a more diverse IETF population
and leadership, the above, especially when combined with Martin
Rex's later comment, is part of the reason why I see the problem
as terribly difficult and not yielding easily to petitions,
design teams, instructions to confirming bodies (particularly
problematic as other discussions have shown), or good intentions.

As a specific example, I think the IETF would be considerably
strengthened by more diversity in corporate affiliations and
industry segments as you suggest above.   As with gender
diversity, my impression is that we are getting more homogeneous
rather than more diverse.  One of the problems is time
commitment and associated costs.  For many corporations, most
startups, and a significant fraction of actual individual
participants, service in leadership positions is feasible only
if those positions are really part-time and significant
attention is paid to either cost containment or spreading
marginal costs around the community.  Yet the IESG (and, to a
slightly lesser extent, the IAB) have tended to assign more and
more work and responsibility to themselves, 

If we want more diversity along corporate, role, and related
economic axes, we need (as others have pointed out) to shrink
the jobs.  In the IESG's case, that may require reducing the
number of WGs we think we can operate in parallel.
Unfortunately, there are many reasons to continue to _expand_
the jobs: on a point basis, it will always be easier to add
tasks to existing leaders than to consider whether those tasks
are really necessary, to consider sunsetting other tasks, or to
organize and manage alternate ways to get them done.  It also
isn't clear that the community cares: I note that the recent
effort to allow the IAB and IESG to appoint people other than
the Chairs to serve on the IAOC/Trust, and an earlier one to
separate the IAOC and the Trust, went exactly nowhere.  On the
other hand, if we are serious, I think it needs to be something
that Nomcoms are committed (preferably without more rules) to
enforce by asking candidates their positions on job-shrinking
and by retiring incumbents who contribute to job-expansion.
Those expansions are perhaps also influenced by the observation
that, if the incumbents have the time and support for an
expanded role, such expansion doesn't seem to be harmful.  That
is part of a classic example of why already-homogeneous
organizations tend to become even more homogeneous, at leat in
the absence of disruptive changes.

best,
   john

---

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 06:57:26 -0700

I would suggest John that the real diversity the IETF needs is 
transparency in its process and a competent IPR rule set which meets the 
same set of legal hurdles people do in the commercial world so to speak.

I would also suggest that the idea of splitting all of these 
contractually binding practices into a set of technical publications is 
inherently insane and has lead to the fiasco that we have today. What 
the IETF needs is a simple set of documents that do not require a free 
wall to post the various components on to develop a proper reliance map.

Just my own two cents though.

Todd

---

From: Jorge Contreras <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:16:58 -0400

> we should not pick and choose, we should include the full list.

I would strongly recommend that legal counsel be consulted before any such
"list" is produced or used by IETF/IESG/Nomcom.  (FYI, this is totally
outside my own area of legal expertise, so IAOC would need to incur some
expense to hire competent counsel in this area)

> religion or sexual orientation of our I* members.

What records *do* exist regarding the identify of IETF leadership?  Is
there a central repository of at least names/companies of IESG members
and/or WG leaders?

---

From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:20:19 -0400

IESG, with name/area: <http://www.ietf.org/iesg/past-members.html>
IAB, with name/affiliation: <http://www.iab.org/about/history/>

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:27:36 -0500

> expense to hire competent counsel in this area)
[MB] I agree 100%.  IETF is not at all qualified to define hiring
criteria or practices. Unfortunately, they do it all the time.  The
model in place IMHO would not stand up to the scrutiny of any major US
company's HR dept.  And, of course, the HR departments are the ones
responsible for ensuring the laws in a specific area are met.   [/MB]
> What records *do* exist regarding the identify of IETF leadership?  Is there
> a central repository of at least names/companies of IESG members and/or WG
> leaders?

---

From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:34:51 -0400

I do not really think the legal angle is helpful in resolving this problem.
 (Which country's laws do we need to comply with?)  Let's treat these legal
ideas as considerations that we should be thinking about, not something
where we should be striving for strict compliance.

