Subject: How to get diversity of nominees was Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

From: "STARK, BARBARA H" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:26:52 +0000

Since this conversation is happening, and I had a first row seat to all things NomCom this past year ...

I don't think the pool of nominee diversity reflected the diversity of the set of people who regularly attend meetings. In my NomCom Chair report at IETF 109, I specifically highlighted the big difference in "time zone" / geographic diversity that was made obvious to me by the time zone info Calendly gave me when nominees scheduled their interviews vs. available statistics regarding current-address-continent of meeting attendees.

IIRC, all the nominees were WG Chairs. This is generally considered an intermediary step towards the NomCom-appointed leadership positions. I strongly suspect (but don't feel incented to get real statistics) that the nominee pool diversity reasonably resembled WG Chair diversity, but that WG Chair diversity does not reflect attendee diversity. It may be useful to focus on how to increase WG Chair diversity. I actually think there are some rather simple-to-implement ideas that could move this in the "right" direction (where "right" => leadership diversity = regular attendee diversity).

Most organizations that have improved their diversity at various management layers have done so by instituting a policy that requires the "hiring boss" to interview a diverse candidate pool. In many cases, the organizations also had to implement policies that made it easy for people interested in a position to self-nominate (apply) for it, rather than allowing the "hiring boss" to choose the candidate(s) from among the people they like, hang out with, and are comfortable with (or recommendations from such people). I've noticed that WG Chair positions are rarely broadly advertised and that each AD seems to have their own method of figuring out who to interview for a Chair position. It might make it easier for ADs to interview a more representative (of regular attendees) set of people if available WG Chair positions were posted and people were allowed to ask to be interviewed (or nominated by a "friend") for the position. 

Another part of this, though, is the scarcity of open WG Chair positions. People mentioned that they don't want people hanging out in AD and IAB positions for many terms. But what about long-standing WGs where all the Chairs have been there for 10 or more years? Might it be useful to encourage a little more rotation of WG Chair positions?

Just some thoughts...
Barbara

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:49:40 -0500

STARK, BARBARA H <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > IIRC, all the nominees were WG Chairs. This is generally considered an

Thanks for highlighting this.
It has been my petpeeve since 2003.

    > Most organizations that have improved their diversity at various
    > management layers have done so by instituting a policy that requires
    > the "hiring boss" to interview a diverse candidate pool. In many cases,
    > the organizations also had to implement policies that made it easy for
    > people interested in a position to self-nominate (apply) for it, rather
    > than allowing the "hiring boss" to choose the candidate(s) from among
    > the people they like, hang out with, and are comfortable with (or
    > recommendations from such people). I've noticed that WG Chair positions
    > are rarely broadly advertised and that each AD seems to have their own
    > method of figuring out who to interview for a Chair position. It might
    > make it easier for ADs to interview a more representative (of regular
    > attendees) set of people if available WG Chair positions were posted
    > and people were allowed to ask to be interviewed (or nominated by a
    > "friend") for the position.

There are a couple of steps to being noticed such that you might be WG chair
eligible.  They are:
  1) being Document Shepherd.
  2) WG Secretary.

What I'd like to have is a list of people who would be willing to Document Shepherd.
They need to care about the work (and understand any controversy in it), so
it can't be just random, but at the same time, they can't be too intimately involved.

This is where I'd put the self-nominate spot.
I also agree that WG positions are not widely advertised.

    > Another part of this, though, is the scarcity of open WG Chair
    > positions. People mentioned that they don't want people hanging out in
    > AD and IAB positions for many terms. But what about long-standing WGs
    > where all the Chairs have been there for 10 or more years? Might it be
    > useful to encourage a little more rotation of WG Chair positions?

I strongly support this idea.
WG chairpersonship has become a bit of sinecure.

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

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:03:41 -0500

On 1/26/21 1:26 PM, STARK, BARBARA H wrote:

> IIRC, all the nominees were WG Chairs. This is generally considered an intermediary step towards the NomCom-appointed leadership positions. I strongly suspect (but don't feel incented to get real statistics) that the nominee pool diversity reasonably resembled WG Chair diversity, but that WG Chair diversity does not reflect attendee diversity.

