Subject: Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2021 18:20:25 +0000

Congratulations to those picked for the incoming leadership positions. Of the people whom I know, they are all intelligent people, with good technical knowledge, but seem always open to discussion and changing their mind. I am sure those that I don’t know are similar. I can’t find fault with any of these choices.

And yet …

When looked at collectively, I am very disappointed. The number of women in leadership has not changed. On the IESG, every incumbent was re-selected, except for one who moved over from IESG to the IAB.  On the IAB, three of five incumbents were picked. The IETF Trust and LLC Board members were similarly re-appointed incumbents. Nobody was added who is not employed by a large Internet or service provider company, except for one re-appointed incumbent who works at a “think tank” with deep historical ties to the IETF.

---

From: "Livingood, Jason" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2021 15:22:56 +0000

> The number of women in leadership has not changed.

That seems to reiterate the need for continued investment in diversity & inclusion and to investing more in the pipeline of a diverse group of future leaders.

> When looked at collectively, I am very disappointed. The number of women in leadership has not changed. On the IESG, every incumbent was re-selected, except for one who moved over from IESG to the…

The incumbency question is an interesting one, Rich. I don't view reappointment of an incumbent as a failure but a reflection that they have done their job well & the organization as a whole is healthy.

In terms of the larger companies this is perhaps a reflection of the broad scope & time commitments involved in roles such as the IESG. Changing the cost/benefit calculation that drives viable candidates with financial/employer support would seem to require some change in the scope of some of these roles (as has oft been discussed for AD roles).

Finally, my own personal perspective is that re-appointment should be largely pro forma unless there is tangible evidence of someone being a poor fit for the role or otherwise struggling or failing to do their job in the 1st term. In addition, I have also seen many people be more productive in their 2nd term as it naturally takes time fully understand their role & complicated relationships/issues/processes/etc., they better understand where & how to make the biggest impact, and have more confidence in undertaking their work.

JL

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 13:29:25 +1100

> When looked at collectively, I am very disappointed. The number of women in leadership has not changed. On the IESG, every incumbent was re-selected, except for one who moved over from IESG to the…

Hi Rich,

You make some very interesting points here.  I'm interested in whether you think the issue is with the pool of available candidates who put their hands up for roles, or with the selection process not valuing diversity sufficiently.

And of course there is a related question here - regardless of which you think the root cause - because we are an organisation composed of those who show up.  That question is:

of the available candidates, if you had the choice, who would you have selected instead of those who were chosen?  i.e. what would your "perfect" slate have been, given the candidates that were available.

Cheers,

Bron.

--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  [email-masked]

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2021 23:43:44 -0500

--On Saturday, January 23, 2021 13:29 +1100 Bron Gondwana
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Congratulations to those picked for the incoming leadership
>> positions. Of the people whom I know, they are all
>> intelligent people, with good technical knowledge, but seem
>> always open to discussion and changing their mind. I am sure
>> those that I don't know are similar. I can't find fault
>> with any of these choices.
> 
>>  
> 
>> And yet …
> 
>>  
> 
>> When looked at collectively, I am very disappointed. The
>> number of women in leadership has not changed. On the IESG,
>> every incumbent was re-selected, except for one who moved
>> over from IESG to the IAB.  On the IAB, three of five
>> incumbents were picked. The IETF Trust and LLC Board members
>> were similarly re-appointed incumbents. Nobody was added who
>> is not employed by a large Internet or service provider
>> company, except for one re-appointed incumbent who works at a
>> "think tank" with deep historical ties to the IETF.
> 
> 
> Hi Rich,
> 
> You make some very interesting points here.  I'm interested in
> whether you think the issue is with the pool of available
> candidates who put their hands up for roles, or with the
> selection process not valuing diversity sufficiently.
> 
> And of course there is a related question here - regardless of
> which you think the root cause - because we are an
> organisation composed of those who show up.  That question is:
> 
> of the available candidates, if you had the choice, who would
> you have selected instead of those who were chosen?  i.e. what
> would your "perfect" slate have been, given the candidates
> that were available.

Bron,

Since Rich was one of the candidates, asking him that question
may be a bit unfair.  More generally, I think the community
might be better off if we avoided second-guessing the Nomcom
decisions in terms of specific people and stuck instead with the
concerns that Rich described and Jason's response.

For example and rather than going on at length, I suggest that
my views on returning or replacing incumbents have not changed
much since Spencer and I produced 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-nomcom-term/ 
in 2006 and 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-nomcom-incumbents-first/
three years later.  Whether the specific ideas in those
documents are right or not, especially this many years later,
they at least contain more of an analysis of the issues than
assuming that incumbents were returned because they did a great
job.

FWIW, I am also doubtful that returning many incumbents can be
interpreted 
as "everything is just great" (a more extreme version of what
Jason said) or anything close to it.  Nomcoms are faced with a
large selection of complicated considerations and tradeoffs.  I
have every reason to believe that this one did a careful,
through, and contentious job (regardless of what any of us may
think of the results) and assuming we can deduce the basis on
which they made their decisions seems inappropriate and at least
a tad disrespectful.  

I do worry about another issue, one that Rich did not mention.
I remember Barbara posting a note strongly encouraging people to
put their names in even if there were incumbents willing to
serve an additional term.   Because putting one's name in
requires considerable effort, if the impression in the community
is that incumbents will almost always be returned, it is going
to be harder and harder to find anyone to volunteer for their
slots (I note that one incumbent this time ran unopposed).  But
that concern isn't new either; Spencer and I addressed it and a
possible solution in the second I-D mentioned above.

best,
   john

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:09:41 +1100

> concerns that Rich described and Jason's response.

Hi John,

I would say quite the opposite.  If he'd been selected and had to work with everyone else, then this would be an unfair question, but otherwise I think it's a vital question and deserves to be addressed.

We see many claims that it would be better to increase the diversity of representation among the leadership of people along certain of the axes along which humans differ, and Rich has specifically taken the time to decry a lack of said diversity in the current leadership (both concluding and incoming).

I'm actually particularly interested to see whether Rich suggests that he would have been the best choice for the role that he applied for, despite being white, male, cis-gendered and western.  Given those facts, I'm interested in how he squares the request for increased diversity with his candidacy, given that the diversity would by definition have to be created by picking non-{western white male}s for other roles in the leadership.

You can't divorce the abstract concerns from the concrete underlying constraints.  It's nice to have those concerns in the abstract, but "rough consensus and running code" - you can't have a rough consensus that "we get more type-X person into leadership" without running "we encourage type-X people to run and we choose them when they do".

I observe a lot of "we should have more of people not like me in leadership, and yet I want to keep my place in leadership" in the world, and it's incongruent.  I don't think Rich's statement of a general goal can stand independent of there existing realistic pathways to achieve that goal, and hence I think it's fair to ask Rich what realistic pathway exists to have delivered a result that he would have been more satisfied with than this one.

Regards,

Bron.

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 14:10:29 +0800

Bron,

I agree with John, I think it is bac practice to discuss names and 
selections.

/Loa

On 23/01/2021 13:09, Bron Gondwana wrote:
>> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Rich,
>> >
> I would say quite the opposite.  If he'd been selected and had to work 
> with everyone else, then this would be an unfair question, but otherwise 
> I think it's a vital question and deserves to be addressed.
> 
> We see many claims that it would be better to increase the diversity of 
> representation among the leadership of people along certain of the axes 
> along which humans differ, and Rich has specifically taken the time to 
> decry a lack of said diversity in the current leadership (both 
> concluding and incoming).
> 
> I'm actually particularly interested to see whether Rich suggests that 
> he would have been the best choice for the role that he applied for, 
> despite being white, male, cis-gendered and western.  Given those facts, 
> I'm interested in how he squares the request for increased diversity 
> with his candidacy, given that the diversity would by definition have to 
> be created by picking non-{western white male}s for other roles in the 
> leadership.
> 
> You can't divorce the abstract concerns from the concrete underlying 
> constraints.  It's nice to have those concerns in the abstract, but 
> "rough consensus and running code" - you can't have a rough consensus 
> that "we get more type-X person into leadership" without running "we 
> encourage type-X people to run and we choose them when they do".
> 
> I observe a lot of "we should have more of people not like me in 
> leadership, and yet I want to keep my place in leadership" in the world, 
> and it's incongruent.  I don't think Rich's statement of a general goal 
> can stand independent of there existing realistic pathways to achieve 
> that goal, and hence I think it's fair to ask Rich what realistic 
> pathway exists to have delivered a result that he would have been more 
> satisfied with than this one.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bron.
> 
> 
> --

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Bronze Dragon Consulting             phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Brian Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 19:18:15 +1300

Agreed. The problem here is not whether incumbents are re-appointed, but
why the pool of candidates lacks diversity. This is not exactly a new
problem.

Regards
    Brian
    (via tiny screen & keyboard)

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 02:21:13 -0500

--On Saturday, January 23, 2021 19:18 +1300 Brian Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Agreed. The problem here is not whether incumbents are
> re-appointed, but why the pool of candidates lacks diversity.
> This is not exactly a new problem.

Well, I think we have three separate problems, none of which
require "I think Alice would be better than Betty" discussions...

(1) How we handle incumbents who are willing to enlist for
additional terms without discouraging people from volunteering
to run against them.  See my previous note for a pointer to at
least one way to mitigate the problem.  There are probably
others, but the IESG was not interested in a discussion in 2009,
so the topic dropped.  Perhaps conditions for the discussion a
better today, perhaps not.

(2) How we increase diversity in the IETF and, in particular,
among those who have whatever support is needed to stand for
leadership positions and become part of the candidate pool (and,
for that matter, part of the Nomcom volunteer pool and the WG
Chair volunteer pool).

(3) What advice we would like to give future Nomcom about the
relative importance of diversity in particular bodies vis-a-vis
picking people based on other qualifications for the relevant
positions.  I am firmly convinced that more diverse
organizations (and especially decision-making bodies) function
better and produce better results.  I have also seen the IETF
make what I believe were poor technical decisions because
everyone involved was used to very high speed networks with
substantially unlimited capacity and the very latest and fastest
local computers and other local equipment, a problem with which
a different type of diversity would help too.  But, especially
on the IESG where AD positions require specific technical
expertise and understanding my suspicion is that any simple
answer to the question of how to balance those requirements
against diversity if there is a shortage of the combination in
the IETF is probably wrong.