--Richard

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:27 AM, Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>wrote:

> there

---

From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:57:54 -0400

Going a bit over-the-top: is there an interaction between sex and sexual orientation? Can one count as the other?

On Mar 20, 2013, at 8:10 AM, Riccardo Bernardini <[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Stewart,
> 
> I would say that in this case we are almost surely automatically fair:  while one can suspect that gender or geographical origin could add a bias (even an unwanted one), if I do not know the, say, sexual orientation of a candidate, I cannot discriminate (even on a subconscious level) using that information.
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:08:18 -0400

> them without strong support from an employer which covers the monetary

Agreed.  But this is a huge problem for IETF.   Far too often, our 
standards aren't serving the Internet community so much as serving the 
interests of a few large companies.   I'd actually guess that this is 
IETF's biggest problem.

Keith

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:17:30 +0100

On 03/20/13 15:16, Jorge Contreras allegedly wrote:
> I would strongly recommend that legal counsel be consulted before any
> such "list" is produced or used by IETF/IESG/Nomcom.

Or don't generate it at all.  Trying to have a complete list of human
attributes to diversify to looks like an engineer's reflex.  We know
what we want to do in principle.

---

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:20:42 -0700

On 03/20/2013 07:16 AM, Jorge Contreras wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman 
> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>

Jorge - did I miss something here - isnt this your job? If not why are 
you here?

Let me respond that further -  I believe that there are any number of 
both privacy and transparency counsel's in the movement so to speak who 
would love to work with such a body to create a transparent set of 
participation rules UNDER THE CURRENT PARTICIPATION MODELS AS BROKEN AS 
THEY ARE...

Didnt you file an ID yourself not to long ago?  In fact I am betting 
Professor you know any number of Grad Students who would love such a job 
if you catch my drift.

Todd

>     Hi Stewart,
>
>     On Mar 20, 2013, at 2:04 AM, Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>     > Age
>     > Disability
>     > Gender reassignment
>     > If we are going to have an itemized list of diversity
>     characteristics, we should not pick and choose, we should include
>     the full list.
>
>
> such "list" is produced or used by IETF/IESG/Nomcom.  (FYI, this is 
> totally outside my own area of legal expertise, so IAOC would need to 
> incur some expense to hire competent counsel in this area)
>
>
>     While I certainly wouldn't suggest we start discriminating based
>     on _any_ of these factors, it is very difficult to measure our
>     results in some of these areas, as we do not collect this
>     information from IETF attendees, nor do we publish the age,
>     disability status, gender status, marital status, religion or
>     sexual orientation of our I* members.
>
>

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:23:21 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, March 20, 2013 7:16 am, Jorge Contreras wrote:
> <[email-masked]>wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Stewart,
>>

  Great, now the lawyers are getting involved. A sure sign this has gone
way too far.

  The factors listed above are those that an employer cannot discriminate
on. It says nothing about diversity or the alleged benefits that diversity
brings to a group. For example, a company is prohibited from not hiring
someone because he or she is Catholic but it does not mean that the
company must work to have some arbitrary percentage of Catholics in
leadership positions or among the general workforce.

  Absent any evidence  of discrimination there is Disparate Impact
Theory which says that the mere fact that a process produces a result
that does not satisfy an arbitrary goal with respect to a protected
group is justification for actively discriminating in favor of that
protected group to "balance" it all out. I really, really hope that is
not where we are going in the IETF. It would wreck this organization
if we had a committee that performed such a blatantly political activity.

  If that is not where the IETF is going, then the categories listed above
should not have anything to do with selection of candidates for leadership
positions. It doesn't matter to the IETF if the candidate is a disabled,
pregnant, lesbian, Wiccan. What matters to the IETF is whether the
candidate is qualified.

  Dan.

