--On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 06:53 -0400 Margaret Wasserman <m...@lilacglade.org> wrote:
>... > I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing > this information, just saying that it makes it hard to tell > whether our leadership is reasonably representative of the > community in some of these areas. > > Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important > to the IETF that are not on this list, like geographic > location, corporate affiliation and industry segment (vendor, > operator, researcher, etc.). Margaret, While I am very much in favor of a more diverse IETF population and leadership, the above, especially when combined with Martin Rex's later comment, is part of the reason why I see the problem as terribly difficult and not yielding easily to petitions, design teams, instructions to confirming bodies (particularly problematic as other discussions have shown), or good intentions. As a specific example, I think the IETF would be considerably strengthened by more diversity in corporate affiliations and industry segments as you suggest above. As with gender diversity, my impression is that we are getting more homogeneous rather than more diverse. One of the problems is time commitment and associated costs. For many corporations, most startups, and a significant fraction of actual individual participants, service in leadership positions is feasible only if those positions are really part-time and significant attention is paid to either cost containment or spreading marginal costs around the community. Yet the IESG (and, to a slightly lesser extent, the IAB) have tended to assign more and more work and responsibility to themselves, If we want more diversity along corporate, role, and related economic axes, we need (as others have pointed out) to shrink the jobs. In the IESG's case, that may require reducing the number of WGs we think we can operate in parallel. Unfortunately, there are many reasons to continue to _expand_ the jobs: on a point basis, it will always be easier to add tasks to existing leaders than to consider whether those tasks are really necessary, to consider sunsetting other tasks, or to organize and manage alternate ways to get them done. It also isn't clear that the community cares: I note that the recent effort to allow the IAB and IESG to appoint people other than the Chairs to serve on the IAOC/Trust, and an earlier one to separate the IAOC and the Trust, went exactly nowhere. On the other hand, if we are serious, I think it needs to be something that Nomcoms are committed (preferably without more rules) to enforce by asking candidates their positions on job-shrinking and by retiring incumbents who contribute to job-expansion. Those expansions are perhaps also influenced by the observation that, if the incumbents have the time and support for an expanded role, such expansion doesn't seem to be harmful. That is part of a classic example of why already-homogeneous organizations tend to become even more homogeneous, at leat in the absence of disruptive changes. best, john