I do want to make a suggestion to complement Bron's.  Would it
be useful to create a repository for confidential comments to
the 2021-2022 Nomcom right now?  We could then encourage Rich
and anyone else who thinks the 2020-2021 Nomcom got some things
wrong and that we can do better to upload comments in as much
detail as they think appropriate now, while their thinking is
still fresh.  But we would treat that material as confidential
comments to the future Nomcom, using whatever degree of security
cleverness we think is needed to prevent anyone from reading the
comments until the new Nomcom Chair is appointed and the keys
turned over to them.

best,
   john

>> I agree with John, I think it is bac practice to discuss
>> names and selections.
>...

>> > Hi John,
>> > 
>> > I would say quite the opposite.  If he'd been selected and
>> > had to work with everyone else, then this would be an
>> > unfair question, but otherwise I think it's a vital
>> > question and deserves to be addressed.
>> > 
>> > We see many claims that it would be better to increase the
>> > diversity of representation among the leadership of people
>> > along certain of the axes along which humans differ, and
>> > Rich has specifically taken the time to decry a lack of
>> > said diversity in the current leadership (both concluding
>> > and incoming).
>> > 
>> > I'm actually particularly interested to see whether Rich
>> > suggests that he would have been the best choice for the
>> > role that he applied for, despite being white, male,
>> > cis-gendered and western.  Given those facts, I'm
>> > interested in how he squares the request for increased
>> > diversity with his candidacy, given that the diversity
>> > would by definition have to be created by picking
>> > non-{western white male}s for other roles in the leadership.
>> > 
>> > You can't divorce the abstract concerns from the concrete
>> > underlying constraints.  It's nice to have those concerns
>> > in the abstract, but "rough consensus and running code" -
>> > you can't have a rough consensus that "we get more type-X
>> > person into leadership" without running "we encourage
>> > type-X people to run and we choose them when they do".
>> > 
>> > I observe a lot of "we should have more of people not like
>> > me in leadership, and yet I want to keep my place in
>> > leadership" in the world, and it's incongruent.  I don't
>> > think Rich's statement of a general goal can stand
>> > independent of there existing realistic pathways to achieve
>> > that goal, and hence I think it's fair to ask Rich what
>> > realistic pathway exists to have delivered a result that he
>> > would have been more satisfied with than this one.
>> > 
>> > Regards,
>> > 
>> > Bron.

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 23:05:01 +1100

I'm somewhat sympathetic to all the "we don't need to actually look into this", though I think our societal hangup about talking about personnel matters, with all the ineffable mysteries that then form around them, is pretty cowardly.

But I'm not sympathic to complaining that the food is not to taste and then not looking into the ingredients that went into it.

Motherhood and apple pie statements that "it's really disappointing we aren't getting more diverse" are quite poisonous when they just stand without introspection.  If an excess of straight white males applying for roles is the root problem, then Rich is as guilty as anybody for contributing to that problem, and it's pretty rich (pun not intended) to then complain about the outcome.

If the problem is that the only candidates available where straight white males, then we can look at how to get other candidates into the pool.

And - if the problem is that the nomcom selected without sufficient weight given to diversity, then considering a selection that would have made Rich appointed (that's the opposite of disappointed, right?) with the result is a reasonable request in response to Rich's stated disappointment.

Throwing our hands up and saying "it involves people, we can't talk about it" is way problematic if we intend to do more than wring our hands and cast generic aspersions of systemic sexism and racism at the IETF.

Bron.

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 12:56:45 +0000

> Throwing our hands up and saying "it involves people, we can't talk about it" is way problematic if we intend to do more than wring our hands and cast generic aspersions of systemic sexism and raci…

The danger I see is the politics of woke impairing out ability to 
deliver the RFC.

I am concerned about diversity but that is diversity of organisations 
that the candidates work for, something that has long been recognised as 
an issue and that we have processes to deal with but which I think will 
come under greater stress in future NomComs.  There is already an 
element of judgement there as to what counts as the same organisation 
and that I think needs ever more careful attention.

We are technical, engineers, and so for me, the issues that woke raise 
are less relevant than in a body that serves the public.  Thus a recent 
report told me that in a city that is 40% black, only 10% of a public 
serving body were black and that I find concerning.  But in the IETF, it 
is technical ability that is of prime concern to me, the ability to 
produce, to review, to criticise a highly technical proposal and I think 
that that should trump the woke issues, of gender, colour, age and such 
like which are important in an organisation providing a service to the 
public at large.

Tom Petch

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 14:33:00 +0000

*   You make some very interesting points here.  I'm interested in whether you think the issue is with the pool of available candidates who put their hands up for roles, or with the selection process not valuing diversity sufficiently.

It would have been nice to have a more diverse pool of candidates. I cannot speak about the internal deliberations of Nomcom, and I won’t, but to me, the net result is disappointing. Put another way, and I am only saying it like this to make it hopefully more obvious “given what they had to work with, they could have done better.”

  *   of the available candidates, if you had the choice, who would you have selected instead of those who were chosen?  i.e. what would your "perfect" slate have been, given the candidates that were available.

I will not answer that for a couple of reasons.  First, as I stated originally, I have no qualms with any of the individuals. Making my own slate would necessarily leave some of the selected people who, and – rightfully so – lead people to think that I did have issues with anyone left off. Second, as an IETF contributor, I will have to work with many of the current slate and I don’t see how answering that question could do anything except cause friction. Third, I don’t have enough information: I didn’t do any interviews, questionnaires are not public (well, mine was), and there was no chance to talk with a bunch of candidates.  (That last is a separate problem.)

Your point – we can’t take about fixing problems without concrete examples – is compelling, but flawed. As a CEO, I am sure that you know you can change hiring practices to get a more desirable output, without reviewing everyone who was just hired.

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 14:48:25 +0000

*   And - if the problem is that the nomcom selected without sufficient weight given to diversity, then considering a selection that would have made Rich appointed (that's the opposite of disappointed, right?) with the result is a reasonable request in response to Rich's stated disappointment.

I assume you’re making a joke about “the opposite”. But to be clear, if Nomcom picked me instead of Carl, the end result would have been the same, of course, and I would still be disappointed. One mitigating factor is that my questionnaire was public and I tried to show how diversity is an ongoing moral concern for me and people could bring it up if I did not follow through.  It’s possible that all other IETF Chair candidates feel the same, of course, and I’m not saying they don’t, just that we don’t know.

If I were picked, however, I’d be unlikely to say anything because I have to work closely with the rest of the slate, and starting off by saying “I’m disappointed this is who we have” would be stupid, for hopefully obvious reasons.

  *   Throwing our hands up and saying "it involves people, we can't talk about it" is way problematic if we intend to do more than wring our hands and cast generic aspersions of systemic sexism and racism at the IETF.

We can talk about it without commenting on specific people.  For example, having a very finely-tuned random number generator used to pick volunteers from a self-selected pool doesn’t change the fact that every picked volunteer will be self-selected. Having jobs that most people think require four years to be able to do correctly, means that people are unlikely to volunteer if they see an incumbent’s name on the list.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 13:31:07 -0500

--On Saturday, January 23, 2021 14:48 +0000 "Salz, Rich"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> 
>   *   And - if the problem is that the nomcom selected without
> sufficient weight given to diversity, then considering a
> selection that would have made Rich appointed (that's the
> opposite of disappointed, right?) with the result is a
> reasonable request in response to Rich's stated disappointment.
> 
> I assume you're making a joke about "the opposite". But
> to be clear, if Nomcom picked me instead of Carl, the end
> result would have been the same, of course, and I would still
> be disappointed. One mitigating factor is that my
> questionnaire was public and I tried to show how diversity is
> an ongoing moral concern for me and people could bring it up
> if I did not follow through.  It's possible that all other
> IETF Chair candidates feel the same, of course, and I'm not
> saying they don't, just that we don't know.
> 
> If I were picked, however, I'd be unlikely to say anything
> because I have to work closely with the rest of the slate, and
> starting off by saying "I'm disappointed this is who we
> have" would be stupid, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Indeed.  But that is almost equally true if you expect to
continue to work in the IETF (which I hope and assume you will)
if you posted your preferred slate with the implication that you
think your candidates would be better choices --on a one by one
basis -- than those selected.  In addition, I think we are
better off moving forward to improve on things for the future
rather than poking at the details of what might have been.   See
below.

>   *   Throwing our hands up and saying "it involves people, we
> can't talk about it" is way problematic if we intend to do
> more than wring our hands and cast generic aspersions of
> systemic sexism and racism at the IETF.

I hope nothing I said sounded to you like your quotation above.
At the risk of casting a different soft of vague aspersions, too
much decision-making over the years (inside and outside the
IETF) has been contaminated by personal resentments and
animosities.  Avoiding doing things that might encourage more of
them seems like a reasonable precaution.

> We can talk about it without commenting on specific people.

Exactly and that is the core of what I was suggesting.  The idea
of opening comments to the next Nomcom now was only intended as
a supplement for those who really did feel a need to comment on
individuals.

> For example, having a very finely-tuned random number
> generator used to pick volunteers from a self-selected pool
> doesn't change the fact that every picked volunteer will be
> self-selected. Having jobs that most people think require four
> years to be able to do correctly, means that people are
> unlikely to volunteer if they see an incumbent's name on the
> list.

Right.  And having job descriptions that can be satisfied only
by those who either (i) work for large organizations that are
willing to give up most of their time for that period while
supplying salary, travel, and other support or (ii) who has
independent means they are willing and able to dedicate that way
also rather significantly affects who is willing to volunteer...
and the diversity of the volunteers.

   john

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 14:55:12 -0500

Brian Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > Agreed. The problem here is not whether incumbents are re-appointed,
    > but why the pool of candidates lacks diversity. This is not exactly a
    > new problem.

This is the list of candidates:
     https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/photos/

This is the input diversity.
Ask the current ADs why this isn't more diverse.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 09:46:34 +1300

On 23-Jan-21 20:21, John C Klensin wrote:
...
> comments until the new Nomcom Chair is appointed and the keys

I think that's an excellent idea, and doesn't need a BCP in order
to achieve it. We already expect the chair of NomCom #N to carry
messages forward to NomCom #N+1; that's why the chair is an ex officio
member of the following year's NomCom. Whether Barbara is willing
to take up your idea is her choice, of course.

As for diversity among the candidates: that's a community problem,
not a NomCom problem. It applies more generally, too: see
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/EYhZK4yTyILUcQj40V9MKS7n4DY
for an example.

   Brian

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:11:51 -0500

One small aspect of this conversation struck me as needing 
clarification.  there is repeated reference to re-appointing incumbents.