If WG chairs tend to be people who have attended many in-person meetings 
and/or have actively participated in IETF for a few years, I wonder how 
much the diversity of WG chairs is affected by attendee churn which 
seems to be larger today than in the past. It's hardly surprising if ADs 
who appoint chairs want people experienced with IETF process (and 
consensus-based decision making in particular, since we rely on chairs 
to gauge consensus and sometimes to help build consensus within their 
WGs).  It would also not be surprising if participants would like to 
experience IETF before taking on the responsibility of chair.

So one thing I'm curious about is: how does IETF encourage more 
participants to be engaged in IETF in general, instead of only in the 
context of specific WGs?

Or to put it another way: how does IETF encourage more participation by 
people with broad and/or long-term interests in the Internet?

I wonder if the fee waivers can continue indefinitely even for in-person 
attendance, or if there can be fee reductions for f2f meetings.   Even 
if it's not feasible to reduce fees for everyone who cannot pay for 
in-person meetings, perhaps there could be reductions in fees from 
under-represented parts of the world? Perhaps other means of lowering 
the cost of attendance can be found?

Keith

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 11:11:22 -0800

Guilty as charged regarding having been in a working group chair capacity for a while. For the record, my co-chair was at one point my AD. One thing to think about in chairs - it is common to couple an experienced chair and “fresh meat” for training purposes.

A suggestion: it might be worthwhile to keep some form of nomination roll - if someone would like to become a chair, they sign up, and their colleagues can (in one way or another) say good things about them. Then when an AD is looking for a possibility, s/he can review the roll. I suspect that the biggest reason ADs choose folks they know is that they don’t necessarily have ways to expand their circle of friends. The most common timing for people to become chairs is probably at working group formation, although it’s not limited to that, and the chair is one of the proponents of the project. Another source of leaders is folks that post drafts. If a person posts periodically and becomes known as an intelligent person that is easy to work with, they become part of a pool to tap.

The comment about “big companies” holds water. I once worked for a smaller company, and was told that its employees read and commented on drafts, but didn’t venture further; the company tried to NOT employ leadership. I filed drafts anyway, and lo and behold the NM AD (Dave Crocker at the time) wanted to open a working group and needed a chair. But yes, larger companies sometimes see leadership positions as in their interest, and are willing to see employees take that step (may even include the possibility in job descriptions or internal training, or institute a corporate policy of promoting its people or hiring leadership). So anyone *can*, but larger companies have more resources to expend in that direction. I have mentioned this before, but I’ll mention it again: if you’re *expected* to show up at random meetings and workshops, funding can be an issue. The LLC can encourage non-big-company folks by having a funding mechanism for their travel expenses.

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 26, 2021, at 10:28 AM, STARK, BARBARA H <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

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From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:11:29 -0300

On 26/1/21 15:26, STARK, BARBARA H wrote:
> IIRC, all the nominees were WG Chairs. This is generally considered an intermediary step towards the NomCom-appointed leadership positions. I strongly suspect (but don't feel incented to get real statistics) that the nominee pool diversity reasonably resembled WG Chair diversity, but that WG Chair diversity does not reflect attendee diversity. It may be useful to focus on how to increase WG Chair diversity. 

e.g.: Have two/three chairs per wg. On of them is a "junior chair" that 
is being introduce to the role. Eventually the junior chair becomes one 
of the experienced chairs, and you have an empty set for a junior chair 
again. Or when they junior chair has become experienced, he leaves, and 
a new junior chair takes the seat?

> Another part of this, though, is the scarcity of open WG Chair positions. People mentioned that they don't want people hanging out in AD and IAB positions for many terms. But what about long-standi…

FWIW, I proposed exactly that ~5 years ago, on the "difersity" list 
(https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/diversity/p9-JnoVuuCgJdmn_hEtxgxdLpaE/):

---- cut here ----
Ones suggestion: Rotate chairs, as you rotate ADs. Have one experienced
chair, and say two fresh chairs. Eventually one of the "fresh" chairs
becomes the experienced one, and you keep refreshing them.