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:31:29 -0500

As I understand it, Jorge is highlighting that he is not an expert in
employment and Equal opportunity law.  That is a specific expertise.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:20 AM, tsg <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Jorge - did I miss something here - isnt this your job? If not why are you
> here?
>
> Let me respond that further -  I believe that there are any number of both
> privacy and transparency counsel's in the movement so to speak who would
> love to work with such a body to create a transparent set of participation
> rules UNDER THE CURRENT PARTICIPATION MODELS AS BROKEN AS THEY ARE...
>
> Professor you know any number of Grad Students who would love such a job if
> you catch my drift.
>
> Todd
>
>
>> Hi Stewart,
>>

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:35:27 -0700

> bring in real lawyers at the appropriate time?

Or not.

There's an important choice between focusing on the sufficiency of 
representation from a defined set of population groups, versus focusing 
on the need for true diversity and the means of achieving it.

The former is a numbers game and produces soulless mechanics that can't 
possibly be constructive, in a group as small and specialized as ours.

The latter is a culture game and actively seeks as a rich range of 
perspectives as practical, knowing that it can't get /all/ perspectives.

d/

ps.  A small point to watch for, if there is a focus on a defined list 
of groups, is the difference between discriminating /against/, versus 
ensuring representation /from/.  Active prohibition vs. active 
solicitation.  The exchange between Margaret and Stuart seemed to mix 
these.  We need to be careful about the distinction.

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:41:53 -0500

I don't think anyone is asking for strict compliance to a particular
country's laws, although, one could debate that since ISOC is the
mother organization for IETF that it might be reasonable to look at
the laws in the regions where ISOC is incorporated. My understanding,
however, is that since IETF is a non-profit, there is no requirement
for them to comply with any of these laws (at least in the US),
although one could debate the fact that the US DoD provides funds to
ISOC such might be required.

Given that folks are still debating whether this years nominees
reflected a reasonable diversity (there were 9 women out of 37
nominees), it does seem that finding a description of diversity
criteria that is considered by other professional organizations is not
a bad idea.    However, given the direction of most of these threads,
I'm beginning to be of the same mindset as John:
https://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=933&k2=68058&tid=1363793904

Regards,
Mary.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:34 AM, Richard Barnes <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> >> > characteristics,
>> > such

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:01:01 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Dave,

> these.  We need to be careful about the distinction.

  I have been viewing this as the difference between discriminating
against versus discriminating for. And I am against discrimination,
even that done for the best of intentions.

  Active solicitation is all well and good but how do you _ensure_
representation of members from a defined list of groups if your
active solicitation does not result in the favored mix?

  Dan.

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:09:23 -0500

I'm somewhat worried at the lurch this thread has taken into the land of 
protected classes, legal advice, etc. I hope we do not go there.

Having said that ... since Eric asked ...

On 3/20/2013 9:57 AM, Eric Burger wrote:
 > Going a bit over-the-top: is there an interaction between sex and 
sexual orientation? Can one count as the other?

I'm not answering as an IAB member, but as co-president of PFLAG Dallas 
("Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and 
Transgenders") ...

PFLAG includes "sexual orientation" under "sexual orientation, gender 
identity and expression". Each of these terms means something different, 
and all of these can be distinct from birth gender.

So, PFLAG would suggest that we treat gender and "sexual orientation, 
gender identity and expression" interchangeably.

Spencer

(www.pflag.org)

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:10:15 -0400

On 03/20/2013 11:41 AM, Mary Barnes wrote:
> nominees),
I actually don't think that the number of female nominees is 
relevant.    What is relevant is the number of qualified female nominees 
who had the willingness, the availability, the required expertise, and 
the support necessary to fill the position.

On several occasions in the past decade I've been asked if I were 
willing to be nominated to serve on IESG again, even though I didn't 
have either sufficient time or support to devote to the task, just so 
that nomcom would have a slate of candidates to compare.   I thought on 
those occasions, and still think, that it's a bit silly to ask nomcom to 
investigate candidates who don't have the time or support to do the 
job.   But I still agreed to be nominated because I could also see some 
value in having nomcom compare several candidates.  (Just like when 
shopping for a new car, it doesn't hurt to look at models that you know 
that you're probably not going to buy, just to get a sense of whether 
you really want what you think you want).

So I guess I've formed the impression that merely being nominated for a 
position doesn't really mean that a person is available.

Keith

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:21:02 -0500

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:10 AM, Keith Moore
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> I actually don't think that the number of female nominees is relevant.
> What is relevant is the number of qualified female nominees who had the
> willingness, the availability, the required expertise, and the support
> necessary to fill the position.
[MB] Sure. But, I know of at least two that I don't think or would
hope anyone would debate
were qualified in all the areas you suggest. Both have contributed
significantly to IETF in a variety
of leadership positions.   I do not believe at least one of the
choices would have
stood up against scrutiny by my own HR dept.  Certainly, you have
opinions, as does the IETF population that is in the  majority, as to
what makes one qualified.
One concept that is not very well understood, however, is the basic
fact that women
work differently than men and thus expecting us to fit the cookie
cutter of IETF leaders isn't quite
appropriate.   To be told by a nomcom voting member, when I mention
this fact, that this just isn't so because IETF is a meritocracy is
insulting and shows a sheer lack of respect for the value that
diversity brings to an organization.
[/MB]
>
> On several occasions in the past decade I've been asked if I were willing to
> be nominated to serve on IESG again, even though I didn't have either
> sufficient time or support to devote to the task, just so that nomcom would
> have a slate of candidates to compare.   I thought on those occasions, and
> still think, that it's a bit silly to ask nomcom to investigate candidates
> who don't have the time or support to do the job.   But I still agreed to be
> nominated because I could also see some value in having nomcom compare
> several candidates.  (Just like when shopping for a new car, it doesn't hurt
> to look at models that you know that you're probably not going to buy, just
> to get a sense of whether you really want what you think you want).
>
[MB] You have to keep in mind in the past that the there were
"dummies" in the nominee pool before open list.  I was explicitly told
by this year's nomcom chair that they were not doing that. Thus, I
would anticipate that the majority of those in the pool this year were
willing and able.[/MB]

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:51:18 -0500

> would anticipate that the majority of those in the pool this year were

Both of you are right, of course.

Before OpenList, the list of nominees willing to be considered was 
treated as confidential. Nomcoms that wanted to ask for input on 
specific people sent out lists of nominees that were padded, as Keith 
says, so that there were "dummies" (usually described as "ringers"), and 
theoretically no one outside Nomcom knew precisely who was being considered.

When we approved http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5680.txt in 2009, it 
added this text to RFC 3777:

       The list of nominees willing to be considered for positions under
       review in the current NomCom cycle is not confidential.  The
       NomCom may disclose a list of names of nominees who are willing to
       be considered for positions under review to the community, in
       order to obtain feedback from the community on these nominees.

 >     The list of nominees disclosed for a specific position should
 >     contain only the names of nominees who are willing to be
 >     considered for the position under review.

       The NomCom may choose not to include some names in the disclosed
       list, at their discretion.

       The NomCom may disclose an updated list, at their discretion.  For
       example, the NomCom might disclose an updated list if the NomCom
       identifies errors/omissions in a previously disclosed version of
       the disclosed list, or if the NomCom finds it necessary to call
       for additional nominees, and these nominees indicate a willingness
       to be considered before the NomCom has completed its
       deliberations.

       Nominees may choose to ask people to provide feedback to the
       NomCom, but should not encourage any public statements of support.
       NomComs should consider nominee-encouraged lobbying and
       campaigning to be unacceptable behavior.

       IETF community members are encouraged to provide feedback on
       nominees to the NomCom, but should not post statements of support/
       non-support for nominees in any public forum.

So, the assumption before 2009 was that lists were padded, and the 
assumption after 2009 is that lists aren't padded. The Nomcom can do 
what seems right, of course.