In my view, and I think this is also the view the community has 
expressed, there are significant differences among reappointing 
incumbents who have served 1 term, 2 terms, and three or more terms. 
While sometimes frustrating, I do understand and generally support the 
bias in favor of reappointing incumbents who have done a competent job 
and only served on term.  In contrast, at best it indicates community 
problems when we are reappointing incumbents who have already served 
three terms.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 17:28:02 -0500

(not really directed at Bron, just riffing off one line in his message)

On 1/23/21 12:09 AM, Bron Gondwana wrote:

> We see many claims that it would be better to increase the diversity 
> of representation among the leadership of people along certain of the 
> axes along which humans differ

Yes, that's true, but humans are (and should be) diverse in how they 
gauge diversity.   I'd personally like to see more diversity in the 
kinds of "sponsors" that I* members have, probably more diversity in 
cultural background, and less pigeonholing of people.   But that's just 
me, and I understand that these are not independent variables.

(I also understand that the very constraints of the I* jobs - which last 
I knew were more-than-full-time, unpaid positions, with no travel budget 
- limit the diversity of potential candidates. And there's nothing 
noncom can do about that, it's a structural problem with no obvious 
solution that doesn't risk creating worse problems.)

I recognize that the nomcoms have difficult jobs, they have to weigh a 
lot of conflicting opinions and needs, and a limited candidate pool to 
choose from.   IMO second-guessing them is pointless at best, and the 
best thing to do if one doesn't like the results is to provide 
feed-forward to the next nomcom.

And I'd recommend giving the new I* groups some benefit of the doubt, 
give them a chance to improve the organization, rather than shooting 
them down from day one based on pure prejudice.

Keith

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 17:51:16 -0500

--On Sunday, January 24, 2021 09:46 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> and anyone else who thinks the 2020-2021 Nomcom got some
>> things wrong and that we can do better to upload comments in
>> as much detail as they think appropriate now, while their
>> thinking is still fresh.  But we would treat that material as
>> confidential comments to the future Nomcom, using whatever
>> degree of security cleverness we think is needed to prevent
>> anyone from reading the comments until the new Nomcom Chair
>> is appointed and the keys turned over to them.
> 
> I think that's an excellent idea, and doesn't need a BCP in
> order to achieve it. We already expect the chair of NomCom #N
> to carry messages forward to NomCom #N+1; that's why the chair
> is an ex officio member of the following year's NomCom.
> Whether Barbara is willing to take up your idea is her choice,
> of course.

I agree that it does not need a BCP, but in part because I see
the tendency to need a specific authorization before doing
anything as an opportunity for the IETF to get in its own way, I
was hoping that, if people thought it was a good idea, the
Secretariat (probably) or Tools Team could just do it and, that,
if any special authorization were needed, the IESG could shrug
its collective shoulders and say "sure, why not".  Barbara
taking up the idea would, of course, be another good
alternative, but I don't think it is worth a lot of fuss.  After
all, no one would be required to take advantage of it and the
worst thing that could happen would be for the 2021-2022 Nomcom
to decide that it doesn't want to bother reading the stuff.  

And, coming back to the distinction a few of us have tried to
make, that mechanism should be used for discussing specific
people and issues that won't be looked at by anyone but the
Nomcom (and maybe, if Barbara likes, feedback to this one).
The more general issues of diversity, reappointing incumbents,
etc., should be, IMO, both more immediate and more public.

> As for diversity among the candidates: that's a community
> problem, not a NomCom problem. It applies more generally, too:
> see
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/EYhZK4yTyI
> LUcQj40V9MKS7n4DY for an example.

Yes.  

And, for questions of reappointing incumbents after one or more
terms, if we (including the IESG) are willing to have that
discussion, I suggest
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-nomcom-incumbents-first/
as at least a reminder that it is not a new concern and perhaps
as a possible starting point.

   john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:08:12 -0500

--On Saturday, January 23, 2021 16:11 -0500 "Joel M. Halpern"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> In my view, and I think this is also the view the community
> has expressed, there are significant differences among
> reappointing incumbents who have served 1 term, 2 terms, and
> three or more terms. While sometimes frustrating, I do
> understand and generally support the bias in favor of
> reappointing incumbents who have done a competent job and only
> served on term.  In contrast, at best it indicates community
> problems when we are reappointing incumbents who have already
> served three terms.

Joel, 

Agreed, but there is another problem with that bias, which is
that it discourages people from becoming candidates and, if they
or whoever has to give permission gets frustrated, it creates a
long term problem.  Combining your summary above with the
general idea Spencer and I explored nearly a dozen years ago,
the Nomcom would first ask incumbents (at least one-term ones)
if they were willing to continue and, for those who were, ask
for comments and conduct evaluations on those candidates.  If
their conclusion was "yes, that person should be reappointed",
that would be the end of it, with time of potential candidates,
the Nomcom, and the community all saved for working on other
positions.  If the conclusion was "no", "done a good job but it
may be time for new blood" or anything similar, they would issue
the normal calls for candidates and comments with the incumbent
remaining in the running but not a foregone conclusion.

Something of that nature would have the disadvantage that, if
there were an incumbent, especially a one-term one, who had done
an excellent job but a superstar waiting who would clearly do an
even better one, the superstar would be locked out.  On the
other hand, that might encourage her to consider other positions
and be a net win for the community with two extra-good people in
the leadership.

    john

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:44:08 -0500

> problems when we are reappointing incumbents who have already served

I was around when the NomCom system was initially being formulated. As I
recall, a 2 year term was chosen not because that should be the normal
length of time an AD serves but as a compromise between the load on the
nomcom, which argues for a longer term, and the amount of damage a bad
choice could do, which argues for a shorter term. There is also the factor
that a newly appointed AD who has not been an AD before has a learning
curve to get up and should be more effective in their second and, if
re-appointed, subsequent years.

Thanks,
Donald
===============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 2386 Panoramic Circle, Apopka, FL 32703 USA
 [email-masked]

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 17:50:02 +0000

> but why the pool of candidates lacks diversity. This is not exactly a

The risk in making this kind of argument is that it enlarges the problem so that people get dismayed, or other feelings, and nothing gets done. There was some diversity in the current pool of candidates and almost none of it showed up in the slate that was selected. Not being privy to the discussions or interviews, I am *NOT* saying they did it wrong. I am just looking at observable outcomes. If diversity and inclusion is important to the IETF membership, we can work on that.

>    Ask the current ADs why this isn't more diverse.

It's not only the current ADs responsibility. In any given year, half the AD's are incumbents, almost always running for re-election. Unconscious bias seems to make it hard for them to find "good" candidates. Not totally true, but also more true than not.

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 17:58:00 +0000

>    We are technical, engineers, and so for me, the issues that woke raise 
    are less relevant than in a body that serves the public.

As someone else pointed out in different words (John Klensin I think), the kind of Internet that IETFers have is very different from the kind of Internet that most of the world has.  That's not a "woke issue"  It's a technical knowledge issue.

> But in the IETF, it 

Do you disagree with "The Internet is for End Users," RFC 8890?  Do you think they are better served by having technical excellence that represents them?

---

From: "STARK, BARBARA H" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 20:19:59 +0000

> possible solution in the second I-D mentioned above.

I'm not commenting on the broader debate. But I did want to point out that I specifically noted that people interested in ultimately being appointed to a position might consider running against popular incumbents in order to get experience with the process. I know that 2 of the 3 newly appointed ADs had previously (unsuccessfully) run for AD positions, and I'm not sure of the 3rd. It's not true of everyone -- but there is often a tendency for people to exude nervousness and lack of confidence the first time through a process like this. Having spent the time myself to go through the nominee process unsuccessfully 2 years ago, I can say I found that experience very educational and feel the effort was well worth it. 
Barbara

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 18:09:29 -0500

--On Sunday, January 24, 2021 20:19 +0000 "STARK, BARBARA H"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> I remember Barbara posting a note strongly encouraging people
>> to put their names in even if there were incumbents willing to
>> requires considerable effort, if the impression in the
>> community is that incumbents will almost always be returned,
>> it is going to be harder and harder to find anyone to
>> volunteer for their slots (I note that one incumbent this
>> time ran unopposed).  But that concern isn't new either;
>> Spencer and I addressed it and a possible solution in the
>> second I-D mentioned above.
> 
> I'm not commenting on the broader debate. But I did want to
> point out that I specifically noted that people interested in
> ultimately being appointed to a position might consider
> running against popular incumbents in order to get experience
> with the process. I know that 2 of the 3 newly appointed ADs
> had previously (unsuccessfully) run for AD positions, and I'm
> not sure of the 3rd. It's not true of everyone -- but there is
> often a tendency for people to exude nervousness and lack of
> confidence the first time through a process like this. Having
> spent the time myself to go through the nominee process
> unsuccessfully 2 years ago, I can say I found that experience
> very educational and feel the effort was well worth it. 

Barbara,

You did indeed and I had forgotten, for which I apologize.  But
it seems to me there is a big difference between "put your name
in, you probably won't get the position, but you will learn
things that might help the next time" and "apply for this on the
assumption that you might get it".  I know that, this time, I
tried to convince one person I considered qualified to run who
basically told me that the experience when they applied for a
position in a different year had been sufficiently
time-consuming and stressful that they were not likely to ever
apply for such a position again.  It was not the first time I've
been told very similar things.  

There is probably nothing that can be done to prevent that kind
of reaction, but it may be a tradeoff to be thought about for
the future.

Any thoughts on whether it would be helpful to start collecting
comments on candidates, new appointees, and/or continuing
incumbents now with the understanding that no one would look at
them before the 2021-2022 Nomcom was seated?

best,
  john

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 23:28:25 -0000

Can I just top-post to throw into the mix that one of the candidate
questionnaire questions is (quite reasonably) to you have support from your
employer (financial and time) to fill this role. Answering this question, of
course, means going to your employer and getting that support (or for
independents finding a sponsor). This represents a certain investment in of
reputation, may be a lot of work, and can be treated differently by
employers when a candidate is not selected.

None of that is to question where we are with the processes, but it should
help explain why people might be more reluctant to put their names forward
if they think they are not in with a reasonable chance.

I think debate has gone back and forwards over the years about the early
announcement of candidates who have been nominated and/or who have accepted
nominations. One argument has been that seeing a small set of nominees might
prompt someone to stand, or that seeing the potential appointees might
incentivise others to stand. Conversely, the argument can be made that
seeing the name of someone you think is half-way reasonable is good enough
reason to not stand. Furthermore, a person might think they stand no chance
against another candidate and so be disinclined to put their name forward,
which might suggest not announcing any names until nominations close.

You pay your money and you take your choice.

Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of John C Klensin
Sent: 24 January 2021 23:09
To: STARK, BARBARA H <[email-masked]>; 'Bron Gondwana'
<[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]' <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

Barbara,

best,
  john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 18:46:24 -0500

--On Sunday, January 24, 2021 23:28 +0000 Adrian Farrel
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Can I just top-post to throw into the mix that one of the
> candidate questionnaire questions is (quite reasonably) to you
> have support from your employer (financial and time) to fill
> this role. Answering this question, of course, means going to
> your employer and getting that support (or for independents
> finding a sponsor). This represents a certain investment in of
> reputation, may be a lot of work, and can be treated
> differently by employers when a candidate is not selected.
> 
> None of that is to question where we are with the processes,
> but it should help explain why people might be more reluctant
> to put their names forward if they think they are not in with
> a reasonable chance.

Indeed.  And, while I didn't hear it this year (probably just
dumb luck), I've heard variations on the above (including
something like "my employer signed off once but won't make the
commitment again") several times when I've encouraged people to
run for various positions.

best,
   john

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:38:25 -0500

Hi John,

> slots (I note that one incumbent this time ran unopposed).  But

Lack of choices for the nomcom to pick from is usually a problem for a
small number of positions but I have no idea why you think "it is
going to be harder and harder to find anyone to volunteer [for slots
where there is an incumbent]". Over the past quarter century, I have
served on 6 nomcoms, 4 as a voting member, once as chair, and once as
immediate past chair. There has been no such trend as you imagine. If
anything, I would guess that the total number of volunteers across all
positions has grown but it is still normal for the nomcom to do some
arm twisting. There have even been years in which there was no
volunteer for a position where the incumbent was not running until the
nomcom beat the bushes and found a volunteer or two.

Thanks,
Donald

---

From: "Livingood, Jason" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:37:51 +0000

>    Ask the current ADs why this isn't more diverse.

[JL] IMO it is more efficient & sustainable to sort of move "upstream" a bit here. To improve the diversity of AD candidates you need to ask how someone matures to become a viable candidate. First they had the means/interest/support to initially engage at the IETF, then they felt positive about that engagement and continued it, then they wrote their first Internet Draft, maybe then they became a WG chair for one or more WGs, etc. So to improve the diversity output of the NomCom selections then IMO we need to focus on mapping out the upstream 'journey' to become an AD (aka the candidate pipeline). This in mapping all the upstream inputs we can then see what we can do at each of those places to attract & sustain greater diversity.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 12:15:15 -0500

--On Monday, January 25, 2021 00:38 -0500 Donald Eastlake
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> time ran unopposed).  But
> Lack of choices for the nomcom to pick from is usually a
> problem for a small number of positions but I have no idea why
> you think "it is going to be harder and harder to find anyone
> to volunteer [for slots where there is an incumbent]". Over
> the past quarter century, I have served on 6 nomcoms, 4 as a
> voting member, once as chair, and once as immediate past
> chair. There has been no such trend as you imagine. If
> anything, I would guess that the total number of volunteers
> across all positions has grown but it is still normal for the
> nomcom to do some arm twisting. There have even been years in
> which there was no volunteer for a position where the
> incumbent was not running until the nomcom beat the bushes and
> found a volunteer or two.

Don,

I think there are two rather different questions one could be
asking here.  Your comment seems to be about the answer to one
of them; my comment was badly phrased but addressed to the other.

One question is whether Nomcoms have (or can beat the bushes and
find) a sufficient number of candidates for each position to
select a candidate who would be able to do an acceptable job.  I
think that is the question to which you are giving a clear "yes"
answer.    The other is more hypothetical: suppose a Nomcom,
rather than or in addition to asking for volunteers,
brainstormed about who would be the absolutely best person with
some connection to the IETF to do a particular job and then went
out and tried to recruit (and arm-twist) that person.  That
turns my concern into "and how many of the people who might be
identified that way would say 'no' because of bad experiences
making themselves available previously or because they can't get
support authorization (not only from employers and the like but
from families and others who might have a 'vote') a second
time?"   Obviously there is no way to know the answer to the
second question with any precision but, from my entirely
anecdotal experience when I have tried to convince specific
people to make themselves available -- not beating the bushes
but trying to find the most tender leaves at the top of the tea
plant -- the answer appears to be "too many".

Despite what I wrote, I'm not concerned about finding "anyone to
volunteer"; I'm concerns about being able to recruit the
absolutely best people for each position, where "best" factors
in technical skill, managerial skill for some positions, the
presence or absence of personality characteristics that could
contribute to effectiveness in developing consensus rather than
being divisive,  diversity, and probably other factors
(definitely not in that order).  

Analogies to the difference between posting a job description
and hoping someone responds who is qualified and engaging with a
retained executive search process should be obvious from the
above and might even be helpful.

best,
   john

best,
   john

---

From: "STARK, BARBARA H" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:23:51 +0000

Hi John,

> them before the 2021-2022 Nomcom was seated?

I saw your suggestion on that. I'm not convinced as to how that would provide useful info to NomCom that isn't being supplied under the current format. And given how closely the volume of received input tracks with reminders to provide input to nominees, I'm not sure how much input would be received in the absence of frequent reminders. And if there were such frequent reminders, would people then become immune to these reminders (and ignore them) and might we actually end up with less input? Since I don't really see the potential benefit, IMO, the potential risks and additional effort don't outweigh those potential benefits.

With that said, I did find comments from several incumbents interesting, as to how going through NomCom is the only way they really have to get feedback about the job they're doing. A method for ADs to get anonymized / summarized input on a yearly basis (and maybe WG chairs, too?) might be useful. But I don't think that would need to be tied to NomCom. No need to add more work to the NomCom chair job. Really. Just sayin'.
Barbara

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:06:53 -0500

> employers when a candidate is not selected.

One of the main drivers of our "diversity" problem is the input set of 
people from which we draw our candidates - it lacks diversity on a 
number of axes.  We've noted this before - that GIGO  or rather 
Conformity In is Conformity Out.

I wanted to pull out this paragraph from Adrian's note and use it to 
make a suggestion:   Let's have the last 5 or so Nomcom chairs plus 
Andrew drag in the appropriate people from some of the larger companies 
and ask them to help us with our candidate diversity problem.  E.g. a 
substantial portion of the folk that end up as ADs or IAB or other 
leadership are funded as part of their employment with those 
companies.   It might actually be a useful exercise to look at the input 
representations we're getting from those companies and see if perhaps 
they can work internally to help broaden the diversity of the set of 
people they send to the IETF.

It may also make sense to see if they'd be interested in providing 
funding for candidates not from those larger companies (e.g. smaller 
sole consultancies, academia, non-profit research institutes) that may 
not be able to find internal support for the large time commitments the 
ADs especially have to make.    In academic terms - an endowed chair.  
I'm not looking for them to fund their competitors obviously, but there 
may be some benefit in providing support for someone nominally 
independent of their company.

Later, Mike

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 19:14:30 +0000

Many of your ideas are good ones worth examining closer.

I strongly disagree with this.  Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the better.  

I looked at the 2020 and 2019 candidates, neither were homogeneous.  (I could not look earlier as the website just says "closed" and I couldn't think of an easy mail archive search query to find the list of names.)  There was diversity, even if it didn't really show up in the selections.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:55:29 -0500

On 1/25/21 2:06 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:

> Let's have the last 5 or so Nomcom chairs plus Andrew drag in the 
> appropriate people from some of the larger companies and ask them to 
> help us with our candidate diversity problem.

Seems like that would be exacerbating the problem rather than addressing 
it.

Or maybe people keep wanting to define "diversity" in only very narrow 
terms.   We need more candidates who are not from "some of the larger 
companies".

Keith

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:59:36 -0500

On 1/25/2021 2:55 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> Seems like that would be exacerbating the problem rather than 
> addressing it.
>
See my response to Rich's note.   I agree - which was the thrust of my 
"fund an endowed chair" comment.  But it would be ignoring reality if I 
didn't acknowledge that the larger companies provide us with much of the 
support now (and thank you Companies for that) and will probably 
continue to do so going forward.

Mike

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:03:51 -0500

> I looked at the 2020 and 2019 candidates, neither were homogeneous.  (I could not look earlier as the website just says "closed" and I couldn't think of an easy mail archive search query to find th…
Rich - when compared to the general set of IETF participants, the Nomcom 
selections mostly mirror the distribution within that set. When compared 
to the general set of adults (or for that matter, the general set of 
adults in the tech space) they don't, and that's been a complaint for at 
least the last 15 years or so.

And one of the axes - from my POV - is small vs large organizations.   
For good and comprehensible reasons, large companies tend to dominate 
the Nomcom selections and have for at least the last 20-25 years.   
Prior to that academia and government were well represented - less so now.

Later, Mike

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:32:43 -0500

> I looked at the 2020 and 2019 candidates, neither were homogeneous.  (I
    > could not look earlier as the website just says "closed" and I couldn't
    > think of an easy mail archive search query to find the list of names.)
    > There was diversity, even if it didn't really show up in the
    > selections.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/nomcom/
lets you see the announcements from previous years... annoyingly, since the
NOMCOM chair usually points at the feedback page, getting the list is
actually difficult.

Given that it's now been routinely open list, I suggest that
  a) the list be open
  b) the announcements should, at this point, list the nominees.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:46:51 -0500

Hi,

I think I'm the "Andrew" mentioned here, so I'm responding.  ObDisclaimer: I work for the Internet Society, and I'm responding with that hat on, but this does not represent an Internet Society position (i.e. I haven't consulted with the Board about this).  I'm writing from my personal address out of convenience.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 02:06:53PM -0500, Michael StJohns wrote:

>Andrew drag in the appropriate people from some of the larger 
>companies and ask them to help us with our candidate diversity 
>problem.  E.g. a substantial portion of the folk that end up as ADs or 
>IAB or other leadership are funded as part of their employment with 
>those companies.   It might actually be a useful exercise to look at 
>the input representations we're getting from those companies and see 
>if perhaps they can work internally to help broaden the diversity of 
>the set of people they send to the IETF.

Is the idea that we talk to companies that are working in the IETF and ask them about their employee diversity?  I confess that I am sceptical about the degree to which such an approach would be received positively.  For whatever it's worth, I have observed for some time that one path to broader diversity within the IETF is a culture that is somewhat less confrontational (not to say occasionally rude and nasty).  It also seems to me that a set of tools that encourage more people to contribute could help.  For people under a certain age, for instance, mailing lists are primarily a relic of another age.  The idea that the IETF is so special that it needs a completely bespoke set of tools that interoperate with nothing else is also more than a little hostile to newcomers.  These strike me as things the community could work on without going to those who subsidize free IETF labour and suggesting that maybe their employee pool isn't diverse enough.

>the ADs especially have to make.    In academic terms - an endowed 
>chair.