That way, each chair will have IETF management experience, and as a
result you get more possible candidates for running as ADs.

And obviously, don't just rotate the same set of folks over different
chairs. The goal should be to increase the opportunity window for all folks.
---- cut here ----

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

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From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:53:38 -0500

There is one easy tool that I think we should use more in appointing WG 
chairs.
ADs could publicly ask for volunteers.

I was very pleasantly surprised a number of years ago when I and another 
IAB member had to appoint a person to a position.  We knew who we 
wanted.  We decided we should put out a public call anyway.  And got a 
volunteer we had not thought of who was even better.

Yours,
Joel

PS: As mentioned by others, I think the practice of pairing experienced 
chairs with new chairs is both a good idea and very effective.

On 1/26/2021 2:03 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
>> intermediary step towards the NomCom-appointed leadership positions. I 
>> strongly suspect (but don't feel incented to get real statistics) that 
>> the nominee pool diversity reasonably resembled WG Chair diversity, 
>> but that WG Chair diversity does not reflect attendee diversity.
>

---

From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:59:46 -0800

> ADs could publicly ask for volunteers.

FWIW, I think we got about five responses to
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/saag/0mfa1LhPnox6MtzhG76N_kVTMsY/ .
Response rates for targetted calls to individual WG lists vary, though.
I agree that it's a helpful thing to do.

-Ben

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:50:55 -0800

Speaking for myself, if one wants to get more X in service, where X is a skin color, a gender, and ethnic background, an industry background, or whatever, the best way is to nominate them and get people to speak to the nominating committee in support. The next best way is to serve on the nominating committee. If someone has not served on the committee, not nominated anyone, and not commented on any nomination, they’re just complaining.

> On Jan 26, 2021, at 2:00 PM, Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 19:59:28 -0500

In line for clarity.
Joel

> Speaking for myself, if one wants to get more X in service, where X is a skin color, a gender, and ethnic background, an industry background, or whatever, the best way is to nominate them and get p…

One of the advantages of the public call for volunteers is that it 
allows folks to know about the opening before it is filled.  No, by 
itself it will not solve the problems.  But it enables many 
improvements.  I do know that there are some corner cases where ADs have 
had reasons for not making public calls.  But I think it is a good tool.

---

From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:12:35 +0100 (CET)

> Il 26/01/2021 19:26 STARK, BARBARA H <[email-masked]> ha scritto:
> 

I think that there is an implicit assumption underlying this, which is that the IETF leadership is meant to be made only by people who are very good and experienced at writing RFCs and shepherding the related process. 

I am not challenging that assumption, but of course that assumption will always restrict the leadership to a narrow set of professional profiles. 

On the other hand, the complaints about lack of diversity at the IETF have often been not just about the stats of its participants and leadership, but about its inability to consider the perspectives of stakeholder groups different than "senior engineers from the developed world".

However, the people who could be able to supply different perspectives are unlikely to have the attitude, the skills and the time necessary to follow a ten-year document author -> WG Chair -> AD path. These are people who participate in meetings and contribute comments and text here and there, but never go beyond that, no matter how many efforts you make, simply because they are not interested nor able to be good WG Chairs.

As I said, I am not necessarily challenging the idea that the leadership is to be made of great standards process managers; that kind of different perspectives could be achieved through other organizational elements (which however currently do not seem to exist). But if you are concerned about the lack of diversity in leadership, first of all you should be sure of what you want it for, and then design processes accordingly.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[email-masked] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 09:47:59 +0000

On 26/01/2021 19:11, Fred Baker wrote:
> Guilty as charged regarding having been in a working group chair capacity for a while. For the record, my co-chair was at one point my AD. One thing to think about in chairs - it is common to couple an experienced chair and “fresh meat” for training purposes

I am conflicted on this.  In general, I believe that all posts should be 
limited, to five years or less.  On the other hand, if I want to 
reference an exemplar of what a WG chair should be seen to do, then your 
chairmanship is high on the list and losing it would diminish the IETF.