Spencer

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:01:48 -0400

> even that done for the best of intentions.

This is certainly the biggest challenge of any intent to include diversity
(of any form) in the mix.

In general, we want the best people in the job in question.  What is "best"
depends on the position (chair, I*, etc.) but as a technical organization
that runs on documents, several things will bubble to the top:
- Technical clue in the matter at hand.
- Reasonable administrative skills.
- Ability to work with others.
- Solid communication skills.

For candidates wherein the above things are roughly equal - or have exceeded
the requirements - diversity is a possible tie-breaker.  If the intent is to
emphasize diversity (for some metric) over one of the core skills, that's
certainly possible.  

The primary challenge then is making sure there is a diverse candidate pool
that satisfies the minimum core skills needed for the positions.  See prior
discussion on mentoring.

(Note that the above observations were things I had intended to say at the
administrative plenary, but I appeared to be standing at the invisible mic.)

-- Jeff

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:09:41 -0700

> - Solid communication skills.

Note the 3 of the 4 items on your list are not a matter of technical 
skill.

Also note that your list is missing something that was raised earlier in 
the thread, namely the difference between local optimization versus 
'global'.  There are benefits in having a group mixture that can be far 
more important than the attributes of the group members taken individually.

d/

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:53:04 -0400

> Note the 3 of the 4 items on your list are not a matter of technical

Agreed, although it is probably understood that technical clue tends to be
pretty high on the list in terms of weight.  

The overlap of those (IMO) core skills and diversity (for some metric
thereof) is present.  Regardless of the reason someone has a given skill,
the skill itself is the functional requirement.

> Also note that your list is missing something that was raised
> earlier in the thread, namely the difference between local
> optimization versus 'global'.  There are benefits in having a group
> mixture that can be far more important than the attributes of the
> group members taken individually.

Probably because I don't buy wholly into that argument - or at least the
argument it makes us "smarter".  A broader source of opinions is always a
good thing and I believe that is one of the things that diversity brings us.

To draw a very geekish analogy, I tend to find that diversity helps only a
little on the "intelligence" of a group.  It does wonders for the "wisdom"
of the group. :-)

-- Jeff

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:17:44 -0400

On 03/20/2013 12:21 PM, Mary Barnes wrote:
> hope anyone would debate were qualified in all the areas you suggest. Both have contributed
> of leadership positions.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that they have sufficient time or employer 
support to do the job now.   And there's no way that someone like you or 
me can reliably know whether that's the case. That has to be something 
that's kept confidential between the nominee and the nomcom.

> appropriate.

To be clear: I wasn't arguing about that aspect at all, just about 
whether it's reasonable to look at a slate of nominees and compare that 
to the slate of people selected and make inferences about the role of 
gender in the nomcom's decision process.

I'm also not presuming that just because there were no women in the 
latest set of appointees to IESG, that it's because the current nomcom 
didn't think that women could "fit the cookie cutter".   I don't have 
and don't pretend to have the ability to read their minds.   In general 
I think that presumptions that require the ability to read specific 
people's minds should be dismissed out-of-hand as irrelevant and perhaps 
insulting.   People can imagine or project what they like, but what 
people imagine or project should never be confused with reality.

>    To be told by a nomcom voting member, when I mention

Respectfully disagree.

We expect the nomcom to balance lots of different considerations when 
choosing IESG and other appointees, AND we expect them to keep their 
deliberations confidential.   Gender is definitely a valid 
consideration, but it's only one consideration, and at least a dozen 
others have been mentioned.   To look at the nomcom result through the 
aperture of only one or two of those considerations, and then make a 
statement about the nature of their imagined gender bias strikes me as 
pure speculation.

I certainly hope that the nomcom doesn't believe that women can't do the 
jobs.  Our community has ample evidence and decades of experience that 
they can.  I served with several women when I was on IESG and found all 
of them to be capable and professional in every respect.

Note also that the process for selecting the nomcom is inherently 
gender-neutral, at least to the extent that the requirement for nomcom 
attendance at prior IETF meetings doesn't impose a gender barrier.
> would anticipate that the majority of those in the pool this year were

That helps a bit, but I still don't think it supports an assertion of 
gender bias in the nomcom's process.

Keith

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:21:22 -0700

On 3/20/2013 10:53 AM, Jeffrey Haas wrote:
> argument it makes us "smarter".

Then I encourage you to do more reading.  It's not a marginal or 
controversial point, among folk who do research in the relevant fields.

d/

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:01:41 -0700 (PDT)

> emphasize diversity (for some metric) over one of the core skills, that's

  By "that", I take it you mean it's certainly possible to discriminate in
favor
some metric of diversity and against a core skill. So? Is that the intent?

  There is quite a bit of dancing around this subject and it would be nice
to say what we all mean here. If you're proposing that IETF start the
practice of discriminating against certain people then say so.

> that satisfies the minimum core skills needed for the positions.  See

  You snipped my other question. So let me ask again. What do we do
if, after ensuring that there's a diverse candidate pool that satisfies the
minimum core skills needed for positions, the end result is more white
men?  Do we stop with the pretense of ensuring diversity of opportunity
and just proceed to diversity of result? Do we enshrine the "soft bigotry
of low expectations"?

  Dan.

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:13:01 -0400

Part of what I meant when I signed the diversity letter was to state a belief
that within a pool of qualified candidates, I believe diversity is
important enough that it is valuable to select for diversity even if
this does not maximize the skills that you enumerated (tech skill, admin
skill, works with others and something else).

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:36:37 -0400

> practice of discriminating against certain people then say so.

Have care, you're close to putting words in my mouth. :-)

If what you mean is that emphasizing diversity over a core skill with
respect to selection of people for positions of responsibility is a form of
discrimination, that's how some people have presented it.  I.e. "affirmative
action".

If you're asking for my personal opinion, I think we should stick to meeting
core criteria minimums and that among candidates that meet those
requirements consider diversity as one of the criteria.

> minimum core skills needed for positions, 

Good start for a presumption.

> the end result is more white men?

I believe you, and many others, are inferring over much with regard to
diversity from the black box that is NomCom.

Unfortunately that is a big ugly part of this whole discussion.  Part
of the perception here is the the NomCom is fed a candidate pool and the
output mostly matches beliefs that diversity is not an input.  It's like any
other job interview - you only know you don't get the job.  You may know who
did.  Without getting someone on the hiring committe to talk about why the
person in question is selected, you can only speculate as to why you weren't
selected.  

If instead you (or someone else) is going to argue that given an input of a
set of candidates that match some crtieria of diversity that it is a
requirement that the output include something that meets that diversity
criteria, then pick your word for that result.

>   Do we stop with the pretense of ensuring diversity of opportunity

Or we define our requirements for the outputs of the process and stop
speculating about the black box.  C.f. the tsvarea discussion on what they
want out of an AD.

-- Jeff

---

From: Arturo Servin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:59:21 -0300

+1

	Please, do not go to bureaucracy and legal side of this. Let's keep it
simple and based on our principles and not in legalities.

as

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:59:34 -0400

> skill, works with others and something else).

"Maximize" overstates my position.  My belief is once the base requirements
are met that diversity is an appropriate tie-breaker.  Maximizing the four I
mentioned is different.

-- Jeff

---

From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:23:29 -0700

> are met that diversity is an appropriate tie-breaker.  Maximizing the four I

I think that diversity is already taken into account
much more than just as a tie-breaker. Nomcon does
look at a lot of the factors influenced by the
candidates background / diversity stats already as
actual job qualifications: Knowlege/presence of
geographic regions, collaborative influencing leadership
stle, ability to engage with other cultures, etc. pp.

Cheers
    Toerless