I think it is up to the community as to whether it wants to pay its ADs; I suspect such a move would be controversial, but I will express no opinion as to whether it's a good idea.  I think, however, that the IETF would possibly have the resources to undertake that if it is successful in its fundraising: the Internet Society has agreed to match funds up to a ceiling (see the announcement from last year), so the IETF would appear to have this option without the Internet Society undertaking such fundraising on behalf of the IETF.  I believe also that, in light of the control of the IETF endowment, it would be at least confusing if the Internet Society undertook such fundraising now.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:03:46 -0500

On 1/25/21 3:46 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> For whatever it's worth, I have observed for some time that one path 
> to broader diversity within the IETF is a culture that is somewhat 
> less confrontational (not to say occasionally rude and nasty).

I don't wish to discount that idea entirely (I at least partially agree 
with it) but we have definitely seen this used as an excuse to be 
prejudiced against some people.   Creating a monoculture in the name of 
diversity seems counterproductive at best.   If we're really going to be 
diverse, we need to be tolerant of many different kinds of people.   The 
IETF community and management used to understand this, now it's 
bordering on hostile to this idea.

> The idea that the IETF is so special that it needs a completely 
> bespoke set of tools that interoperate with nothing else is also more 
> than a little hostile to newcomers.
>
That sentence sounds more than a little bit hostile itself. (Where are 
the Tone Police when we need them?   Just kidding, the Tone Police are 
part of the problem too.)

With respect to tooling, this should be a relatively easy test. Are the 
"bespoke" tools easier to use than whatever tools we might be using 
otherwise?   As far as I can tell, the answer is generally "yes", though 
there's certainly room for improvement in some areas (xml2rfc comes to 
mind).    It's not as if the industry has better tools for the kind of 
work IETF does.   Github is NOT a better tool overall, even if it has 
advantages for certain aspects of the process.  Some common tools like 
Jira and Slack are tremendous barriers to productivity.   I'd really 
like it if everyone could contribute to document editing/development 
using their favorite word processors, but that will still require 
bespoke tooling on the back end.

But I suspect that underlying the idea that IETF shouldn't use bespoke 
tools is a really toxic idea - which is that IETF shouldn't be trying to 
innovate, or maybe even that nobody other than Big Companies should be 
trying to innovate.    It strikes me as both shortsighted and trying to 
protect interests that are antithetical to IETF.

Keith

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:35:42 -0500

Hi,

Same disclaimer as before, but this time I'm definitely speaking only for myself.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 04:03:46PM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
>>
>That sentence sounds more than a little bit hostile itself.

I would appreciate knowing why you think so.  

>With respect to tooling, this should be a relatively easy test. Are 
>the "bespoke" tools easier to use than whatever tools we might be 
>using otherwise?

"Easier" is surely a matter of where one stands.  The point that I was making (and the only point I was trying to make) is that, if you want a more-diverse set of people to join, making the barriers to engagement as high as the IETF does through tools that are really foreign to a lot of people will not help with that.  Like github or not (I do not), it is a tool that is familiar to a lot of people, and the more one adapts workflow to things that are familiar to a lot of people the more likely one is to attract such people.  That's the network effect in operation, which is of course something that everyone who works in the IETF is familiar with.

>tools

I think that overstates the point I thought I was making, but I'll assume it was because I made my point inelegantly rather than making myself understood.  My apologies.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:45:17 -0500

On 1/25/2021 3:46 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think I'm the "Andrew" mentioned here, so I'm responding.
Yes you are the Andrew I meant!
> ObDisclaimer: I work for the Internet Society, and I'm responding with 
> that hat on, but this does not represent an Internet Society position 
> (i.e. I haven't consulted with the Board about this). I'm writing from 
> my personal address out of convenience.
>
>> problem.  E.g. a substantial portion of the folk that end up as ADs 
>> or IAB or other leadership are funded as part of their employment 
>> with those companies.   It might actually be a useful exercise to 
>> look at the input representations we're getting from those companies 
>> and see if perhaps they can work internally to help broaden the 
>> diversity of the set of people they send to the IETF.
>
> Is the idea that we talk to companies that are working in the IETF and 
> ask them about their employee diversity? 

Nope, the idea is "We have a diversity problem, and we're hoping you can 
help.  Could you take a look at the set of people you send to the IETF 
and see if there's anything you can do to increase the diversity of that 
set of people over the long term to ideally make it more closely 
resemble your internal demographics?"

> I confess that I am sceptical about the degree to which such an 
> approach would be received positively. 

Put the way you put it, I would agree.  But put the way I put it, they 
might find it an interesting challenge and supportive of their own 
corporate culture.  I'd probably try and engage with the diversity 
officer if such a position exists.

> less confrontational (not to say occasionally rude and nasty).  It 
> also seems to me that a set of tools that encourage more people to 
> contribute could help.  For people under a certain age, for instance, 
> mailing lists are primarily a relic of another age.  The idea that the 
> IETF is so special that it needs a completely bespoke set of tools 
> that interoperate with nothing else is also more than a little hostile 
> to newcomers.  These strike me as things the community could work on 
> without going to those who subsidize free IETF labour and suggesting 
> that maybe their employee pool isn't diverse enough.

All organizations have their own culture and their own norms. It's a 
fact.  As the IETF is some 35+ years old, we have a culture with both a 
lot of history and a lot of inertia.   It will change slowly, and it 
will tend to approach the recent norms of the most active 
participants.   That's not about bespoke tools - it's just the way 
things are.

And - please avoid the somewhat insulting inferences of what I meant - 
you could have avoided them in both places in this response by simply 
asking for clarification.

> I think it is up to the community as to whether it wants to pay its ADs

That's not what I said and I think you know that.  What I noted was 
there were a number of very capable people in the IETF who lack the 
support to take on a role that's not directly related to putting food on 
their tables.  Providing one additional possible resource for those folk 
to get an offer of support is not "paying its AD's".

In this last go around, I became aware that a well-qualified candidate 
had decided not to stand due to a lack of sufficient financial support.  
I put out some feelers and was able to find a possible source of support 
and connected them with the candidate.   I'm aware of a number of sole 
consultants that over the years have been able to find sources of 
support for the work of the IETF (in the general vs the normal "please 
help us standardize 'foo'") and all I'm suggesting is to possibly help 
with that process.

> ; I suspect such a move would be controversial, but I will express no 
> opinion as to whether it's a good idea.  I think, however, that the 
> IETF would possibly have the resources to undertake that if it is 
> successful in its fundraising: the Internet Society has agreed to 
> match funds up to a ceiling (see the announcement from last year), so 
> the IETF would appear to have this option without the Internet Society 
> undertaking such fundraising on behalf of the IETF.  I believe also 
> that, in light of the control of the IETF endowment, it would be at 
> least confusing if the Internet Society undertook such fundraising now.
>
I suggested your participation as the person who selects the Nomcom 
chair, not for any desire to have the ISOC be funding AD and IAB positions.

Later, Mike

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:01:55 +0000

Right, that was my point.  I guess I was too terse, and didn't list the steps I went through.

>      b) the announcements should, at this point, list the nominees.

One problem is that such a message would be static, compared to the website.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:06:04 -0500

Hi,

(Same disclaimer, speaking for myself)

>And - please avoid the somewhat insulting inferences of what I meant - 

I am sorry for the offense I apparently caused.

>chair, not for any desire to have the ISOC be funding AD and IAB 

I see.  I think it would be inappropriate for the person who selects the nomcom chair to be involved in activities that attempt to adjust what the nomcom evaluates, because it might appear to be an attempt to put a finger on the scale.  So I think it would not be advisable for me to be involved in this activity.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:08:54 +0000

Not having metrics, I am not so sure this is true.  I look at the systers list and group photos that are shown at every newcomer's presentation, for example.

>    And one of the axes - from my POV - is small vs large organizations. 

I completely agree.

One idea about addressing this is that we change the AD job to not be so full-time.  Or add more AD's.  Lots of choices here.  Terry Manderson's email, https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/S4xr9MR3usleQ8nCMTACnJ6UWkU/, is inspiring.

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:46:54 -0500

> One idea about addressing this is that we change the AD job to not be so full-time.  Or add more AD's.  Lots of choices here.  Terry Manderson's email, https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/S4…
Hi Rich - I actually did the math a long while back (maybe 8 years?), 
and at one time the leadership was about 15% over-represented by women 
based on a rough population analysis of the apparent proportion of 
genders (by name) for both the attendee list and the list of WG chairs - 
e.g. my best guess at the IETF demographics.

Given that the general set of adults is about 1/2 female, and given that 
the set of female attendees appears to be about 10-20% of the IETF set 
of attendees, I would have actually thought the statement "Nomcom 
selections .... when compared to the general set of adults ... don't 
[mirror the distribution within that set]" would be self-evidently true.

Mike

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:57:34 -0500

> I would appreciate knowing why you think so.

The words "special" and "bespoke" are part of why - you're taking an 
essentially arbitrary position in favor of certain tools and against 
other tools, without any  apparent support for your position other than 
bias, and you claim to be making that argument in favor of diversity.

> "Easier" is surely a matter of where one stands.  The point that I was 
> making (and the only point I was trying to make) is that, if you want 
> a more-diverse set of people to join, making the barriers to 
> engagement as high as the IETF does through tools that are really 
> foreign to a lot of people will not help with that.  Like github or 
> not (I do not), it is a tool that is familiar to a lot of people, and 
> the more one adapts workflow to things that are familiar to a lot of 
> people the more likely one is to attract such people.  That's the 
> network effect in operation, which is of course something that 
> everyone who works in the IETF is familiar with.

Surely you've noticed that there's a lot of pushback against github from 
people who aren't familiar with it and/or who don't think it's an 
effective tool?   If you bias IETF toward github users you're biasing it 
against people who prefer other tools or other ways of working.   IMO 
that kind of bias doesn't serve a consensus-making organization that's 
trying to be open to participation by anyone.

I'm also having a little trouble wrapping my head around that argument 
because of my own experience.   For the last 13 years I've worked for 
dozens of different clients, and each one came with its own 
constraints.  I've had clients that insisted that I use Word and Excel 
and some other abysmal MS drawing tool that I don't recall at the 
moment.   I've had other clients insisting that I use Jira and Bitbucket 
which really make work much more difficult than it needs to be.   I've 
had clients insisting that I use Eclipse IDE or some vendor-specific 
variant of that even when it constantly broke down, lost code, and 
required reinstallation.   I've had one client insisting that I use a 
Windows box on my desk for a year until I finally got them to let me use 
Linux, after which my productivity doubled.   One of my current nemeses 
is Slack, which is so much worse than email that it's criminal.    Some 
of these tools are better than others, but all of them are either 
impediments to getting work done, or they come with baggage that creates 
impediments to getting work done (like security holes big enough to 
drive aircraft carriers through).