On the other hand, I may see a WG chair in place for a long time and 
doing the job in a way that I believe damages the IETF and cannot 
understand why the ADs do not act.  Were we meeting in person, I would 
say more but that is not for e-mail.

One step forward would be to stop WG Chairs authoring I-D.  If they 
cannot get someone else to hold the pen, then there is insufficient 
support, perhaps insufficient leadership, in the IETF for the work to 
proceed IMHO.

 From my own experience of running things, sometimes the way forward is 
to create a hole, a space, not having a clear idea of what will fill 
that hole, and see what comes to fill it.

Tom Petch

> .

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:10:15 -0600

> I strongly support this idea.

+1

Also, I think that WGs lasting 10+ years should be sanctioned, why do we
need them?

Behcet

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 07:35:30 +1300

On 27-Jan-21 22:47, tom petch wrote:
...
> One step forward would be to stop WG Chairs authoring I-D. 

That would certainly have stopped me from ever being a WG Chair.

On 28-Jan-21 05:10, Behcet Sarikaya wrote:
...> Also, I think that WGs lasting 10+ years should be sanctioned, why do we need them?

For protocols needing continuous maintenance and/or operational enhancement.

    Brian

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 16:26:49 -0300

On 26/1/21 21:50, Fred Baker wrote:
> Speaking for myself, if one wants to get more X in service, where X
> is a skin color, a gender, and ethnic background, an industry
> background, or whatever, the best way is to nominate them and get
> people to speak to the nominating committee in support.

The problem is that nobody seems to define "X". And if they did, it
would probably be a rather narrow-minded definition.

Let me offer an analogy:

We're beef eaters, and on the weekends, we normally eat roasted ribs.
Sometimes we like to have a more diverse BBQ, and may add meat entrails
(I assume that's the English word for "entraña") or flank. Sometimes we
want even more diversity and add chicken, or pork. And when we get
super-crazy about diversity, we add lamb.

Now, do we have a diverse diet? -- A vegetarian might argue that we
don't. :-)

 > The next best way is to serve on the nominating committee. If someone
 > has not served on the committee, not nominated anyone, and not
 > commented on any nomination, they’re just complaining.

That's a bit like the system trying to fix itself.  For instance, in 
order to server the nominating comittee, you need to have attended a 
number of recent f2f meetings.

And if you're lucky to comply with that requirement, and lucky to be 
selected in the draw to be part of the nomcom, it seems that you also 
need to attend the subsequent in person meetings. I was, for instance, 
suggested to step down from my past nomcom position because I had not 
secured funding to attend an IETF meeting (IIRC, that was IETF banghok)

Thanks,

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 16:05:18 -0800

So voila! IPv4 has existed more than ten years, so we don’t need it any more... Also DNS, DHCP, TCP, Ethernet, SMTP - wow, that rule really clears the deck. And heck - even IETF chairs produce internet drafts.

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 27, 2021, at 10:35 AM, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 11:22:59 -0500

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:05 PM Fred Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> So voila! IPv4 has existed more than ten years, so we don’t need it any
> more... Also DNS, DHCP, TCP, Ethernet, SMTP - wow, that rule really clears
> the deck. And heck - even IETF chairs produce internet drafts.
>

Quite. This leads me to re-suggest a proposal I have made from time to time
which is that every area have a DISPATCH working group and every area also
have a maintenance group.

This has (sorta) happened in security with LAMPS. Faced with the need to
update cipher suites across the board, a new WG was formed which has been
tweaking every protocol in active use not in active development.

The objection generally raised is of course that this allows people to
'mess' with existing protocols adding features that shouldn't be there. But
that objection presupposes that the job of the IETF is to control
permission for permissionless innovation.