But all of these for me were simply business decisions.   I could take 
the gig and the money that went with it, or not.   Most of my work these 
days is from home, and I absolutely will not run Windows on bare metal 
on my home network.  But for enough money I can set up a VM and run it 
there.  Or I can buy a used X86 box, set up a completely isolated 
network with its own Internet connection, and run it there.    If I'm 
being paid enough money I can buy licenses for the software I'm required 
to use, or I can set up separate systems on separate networks so that 
using whatever web site is hopefully only a minimal threat to my 
privacy, security, or whatever.    It's just business.  I try to not 
burden my clients with it, and I don't lose a lot of sleep over it.

(Actually there are two simple questions:  (1) Would I be making enough 
money for long enough to put up with this particular set of BS 
constraints or not?  and (2): Is life too short to be wasting my time 
beating my head against the particular walls that this client insists 
on?   The older I get, the more the latter question becomes relevant, 
and the more often the answer is "no".)

 From my perspective, whether to use IETF's "bespoke" tools involves 
approximately the same kind of questions.   From my 30 years experience 
in IETF I can state with tremendous confidence that the "bespoke" tools 
are generally MUCH better than the ones that existed before.   
(Otherwise they wouldn't have been either developed or adopted.)   From 
my experience with various tools used by several industry clients I can 
state with a fair amount of confidence that the "bespoke" tools are 
generally better than what most of the industry is using, but I can't be 
certain that there's absolutely nothing better out there for every use 
case.  What I can say confidently is that there's no good reason to 
exclude "bespoke" tools merely because they are "bespoke".

(Email, BTW, is not a "bespoke" tool; it's a very mature tool that is 
informed by 50+ years of experience.  It's very widely used in 
industry.   It's also MUCH better than the vast majority of other 
messaging systems in use today, especially if you look at the full 
spectrum of uses.  It has tremendous portability, accessibility, 
robustness and a wide variety of use cases.   And since email basically 
consists of protocols that IETF maintains, to the extent that email 
isn't up to snuff we have a lot of power - and responsibility - to 
improve it.)

***

Maybe there's another factor here, which is the learning curve for a new 
tool versus the amount of time one expects to participate in IETF.   
People prefer to use the tools to which they are accustomed.    Learning 
a new tool for some particular purpose takes time, and it's hard to 
justify that time when one already knows how to use an existing tool for 
that purpose. Also, once you become an expert in one tool, you'll 
probably never be expert level in another tool that does more-or-less 
the same thing.

But it's even harder for someone to justify the investment to learn new 
tools required by a new client, or similarly by IETF, if someone sees 
that activity as only a temporary diversion (or nuisance?) from what 
they want to be doing.   It used to be that IETF attracted long-term 
participants; this seems less true today because so much current IETF 
work is niche work.  I'm not saying that this is inherently bad or good; 
IETF clearly needs both long-term participants and people working on 
protocols for niche cases.

I suspect that the discussions of "bespoke" tools would be more 
productive if we were talking about specific tools, because each has its 
own costs and benefits and its own learning curve.   If new IETF 
participants are cursing xml2rfc, I'm probably right there with them.  
But most of our bespoke tools seem relatively easy to use.   Rather than 
attack "bespoke" tools in general, maybe look at each tool and see if it 
really fits us well?

Beyond that, IMO we need to maximize the extent to which people can use 
their preferred tools without requiring others to do so. And that means 
defining our interfaces around standards

***

BTW, I don't think the biggest barriers to participation in IETF are the 
bespoke tools, though I can understand the reluctance of newcomers to 
use some of them.   I don't even think the biggest barriers are dealing 
with different peoples' personalities and different ideas of 
"professionalism", partly because tolerance of different cultures and 
different points of view is essential for IETF's work anyway.   The 
biggest barriers to me appear to be excessive bureaucracy (it's really 
hard to keep track of which group, committee, organization or supporting 
organization does what), and (related to this) the abysmally poor 
organization of information of IETF's web site and other sources of 
information (e.g. RFCs, IESG statements, etc.) about how IETF works.

Keith

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 23:07:39 +0000

Well, nice to have historical data, but not very relevant to today given that the IETF attendance churn is pretty high.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:11:29 -0500

On 1/25/21 5:08 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:

> One idea about addressing this is that we change the AD job to not be so full-time.  Or add more AD's.

IESG is not embarrassingly parallel - adding more processing elements 
(ADs) creates more overhead for everyone.    For that and other reasons, 
neither IESG nor IETF as a whole scales very well.

At a time when there was much more participation in IETF than there is 
now, I looked at what it would take to make IETF scale better, and 
didn't find any good answers.   If we could reliably separate the issues 
that require broad consensus from those which don't, that might 
help.     If we could reliably distinguish between issues that IETF 
needs to take on from those that don't, without making it really easy 
for competing organizations to circumvent IETF on the important issues, 
that might help.

But these are some of the problems for which the obvious solutions have 
a lot of potential to create worse problems.   (The cause of problems is 
solutions, after all.)   That doesn't mean don't look for solutions.   
It does mean don't presume that a "new" approach is better simply 
because it's new or different, and the problems therefore aren't as evident.

Keith

---

From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:15:13 -0800

Hi Keith,

One point of clarification...

> drive aircraft carriers through).

Do you intend these assessments of better/worse for getting work done to be
scoped solely to you and your usage of them, or as global assertions that
should apply to all potential users of those tools?

Which, perhaps, gets into your later point (that I trimmed, whoops) about
having standard interfaces as much as possible and letting people use their
own preferred tools to access them.

Thanks,

Ben

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:24:32 -0500

> should apply to all potential users of those tools?

More the former than the latter.   If I put myself in a position of 
making decisions for a company with large numbers of employees as to 
which tools to use, I find that it's a real dilemma.   I can come up 
with good reasons to use almost any of these tools in specific cases, 
and at least defensible reasons for using some of these tools 
company-wide.   (Though I often find that the people making these 
choices aren't aware of how much trouble they're creating for some of 
their employees who have to use the tools.) What I think it says is that 
the current set of tools available to industry basically suck, and part 
of the reason that they suck is that many of them try to force the users 
into particular ecosystems that paint their customers into corners and 
force them to use poor tools along with the good ones.

IETF is in a slightly different position in that our worker bees choose 
us rather than the other way around, and IETF by its very nature needs 
to be open to broad participation.   And what I think that implies is 
trying to let _everyone_ use their preferred tools as much as is 
feasible, even if we need some "bespoke" tools to facilitate that happening.

Yes.

Keith

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 21:24:05 -0300

Hi, Michael,

On 25/1/21 16:06, Michael StJohns wrote:
> and ask them to help us with our candidate diversity problem. 

Wouldn't "drag in the appropriate people from some of the larger 
companies" actually be the wrong first step?

Those larger companies usually have the means for financial support, 
operating in a specific set of countries, and have a specific level of 
influence in the IETF. (many of these things are probably quite related 
with the diversity problem).

In that light, why not poll:
* folks from such large companies
* folks from universities
* independent consultants.

And for all of the above items, have folks from each of the different 
regions and, to the extent that's possible, from multiple genders.

(Still not perfect, but certainly a more diverse sample to tackle the 
problem of diversity -- otherwise it might result in micro-diversity)

> independent of their company.

Wouldn't the Internet Society be an obvious fit for this one?

Thanks!

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

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 23:52:23 -0300

On 25/1/21 18:35, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> making (and the only point I was trying to make) is that, if you want a 
> more-diverse set of people to join, making the barriers to engagement as 
> high as the IETF does through tools that are really foreign to a lot of 
> people will not help with that. 

As someone who is part of under-representing community (South America, 
on the "geography" axis),  I'd say that tooling is the least of the 
barriers when it comes to joining the IETF.

If I was asked about it, I'd say that IMHO the main barriers are (in no 
specific order):

1) Language

This one has not been an issue for myself, but I'm aware it *is* an 
issue for folks from our region (where most of us speak Spanish, or 
Portuguese). Usually, folks with the required technical skills for 
participating in the IETF won't have a lot of issues with written 
English. However, oral English can be quite a challenge -- particularly 
given the diversity of accents, and even more if/when folks use idioms, 
talk extremely fast, or in a way that's not very clear to "English as 
second language" participants.

2) Financial support

It is virtually impossible in our region to get support to attend IETF 
meetings. Among other reasons, because most organizations do not see an 
obvious "return of investment" from such participation. When you add on 
top of that that a lot of people make less than 1K USD/month, that gives 
you an idea of the extent to which organizations might fund their 
employees, or participants would be able to pay from their own pockets.

3) ROI for participants

Quite related to #2 above is that the kind of skills that you'd develope 
while participating in the IETF are not something that you could easily 
market in this region to make a living. Let me be quite blunt: a CCNA 
certification is way more likely to help you in the job market than e.g. 
having authored an RFC (whatever the topic or the quality of the RFC).

The past Internet Society's "IETF Fellowship" was of help -- however, I 
think there were a number of flaws in its implementation that 
essentially cause it to have a rather marginal effect. -- Although I'd 
have rather fixed the flaws than discontinued the program.

That said, other organizations from the region should probably do their 
bit here. Some "support" IETF participation, but do not tackle any of 
the obstacles I'm referring to in this email.

4) Participation from small organizations

While this varies a lot from one wg to another (and also depending on 
the specific topic in question) my impression is that while all folks 
participate as individuals, at times whether you are part of a large 
organization makes a big difference when it comes to your IETF 
experience. This can be a very discouraging factor for newcomers from 
the region (if not for all folks from the region, whether newcomers or 
not). In theory, this issue doesn't exist. In practice, it probably does.

5) Technical skills

As a result of #2-#4 above, it's not very usual for university program's 
or other courses to, say, fail to include networking fundamentals (e.g., 
ala Radia Perlman's "Interconnections...", John Day's "Patterns in 
Network Architecture..", etc.). For the most part, such programs cover 
some IETF standards as the "state of the art in networking" -- and I'd 
say that if your background is that what we currently have is the best 
we could possibly achieve (rather than realizing that at least a part of 
it has to do with historical events and electro-politics), it's harder 
to approach the topic in a way that you can help improve things.

Notes:

* It's probably obvious and implied, but, nevertheless: I haven't been 
"elected" to "speak for the region". However, I've actively participated 
from South America for quite a while, and also speak regularly with the 
few other folks that participate from the region.

* Regarding tools:  Some, such as xml2rfc, are a kind of necessary evil 
(I edited my first document directly as TXT, and wouldn't do that again 
:-) ), and can be dealt with quite easily via the sample xml skeletons 
you'll see around.  Others, such as github, can at times get in the way 
of editing a document -- and I believe should be optional to authors 
(use them if you'll find them of help... but otherwise use whatever ools 
and workflow works best for you).

Just my two cents.

Thanks,

---

From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:39:23 -0800

Hi Fernando,

> companies" actually be the wrong first step?

I think that "the appropriate people" was meant to refer to the managers
that approve travel+time to attend/contribute to the IETF, not the people
actually doing the contributing.  So the conversation might go something
like "hi, we see you send a lot of smart people to the IETF; thank you!
However, the IETF is looking at its diversity numbers, and it seems that
the distribution of people you send to the IETF is different from your
overall distribution of staff.  Can you think of ways to make the
distribution of people you send to IETF more closely match your overall
staff distribtion, so that the IETF in turn can more closely match the
overall population?"

> regions and, to the extent that's possible, from multiple genders.

Which is, of course, not to say that these proposals are bad, just that I
don't think they relate to the intended proposal.

-Ben

---

From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 08:22:22 +1300

> On 26/01/2021, at 7:39 PM, Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

That is exactly how I would do it.

Jay

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked]

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:50:10 -0500

On 1/26/2021 2:22 PM, Jay Daley wrote:
>
>
>> On 26/01/2021, at 7:39 PM, Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked] 
>> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>

Actually, I'd probably approach C or S suite folk at the larger 
companies for the same reason I didn't suggest approaching the smaller 
companies:  Basically, if you've got a company population of 5-10K or 
more and are sending 20-30 people, there's a good chance that if asked 
nicely, we might get a few others from that company of different 
demographics, especially if the C or S folk influence company policy.   
Approaching a manager or even a manager of managers is unlikely to 
result in many additions or changes as they're probably already sending 
what they can afford (budget and time wise) based on the goals of their 
part of the organization.  Ditto for smaller companies.

I like the restatement Ben made above.

Mike

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:59:23 -0500

On 1/25/2021 5:06 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> I see.  I think it would be inappropriate for the person who selects 
> the nomcom chair to be involved in activities that attempt to adjust 
> what the nomcom evaluates, because it might appear to be an attempt to 
> put a finger on the scale.  So I think it would not be advisable for 
> me to be involved in this activity.
>

I don't actually see why it would be inappropriate.  What we're trying 
to do is affect the input of the set of IETF participants which will 
eventually - say in 3-5 years - affect the input set of WG chairs and 
authors - which will eventually - say in another 3-5 years affect the 
input set of candidates for the Nomcom.   I would say that you'd have to 
weigh a lot more than you do now to be able to put a finger on the 
scales  and affect something 6-10 years out in a manner that's not in 
the noise.

Another point is that the IETF is more about getting good technical 
stuff out, whereas the ISOC is all about "... promot[ing] the open 
development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all 
people throughout the world".  Those have some points of intersection, 
but as has been pointed out - the IETF tends to be a bit parochial.  
Having the ISOC involved in supporting an IETF diversification effort 
seems like a no brainer.

But it may be the case you're the wrong position at ISOC to be involved 
and that someone else might be a better choice - worth a discussion.

Later, Mike

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:05:15 -0500

> demographics, especially if the C or S folk influence company policy.

While I think the above reasoning is sound as far as it goes, IMO the 
last thing IETF needs is even heavier participation from Big 
Companies.   That doesn't increase diversity, it increases oligarchy.

Keith

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:52:52 -0300

Hi, Ben,

On 26/1/21 03:39, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
[....]
> actually doing the contributing. 

But the end-result is the same: a biased sample: probably 30-40 
organizations from, say, 15 countries.

Although.., my comments were probably like putting the cart before the 
horse: The first question should be: what kind of diversity do you 
expect to achieve/improve?  Gender diversity from the same set of 
organizations and countries?

And, whatever the answer, why one or two particular axis of diversity 
are the (only) ones that matter?

> So the conversation might go something

I might be wrong, but... I guess that whether that's part of how each 
manager manages their own people -- i.e., from their pov, they send what 
their consider the best people for the job based on availability, time 
and funding constraints, etc..  But, of course, I might be wrong.

Thanks,

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 17:24:58 -0300

Hi, Michael,

> On 1/25/2021 5:06 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
[...]
> but as has been pointed out - the IETF tends to be a bit parochial.  

I will not challenge that. But I'd say that the inclusiveness problem 
has a lot to do with organizations claiming that the topic is not and 
must not be part of their agenda. And the problem is not fixed by simply 
getting a more diverse management, but rather by solving structural 
problems (if any).

I'd also note that most of the times I've "lurked" this list, many of 
the most heated debates didn't have a lot to do with getting good 
technical stuff out.

Consider, for example, the somewhat recent thread about "inclusive 
language", where most of the debate was triggered by a movement about a 
racism problem in one specific country, that many other countries  don't 
even experience. And, indeed, most of the discussion was around, again, 
one particular of form of "inclusive language", so to speak. (i.e., 
mostly only those terms relevant to such movement).

Additionally, we have (had?) a diversity list, and we *are* having a 
discussion on diversity. So, in this respect, "diversity" does seem to 
be part of the IETF agenda.

I'd note that I support the underlying causes (e.g. blm), and appreciate 
many of these discussions and associated efforts. I also believe that 
they have been pursued in good faith.

However, if the IETF is going to address the diversity issue, it should 
probably seriously consider many axis, rather than cherry-pick a few of 
them that seems relevant to some of its participants -- particularly 
when we start from the assumption that the community is not very diverse 
in the first place.

Just my two cents.

Thanks,

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 21:30:17 +0000

>    Finally, my own personal perspective is that re-appointment should be largely pro forma unless there is tangible evidence of someone being a poor fit for the role or otherwise struggling or failing to do their job in the 1st term.

I understand this, and most comments and discussions I've seen mentions this.

A downside of this is that the true number of openings in any given year is half of what it appears to be as the practical term of office is chosen, and then re-chosen two years later.  I would expect that it's less than half because people who might be interested lose their enthusiasm and don't try. Further, given the job-changing frequency in our industry, it can be hard to sustain interest, and management approval, over multiple years. One place it's easier is, of course, big companies.

It's all tangled up, everything's a trade-off.  Every area has a directorate now. Can an AD job be learned in under a year?

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:35:35 -0700

On 1/27/21 2:30 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:

> Can an AD job be learned in under a year?

In my experience it takes 6-12 months.

Peter

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 19:17:31 -0300

On 22/1/21 12:22, Livingood, Jason wrote:
[...]
> Finally, my own personal perspective is that re-appointment should be largely pro forma unless there is tangible evidence of someone being a poor fit for the role or otherwise struggling or failing…

IMHO, I disagree. Some of the reasons are that the possible obvious 
outcome for this would be:

1) Most likely you'll get fewer candidates for roles where's the 
possibility of re-appointment, particularly if/when not being appointed 
can be seen by their managers as somebody else being better qualified 
for the role.

And, if you nominate and go through the burden of being a candidate, is 
it because you did it knowing that you would not be selected? Or is it 
"rumor has it that AD X has done a terrible job"?

2) Picking the best candidate now implicitly turns into firing the folk 
currently occupying the seat, rather than picking the best candidate. 
Which at the end of the day means results in the nomcom having to 
explain themselves how they rate this and that action (i.e., is there 
enough of a reason to fire the incumbent? Is there an established 
criteria for that?). Additionally, it publicly sends a message about the 
folk not being re-appointed that is not necessarily the message the 
nomcom is trying to convey ("We picked this one because he/she is really 
the best candidate" does not need to imply "Yeah, we fired the current 
AD because he/she was really bad")

Just my two cents,

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 19:25:42 -0300

On 25/1/21 12:37, Livingood, Jason wrote:
[...]
 > This in mapping all the upstream inputs we can then see what we can do
 > at each of those places to attract & sustain greater diversity.

What, specifically, do you mean by diversity?
And where would you like to see it?

These two links provides data for two (of the multiple) axis that 
represent diversity:

* https://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/d-countrydistr.html
* https://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/companydistr.html

For some reason, these two axis are not considered when discussing 
diversity. Or, to be put in a different way, diversity seems to be 
discussed only as long as those two axis remain unaffected.

Just my two cents,

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 23:30:28 +0000

>    For some reason, these two axis [country and company] are not considered when discussing 

I think you've been missing a big part of the conversation.

Almost every time we talk about meeting times, the US conversation comes up.

Every time we talk about time required to take a leadership (mainly IESG) position, the time commitment and how it biases toward big companies comes up.

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 21:19:40 -0300

> I think you've been missing a big part of the conversation.

Possibly.

> Every time we talk about time required to take a leadership (mainly IESG) position, the time commitment and how it biases toward big companies comes up.

Are you arguing that geographic and company diversity is part of the 
diversity the IETF is trying to address?

Thanks,

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 02:40:52 +0000

I think diversity across several axis is being discussed.  I would not say anything is being addressed yet.

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 23:48:08 -0300

> I think diversity across several axis is being discussed.  I would not say anything is being addressed yet.

Namely, which axis?

---

From: Terry Manderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:48:18 +1000

I feel like that the IETF spends a lot of time posturing about what it can, or can not do, to address diversity. 

Perhaps a pragmatic approach (since we are engineers) might be to first survey the (apologies for the offence) the diverse and minority participants and ask them what their barriers were to contributing to the IETF and what their barriers, restrictions, or reluctance might be to seeking an IETF leadership role.

The results of that might even form a problem statement.

Cheers,
Terry
--
Mobile device, don't expect grammar.

> On 28 Jan 2021, at 10:21 am, Fernando Gont <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Are you arguing that geographic and company diversity is part of the diversity the IETF is trying to address?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Fernando Gont
> SI6 Networks

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 01:10:16 -0300

> I feel like that the IETF spends a lot of time posturing about what it can, or can not do, to address diversity.

FWIW, I've askes the question of what kind of diversity (gender? race? 
company? geographic? all of them? ) is expected, because the answers to 
the problem (if any) probably depend a lot on which diversity axis you 
want to address.

And probably also even who you'd ask the questions.

> The results of that might even form a problem statement.

Agreed.

Cheers,

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 01:13:04 -0500

> Perhaps a pragmatic approach (since we are engineers) might be to first survey the (apologies for the offence) the diverse and minority participants and ask them what their barriers were to contrib…

Arrgh.   (to IETF in general) Please stop pigeonholing people; it only 
makes your prejudice more evident.

Ask EVERYONE what their barriers are and were to contributing to IETF.  
Let people label themselves if they wish but don't get in the business 
of deciding who is a "diverse" or "minority" participant.