One of the reasons some WGs linger is that their function requires
continuous tweakage, GSSAPI/KITTEN being an example. Better to have one WG
with the purpose of lingering than four lingering past their sell-by.

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:49:29 -0600

> That would certainly have stopped me from ever being a WG Chair.
But you are not at this time, right?

> For protocols needing continuous maintenance and/or operational
Not all of them.

Behcet

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:47:28 -0500

Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > continuous tweakage, GSSAPI/KITTEN being an example. Better to have one
    > WG with the purpose of lingering than four lingering past their
    > sell-by.

Yes, but there is a cost to the participants of being on an "area
maintenance" WG when there are long threads that have nothing to do with the
protocols on which they are experts.
(It would be different if we used Usenet news readers, which I think you
would agree)

---

From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 14:05:36 -0500

With regard to maintenance, the two areas I am most active in each have 
enough maintenance that having one WG for all the maintenance (in each 
area) simply would not work.  IDR, LSR, and MPLS for Routing.  6man 
(which is even named as a maintenance group) and DHC (and probably even 
some of the others) in Internet.

Yes, the IETF used to have a policy against long lived working groups. 
We found it didn't work.

Yours,
Joel

On 1/28/2021 11:22 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:05 PM Fred Baker <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     So voila! IPv4 has existed more than ten years, so we don’t need it
>     any more... Also DNS, DHCP, TCP, Ethernet, SMTP - wow, that rule
>     really clears the deck. And heck - even IETF chairs produce internet
>     drafts.
> 
> 
> Quite. This leads me to re-suggest a proposal I have made from time to 
> time which is that every area have a DISPATCH working group and every 
> area also have a maintenance group.
> 
> update cipher suites across the board, a new WG was formed which has 
> been tweaking every protocol in active use not in active development.
> 
> 'mess' with existing protocols adding features that shouldn't be there. 
> But that objection presupposes that the job of the IETF is to control 
> WG with the purpose of lingering than four lingering past their sell-by.
> 
>

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 14:19:47 -0500

Michael Richardson <[email-masked]> wrote:
    >> continuous tweakage, GSSAPI/KITTEN being an example. Better to have
    >> one WG with the purpose of lingering than four lingering past their
    >> sell-by.

    > maintenance" WG when there are long threads that have nothing to do
    > with the protocols on which they are experts.  (It would be different
    > if we used Usenet news readers, which I think you would agree)

I thought about having one WG with multiple mailing lists, but my experience
is that chairs get overworked.

Having more chairs means more opportunities for diversity, so I am for having
more WGs that are often quiet.   Although even chairs bitrot on process.

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2021 17:33:16 +0000

> some of the others) in Internet.

More generally, the work of an organisation can be divided into project 
and process, and the IETF is no exception.  To the process category, I 
might add TCPM, netconf, netmod.  If a prococol is successful, then, 
almost by definition, you need a process WG for it.

You could wish for a WG Chair to cut their teeth on a project WG before 
moving on to the greater demands of a process one.

Tom Petch

>> This has (sorta) happened in security with LAMPS. Faced with the need
>> to update cipher suites across the board, a new WG was formed which
>> has been tweaking every protocol in active use not in active development.
>>
>> 'mess' with existing protocols adding features that shouldn't be
>> there. But that objection presupposes that the job of the IETF is to
>> control permission for permissionless innovation.
>>

---

From: Richard Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2021 18:18:24 +0000

>For protocols needing continuous maintenance and/or operational enhancement.

Would it make more sense if we have WGs operating in a roadmap or release-by-release way? 

When developing software/systems, it is a general practice to use the release concept, for example, both Cisco IOS and Juniper JunOS have been developed in a way of release by release. 

A WG would continue as long as needed provided that there be a release of enough work to do.

Thanks,

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2021 10:36 AM
To: tom petch <[email-masked]>; Fred Baker <[email-masked]>; STARK, BARBARA H <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: How to get diversity of nominees was Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

    Brian