Keith

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 09:22:26 +0100

Hi Terry,

> On 28 Jan 2021, at 04:48, Terry Manderson <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

+1

I think this is an excellent actionable idea.  I think we’ve done some of that in the past.  My suggestion is that we ask all IETF participants (and anyone else) with some demographics questions.  That way we can gain some perspective on who is impacted by what blocks and maybe even why.

Eliot

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 04:18:43 -0500

On 1/28/21 3:22 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

>  My suggestion is that we ask all IETF participants (and anyone else) 
> with some demographics questions.  That way we can gain some 
> perspective on who is impacted by what blocks and maybe even why.

If you give people a set of demographics questions, the questions you 
pick bias the responses you get.  I suspect it's more useful to ask 
everyone what they think are the barriers to their contributing or 
seeking leadership roles.  The answers probably won't cluster to fit 
into tidy graphs and might not confirm people's preconceptions, but 
they'll be more informative.

Keith

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:46:08 +0100

> On 28 Jan 2021, at 10:18, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> If you give people a set of demographics questions, the questions you pick bias the responses you get.  I suspect it's more useful to ask everyone what they think are the barriers to their contributing or seeking leadership roles.  The answers probably won't cluster to fit into tidy graphs and might not confirm people's preconceptions, but they'll be more informative.

Let’s take some examples:

One person says “there are no barriers.  I am comfortable participating as is.”  Another person says, “The meetings are never convenient for me to attend.”  This tells us nothing useful, even in aggregate.  But if we ask an additional question, “Where do you reside?”  And the people answering the former are primarily in the US and Europe, and the people answering the latter are in the Southern Hemisphere, then we know we have a problem with not serving the needs of people in the Southern Hemisphere.

If we ask the question, “Do you feel welcomed at the IETF?”  and some people answer “yes” and some people answer “no”, again, this tells us nothing.  But if the people who say “yes” are primarily white men from Europe and North America and the people who say “no” are everyone else, we clearly have a broad problem.  But perhaps it’s more nuanced.  Maybe it’s a language problem.  Maybe the mix in demographics doesn’t indicate clean groupings.

All of this is possible, but all require establishing some demographics.  By the way, establishing a set of groupings now doesn’t mean we can’t learn about other groupings either in the process or later.

Eliot

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 11:29:27 +0000

On 28/01/2021 04:10, Fernando Gont wrote:
>> I feel like that the IETF spends a lot of time posturing about what it
>> can, or can not do, to address diversity.
>

Fernando

The IETF does have a policy about company diversity, as I pointed out at 
the start of the thread, and, as I said then, I think that this is the 
crucial one.  I believe it needs strengthening because the weaknesses in 
it represent a threat to the work of he IETF as being an International body.

Geography comes into it too, as, to me, a closely-related but not quite 
as important axis, the lack of which would again threaten the IETF.

If the IETF is not diverse along what might be termed the woke axes, 
then I do not see a threat there.

Tom Petch

>> Perhaps a pragmatic approach (since we are engineers) might be to
>> first survey the (apologies for the offence) the diverse and minority
>> participants and ask them what their barriers were to contributing to
>> the IETF and what their barriers, restrictions, or reluctance might be
>> to seeking an IETF leadership role.
>>

---

From: "Maisonneuve, Julien (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 14:34:55 +0000

Generally agree with Fernando, but I would like to focus on a different take : there is a danger to focus on "diversity" for its own sake, and people tend to hang their particular view of diversity there (race, gender, country, religion, sexual orientation...). Picking the "right" type of diversity will always create some form of bias, there will always be unhappy people and it's not clear we can find a "satisfactory" (set of) axis.
There is also a will to align the IETF's participation or IETF's management towards some form of broad "diversity", which brings a whole set of painful questions (should we align proportions with the world's population mix ? If not which subset ? why ?). Again not sure there is a "good" solution.
I don't think this is productive. 
I think we should focus instead on the goals we want to reach for IETF, and try to understand first what the problem is today in terms of obstacles to produce relevant standards for the world (PS, anyone ?). 
It should not be about people's communities or feelings, unless this brings something specific and related to IETF goals to the table.
Julien (probably stepping in a hornet nest).
Obligatory disclaimer: Not related to my employer's views. Also as an European, alien to many North-American disputes and unwilling to engage in them.

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Fernando Gont
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 5:10 AM
To: Terry Manderson <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]; Livingood, Jason <Jason_Livingood=[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

FWIW, I've askes the question of what kind of diversity (gender? race? 
company? geographic? all of them? ) is expected, because the answers to the problem (if any) probably depend a lot on which diversity axis you want to address.

Agreed.

Cheers,

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 12:23:47 -0300

On 28/1/21 11:34, Maisonneuve, Julien (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay) wrote:
> Generally agree with Fernando, but I would like to focus on a 
> different take : there is a danger to focus on "diversity" for its 
> own sake, and people tend to hang their particular view of diversity 
> there (race, gender, country, religion, sexual orientation...).

Indeed. That's why I've asked what, specifically, people mean when they
talk about "diversity".

[...]
> If not which subset ? why ?). Again not
> sure there is a "good" solution. I don't think this is productive. I
> think we should focus instead on the goals we want to reach for IETF,
> and try to understand first what the problem is today in terms of 
> obstacles to produce relevant standards for the world (PS, anyone ?).
> It should not be about people's communities or feelings, unless this
> brings something specific and related to IETF goals to the table.

For the most part, my argument has been that if there's going to be an 
effort about diversity, then, given that the IETF is a global 
organization, the approach to the topic should also be from a global 
perspective. And if for some reason that's not an interesting project to 
pursue, it would be better to simply acknowledge that upfront, and move on.

FWIW, I would hope for some version of the former.  But the later is 
probably still better than pretending that one is addressing a broad and 
complex issue, when that's not the case. (I also think that you only 
really address the problem when you tackle the underlying issues -- as 
opposed to simply focus on ticking boxes (like quotas)).

Just my two cents,

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:13:44 +0000

> In my experience it takes 6-12 months.
I concur. It takes about 9-12 months to get comfortable with doing the job.

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 20:14:33 -0800

Hi Rich, Adrian,
At 11:14 AM 25-01-2021, Salz, Rich wrote:
>I looked at the 2020 and 2019 candidates, neither were 
>homogeneous.  (I could not look earlier as the website just says 
>"closed" and I couldn't think of an easy mail archive search query 
>to find the list of names.)  There was diversity, even if it didn't 
>really show up in the selections.

Whether the "input" lists is diverse or not depends on one's view of 
what is described as the "community".  There will likely be a change 
in future as Brian and Stephen moved forward some changes to 
"eligibility" which were shot down when I tried that many years ago.

The persons on the outside did not express their views on the 
topic.  One of the expectations for an IESG member [1] is that he/she 
should "nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the 
future".  I doubt that the expectation was fulfilled or else this 
thread would not exist.

Some of the selections were multi-term selections.  One of the 
drawbacks of such selections is that it fosters  a culture in which 
the decision-makers stick to policies even if those policies are working badly.

>which might suggest not announcing any names until nominations close.

Those issues were discussed as part of the "open secret" list of 
nominees discussion.  Some nominees publicly announced that they were 
putting their name prior to that discussion.

There could be a perception that one has to fit a profile to be a 
viable candidate for selection, e.g. employed by one of the companies 
which usually field nominees.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. There is a tendency for a nominating process discussion to be 
focused on IESG selections even though there is a significant number 
of positions which require other expertise.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2021 14:25:30 -0500

On 1/28/21 4:46 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

>> On 28 Jan 2021, at 10:18, Keith Moore <[email-masked] 
>> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
> One person says “there are no barriers.  I am comfortable 
> participating as is.”  Another person says, “The meetings are never 
> convenient for me to attend.”  This tells us nothing useful, even in 
> aggregate.  But if we ask an additional question, “Where do you 
> reside?”  And the people answering the former are primarily in the US 
> and Europe, and the people answering the latter are in the Southern 
> Hemisphere, then we know we have a problem with not serving the needs 
> of people in the Southern Hemisphere.
>
> If we ask the question, “Do you feel welcomed at the IETF?”  and some 
> people answer “yes” and some people answer “no”, again, this tells us 
> nothing.  But if the people who say “yes” are primarily white men from 
> Europe and North America and the people who say “no” are everyone 
> else, we clearly have a broad problem.  But perhaps it’s more nuanced. 
>  Maybe it’s a language problem.  Maybe the mix in demographics 
> *doesn’t* indicate clean groupings.
>
> All of this is possible, but all require establishing some 
> demographics.  By the way, establishing a set of groupings now doesn’t 
> mean we can’t learn about other groupings either in the process or later.

Of course it's necessary to carefully construct the questions to be 
asked if you want useful results.    So don't ask, for example, "Is it 
convenient for you to attend meetings?"  without also asking why.   Try 
to avoid inferring the reason why.   After all these questions are as 
much about perception as reality, because a perceived barrier to 
participation discourages participation.

The problem I consistently see with surveys of any kind is that they are 
constructed in such a way as to confirm the preconceptions of the party 
asking the questions, or to make that party look better than it might 
deserve.   If the questions asked are primarily or even significantly 
about "demographics" like geography, race, and gender, the survey will 
be sensitive to those variables.  But it will be insensitive to things 
which may be even more significant effects on diversity of IETF 
participation.

Keith

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2021 22:24:17 -0800

Hi Julien,
At 06:34 AM 28-01-2021, Maisonneuve, Julien (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay) wrote:
>Picking the "right" type of diversity will always create some form 
>of bias, there will always be unhappy people and it's not clear we 
>can find a "satisfactory" (set of) axis.

The following is from the IETF web site: "IETF standards are built on 
the combined engineering judgement of participants, including 
individuals from academia and network operators, router vendors and 
open source projects".   There are nomination committee appointments 
to entities where non-engineering expertise is sought, e.g. the IETF 
Administration LLC.  If the appointments, viewed as a whole, are 
undiverse, the organization would not look international.  I doubt 
that it would be possible to devise criteria which would be 
satisfactory to everyone.  It is usually left to the members of the 
nomination committee to decide whether to consider that aspect in 
making their selections/appointments.

I took a quick look at the current composition of the LLC.  A 
majority of its directors are from one region.  Are there people with 
the relevant expertise from other regions interested in volunteering 
for that position?  Why didn't they apply for the position?

The above is also applicable for Area Directors.

The previous diversity effort was focused on the male/female 
ratio.  It is unlikely that the outsourced effort to increase 
regional diversity was successful given the nomination committee 
appointments.  Diversity might be a difficult problem to address.  It 
is better to give up on addressing the diversity issue(s) instead of 
seeing meaningless statements from the IESG about it.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy