subject:"Re\: IETF Diversity"


On 18/06/13 21:08, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple 
people come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't 
consider it pontificating.





sorry, just point it out, sometimes you said it right, but that does not 
guarantee you are always right. to correct and make it clearer, when 
... made a statement, ... people came to thank  for past experience, no 
present tense please.


no further comment, since I actually appreciate what you said and the 
intention, as you described below.


-- Aaron

I do however consider your own response to be an example of the type 
of exclusionary behavior that I was talking about. Dismissing those 
concerns as 'pontificating' does not help matters. And you have no 
idea what actions I have taken to attempt to recruit people to get 
involved.


The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention 
of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list.





On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.im 
mailto:stpe...@stpeter.im wrote:


On 6/18/13 10:52 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 I am rather disappointed that there hasn't been any followup to the
 diversity discussion that took place at the plenary.

Speak for yourself. Some of us are taking concrete actions (e.g.,
recruiting people for document shepherd and WG chair roles) instead of
pontificating at the mic.

Peter

--
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/





--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Phillip Hallam-Baker

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Aaron Yi DING yd...@cs.helsinki.fi wrote:

  On 18/06/13 21:08, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

 When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple people
 come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't consider it
 pontificating.



 sorry, just point it out, sometimes you said it right, but that does not
 guarantee you are always right. to correct and make it clearer, when ...
 made a statement, ... people came to thank  for past experience, no
 present tense please.

 no further comment, since I actually appreciate what you said and the
 intention, as you described below.



It is hard to encourage, much easier to discourage. I thought Peter's
attempt at a slap down was completely out of line and demonstrates the
problem I am talking about here. Agenda denial is a strategy where to avoid
discussing the topic that you know you have a weak case you suggest a
change of topic.

There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain control
in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment so of
course he sees no structural problem.

What I suggested is that the status quo is going to lead to applications
area work moving to forums outside the IETF. The Jabber folk have already
done this with the XMPP foundation.


I have the greatest of respect for Vint Cerf's technical capabilities but
he consistently failed to establish open and transparent governance
mechanisms.


-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Dave Cridland

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:





There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the
IETF constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to
maintain control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF
establishment so of course he sees no structural problem.

PSA's been an AD, yes, but:







What I suggested is that the status quo is going to lead to
applications area work moving to forums outside the IETF. The Jabber
folk have already done this with the XMPP foundation.

He's also one of the Jabber folk, and indeed Executive Director of the
XSF.

So given these two statements are in conflict, there must be a problem
with them.

I think it's in the implication that the XMPP folk came and looked at
the IETF and decided there was some structural problem. I don't think
that's the case. You'd need to ask someone who was there when it
formed, like Peter, but I suspect it really mutated gradually from an
umbrella organization for open-source software projects, and by the
time anyone realised it was an SDO, then the IETF was already
committed to SIP/SIMPLE (to the point of giving them their own area),
and was in addition happy to cite XEPs and use the technology
operationally.

Dave.


Sent with [inky: http://inky.com?kme=signature]

Re: IETF Diversity


On 19/06/13 14:44, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Aaron Yi DING yd...@cs.helsinki.fi 
mailto:yd...@cs.helsinki.fi wrote:


On 18/06/13 21:08, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple
people come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't
consider it pontificating.


sorry, just point it out, sometimes you said it right, but that
does not guarantee you are always right. to correct and make it
clearer, when ... made a statement, ... people came to thank 
for past experience, no present tense please.


no further comment, since I actually appreciate what you said and
the intention, as you described below.


It is hard to encourage, much easier to discourage. I thought Peter's 
attempt at a slap down was completely out of line and demonstrates the 
problem I am talking about here. Agenda denial is a strategy where to 
avoid discussing the topic that you know you have a weak case you 
suggest a change of topic.





Definitely not hinting to change the topic..

As I just exchange opinions with other IETFer on this. With no 
disrespect, I agree with the latter part of your previous mail, 
especially about the tendency of being an exclusive environment.


It's not about correcting the grammar or sth other trivial thing. What I 
want to convey through the message is that our past experience may 
affect our judgment of upcoming deed. Believe or not, smart people like 
most IETFers, perhaps tend to be bit cocky as there are so many positive 
experience accumulated in the past. However, experience may not stand 
always perfectly correct, and it is not a justification for every future 
action. This is not targeting at you or any specific person.


There is visible problem here and perhaps more. Constructive suggestions 
and actions will be most welcome. Comments with pure emotional 
reflections are comments, e.g. not happy about this; those are 
completely wrong; it is hopeless...


I repeat that I appreciate your suggestions.

It would be nice if we all appreciate the time of the readers on the list.

Thanks,
Aaron



There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the 
IETF constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to 
maintain control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF 
establishment so of course he sees no structural problem.


What I suggested is that the status quo is going to lead to 
applications area work moving to forums outside the IETF. The Jabber 
folk have already done this with the XMPP foundation.



I have the greatest of respect for Vint Cerf's technical capabilities 
but he consistently failed to establish open and transparent 
governance mechanisms.



--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity


On 6/18/2013 7:23 PM, Arturo Servin wrote:

 We created an IETF-TF in LACNOG;



Arturo,

Many thanks for the summary of efforts within the region; they sound 
quite promising.


Just to be clear, my question was specifically concerning the activity 
of the IAOC that Jari cited.


That effort has been started and pursued in isolation of any other 
efforts and it has been the subject of direct IETF discussion.  So I 
was/am asking about it's follow-up effort.


d/


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity


On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
so of course he sees no structural problem.
PSA's been an AD, yes, but:



Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.

We should not sustain such threads.

d/


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 8:32 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
 On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
 Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
 constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
 control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
 so of course he sees no structural problem.
 PSA's been an AD, yes, but:
 
 
 Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.
 
 We should not sustain such threads.

My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not productive
for us all to wait from word on high before taking positive action.
Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other official body are just
folks who are temporarily serving the community in a defined role. If we
want to change the culture of our community with respect to diversity,
it's better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor particular
individuals.

My apologies for the extremely egregious manner in which I stated the
point. It was not directed personally at Mr. Hallam-Baker, but at all of
us who talk and don't take action -- myself very much included.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity


On 6/19/2013 8:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

On 6/19/13 8:32 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:

On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
so of course he sees no structural problem.
PSA's been an AD, yes, but:



Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.

We should not sustain such threads.

...

My apologies for the extremely egregious manner in which I stated the
point. It was not directed personally at Mr. Hallam-Baker, but at all of
us who talk and don't take action -- myself very much included.



oh dear.  /my/ apologies for being unclear.  I didn't mean that /your/ 
posting was an ad hominem, but that you were responding to one.


Your own point is fine and constructive.  Worthy thought.  Worth 
pursuing.  Offered independently it would have been dandy.


My point is that we need to stop tolerating ad hominem content and that 
starts by not responding to it.  Posting a reply -- even one that 
ignores the offensive content -- constitutes tolerance for the behavior.


The view that we should be resilient against such behavior is long past 
its time.  We should, instead, demand professional demeanor, and that 
means shunning behavior that attacks people and their motives.


d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 6:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
 Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
 constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
 control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
 so of course he sees no structural problem. 

Actually I see lots of structural problems -- I just happen to be of the
mindset that working from the bottom up is the only sustainable model
for change.

 PSA's been an AD, yes, but:
  
 What I suggested is that the status quo is going to lead to applications
 area work moving to forums outside the IETF. The Jabber folk have
 already done this with the XMPP foundation.
  
 He's also one of the Jabber folk, and indeed Executive Director of the XSF.
  
 So given these two statements are in conflict, there must be a problem
 with them.
  
 I think it's in the implication that the XMPP folk came and looked at
 the IETF and decided there was some structural problem. I don't think
 that's the case. You'd need to ask someone who was there when it formed,
 like Peter, but I suspect it really mutated gradually from an umbrella
 organization for open-source software projects, and by the time anyone
 realised it was an SDO, then the IETF was already committed to
 SIP/SIMPLE (to the point of giving them their own area), and was in
 addition happy to cite XEPs and use the technology operationally.

Well, the Jabberites were working in their own open-source community in
1999 and were quite clueless about IETF activities until the XMPP WG was
formed in 2002 (and, one might argue, even after that). We continued to
work on XMPP extensions at the XSF in parallel with working on the core
of XMPP at the IETF because I don't think it would have been productive
to define hundreds of XMPP extensions in the XMPP WG at the IETF (that
might have been perceived as a DoS attack, if you will).

But this is really not a diversity issue, so if we're going to continue
this thread I suggest that at the least we change the subject line.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

Commenting is already an action taken, so we thank who made effort to bring
the points forward. I always add my comments even though I had given no
title. However, thoes folks that have been given titles by the IETF I think
they should do actions more regarding this diversity issue as
Mr.Hallam-baker requesting. I never give excuses to managers, but
appreciate all their efforts and patients for the community :-)

AB


On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.imwrote:

 On 6/19/13 8:32 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
  On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
  Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
  There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the IETF
  constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
  control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
  so of course he sees no structural problem.
  PSA's been an AD, yes, but:
 
 
  Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.
 
  We should not sustain such threads.

 My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not productive
 for us all to wait from word on high before taking positive action.
 Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other official body are just
 folks who are temporarily serving the community in a defined role. If we
 want to change the culture of our community with respect to diversity,
 it's better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor particular
 individuals.

 My apologies for the extremely egregious manner in which I stated the
 point. It was not directed personally at Mr. Hallam-Baker, but at all of
 us who talk and don't take action -- myself very much included.

 Peter

 --
 Peter Saint-Andre
 https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 9:15 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
 On 6/19/2013 8:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 8:32 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
 On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
 Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the
 IETF
 constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
 control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
 so of course he sees no structural problem.
 PSA's been an AD, yes, but:


 Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.

 We should not sustain such threads.
 ...
 My apologies for the extremely egregious manner in which I stated the
 point. It was not directed personally at Mr. Hallam-Baker, but at all of
 us who talk and don't take action -- myself very much included.
 
 
 oh dear.  /my/ apologies for being unclear.  I didn't mean that /your/
 posting was an ad hominem, but that you were responding to one.
 
 Your own point is fine and constructive.  Worthy thought.  Worth
 pursuing.  Offered independently it would have been dandy.
 
 My point is that we need to stop tolerating ad hominem content and that
 starts by not responding to it.  Posting a reply -- even one that
 ignores the offensive content -- constitutes tolerance for the behavior.
 
 The view that we should be resilient against such behavior is long past
 its time.  We should, instead, demand professional demeanor, and that
 means shunning behavior that attacks people and their motives.

Dave, you are completely correct and I'm going to make a commitment to
personal improvement. :-)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 7:16 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Actually I see lots of structural problems -- I just happen to be of the
 mindset that working from the bottom up is the only sustainable model
 for change.

Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
rights, etc.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Brian Haberman


On 6/19/13 11:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:



My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not productive
for us all to wait from word on high before taking positive action.
Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other official body are just
folks who are temporarily serving the community in a defined role. If we
want to change the culture of our community with respect to diversity,
it's better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor particular
individuals.


To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call soon for 
volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting with IETF 87). 
Once the web page for the mentoring program with all the information is 
up, you should be seeing a call for mentors.


We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer members of 
the IETF community become more involved and productive in our activities.


Regards,
Brian

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 9:22 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 7:16 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Actually I see lots of structural problems -- I just happen to be of the
 mindset that working from the bottom up is the only sustainable model
 for change.
 
 Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
 have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
 rights, etc.

That's a topic for the ietf-philosophy discussion list, methinks. :-)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 7:26 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 9:22 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
 have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
 rights, etc.
 That's a topic for the ietf-philosophy discussion list, methinks. :-)

To the extent that unexamined assertions about how social/cultural
change works are being used to explain why the organization doesn't
need to be particularly proactive, I don't think so.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 9:26 AM, Brian Haberman wrote:
 On 6/19/13 11:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 

 My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not productive
 for us all to wait from word on high before taking positive action.
 Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other official body are just
 folks who are temporarily serving the community in a defined role. If we
 want to change the culture of our community with respect to diversity,
 it's better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor particular
 individuals.
 
 To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call soon for
 volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting with IETF 87). Once
 the web page for the mentoring program with all the information is up,
 you should be seeing a call for mentors.
 
 We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer members of
 the IETF community become more involved and productive in our activities.

That's great!

However, why do we need to wait for a program? Can't we simply be human,
introduce ourselves to new participants, reach out to individual
contributors about becoming document shepherds, document editors, WG
secretaries, WG chairs, BoF chairs, etc.? That's what I've been doing,
and so far the results have been positive.

I'm not saying that's the only way to make progress, but I see it as
very much worth the effort.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Phillip Hallam-Baker

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Melinda Shore melinda.sh...@gmail.comwrote:

 On 6/19/13 7:16 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
  Actually I see lots of structural problems -- I just happen to be of the
  mindset that working from the bottom up is the only sustainable model
  for change.

 Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
 have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
 rights, etc.


When the IETF was being started Harvard had just abolished its quota on
hiring Jews and was attempting to correct their past discrimination by
awarding tenure to people like Larry Summers a year after they handed in
their dissertation.

That was not bottom up change. It was change that was forced from the top
down in response to bottom up pressure on the decision makers. It was not
Harvard that decided to reform, it was the government that told Harvard
that it would reform or see no more government grants. They still have the
'legacies' program in place that was originally adopted to keep Jews out of
a Protestant organization.


Academia is still one of the worst environments for discrimination. They
don't have formal barriers as in the past but the informal barriers are
steep.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Brian Haberman


On 6/19/13 11:31 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

On 6/19/13 9:26 AM, Brian Haberman wrote:

On 6/19/13 11:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:



My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not productive
for us all to wait from word on high before taking positive action.
Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other official body are just
folks who are temporarily serving the community in a defined role. If we
want to change the culture of our community with respect to diversity,
it's better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor particular
individuals.


To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call soon for
volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting with IETF 87). Once
the web page for the mentoring program with all the information is up,
you should be seeing a call for mentors.

We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer members of
the IETF community become more involved and productive in our activities.


That's great!

However, why do we need to wait for a program? Can't we simply be human,
introduce ourselves to new participants, reach out to individual
contributors about becoming document shepherds, document editors, WG
secretaries, WG chairs, BoF chairs, etc.? That's what I've been doing,
and so far the results have been positive.


I would highly encourage people taking that initiative and appreciate 
folks who do that of their own accord.




I'm not saying that's the only way to make progress, but I see it as
very much worth the effort.


Absolutely agree.  The goal of this experimental mentoring program is to 
provide people who may not be sure *how* to be mentors a framework to 
work within.


Regards,
Brian

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

I think all need mentoring. It is a both way learning for top and down
levels. So maybe newcomer can be mentoring to management of what is a
newcomer like these days :-)

AB

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Hector Santos

It is one thing to follow this practice of, for lack of a better word, 
ignorance, for yourself but to advocate it as a whole for the rest of 
the community to follow is probably not the optimal path when addressing 
the diversity conflicts.  Everyone has a motive and interest in what 
they do, why they are here, etc. You will never be able to eliminate 
this nature element among people, especially among such a diverse group 
of disciplines, especially as the growth of electronic diversity 
continues.  I hate to see Rough Consensus By Osmosis being one of the 
recommendation outcomes from the Diversity Design Team.


Thank You

Sincerely,
Hector Santos, CTO
Santronics Software, Inc.

On 6/19/2013 11:15 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:

On 6/19/2013 8:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

On 6/19/13 8:32 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:

On 6/19/2013 5:35 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
There is a real problem with accountability and transparency in the
IETF
constitution which was designed by a bunch of old boys to maintain
control in their own hands. Peter is a member of the IETF establishment
so of course he sees no structural problem.
PSA's been an AD, yes, but:



Forgive me, but you just responded to a rather unpleasant ad hominem.

We should not sustain such threads.

...

My apologies for the extremely egregious manner in which I stated the
point. It was not directed personally at Mr. Hallam-Baker, but at all of
us who talk and don't take action -- myself very much included.



oh dear.  /my/ apologies for being unclear.  I didn't mean that /your/
posting was an ad hominem, but that you were responding to one.

Your own point is fine and constructive.  Worthy thought.  Worth
pursuing.  Offered independently it would have been dandy.

My point is that we need to stop tolerating ad hominem content and that
starts by not responding to it.  Posting a reply -- even one that
ignores the offensive content -- constitutes tolerance for the behavior.

The view that we should be resilient against such behavior is long past
its time.  We should, instead, demand professional demeanor, and that
means shunning behavior that attacks people and their motives.

d/

Re: IETF Diversity

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 6/19/13 9:29 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 7:26 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 9:22 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal
 mandates have typically led social change, at least when it
 comes to civil rights, etc.
 That's a topic for the ietf-philosophy discussion list, methinks.
 :-)
 
 To the extent that unexamined assertions about how social/cultural 
 change works are being used to explain why the organization
 doesn't need to be particularly proactive, I don't think so.

Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been
thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change for a
very long time.

Peter

- -- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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Re: IETF Diversity

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Hash: SHA1

On 6/19/13 9:36 AM, Brian Haberman wrote:
 On 6/19/13 11:31 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 9:26 AM, Brian Haberman wrote:
 On 6/19/13 11:08 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 
 
 My point, poorly expressed though it was, is that it's not
 productive for us all to wait from word on high before taking
 positive action. Members of the IESG, IAB, IOAC, or any other
 official body are just folks who are temporarily serving
 the community in a defined role. If we want to change the
 culture of our community with respect to diversity, it's
 better for us to work to encourage, nurture, and mentor
 particular individuals.
 
 To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call
 soon for volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting
 with IETF 87). Once the web page for the mentoring program with
 all the information is up, you should be seeing a call for
 mentors.
 
 We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer
 members of the IETF community become more involved and
 productive in our activities.
 
 That's great!
 
 However, why do we need to wait for a program? Can't we simply be
 human, introduce ourselves to new participants, reach out to
 individual contributors about becoming document shepherds,
 document editors, WG secretaries, WG chairs, BoF chairs, etc.?
 That's what I've been doing, and so far the results have been
 positive.
 
 I would highly encourage people taking that initiative and
 appreciate folks who do that of their own accord.
 
 
 I'm not saying that's the only way to make progress, but I see it
 as very much worth the effort.
 
 Absolutely agree.  The goal of this experimental mentoring program
 is to provide people who may not be sure *how* to be mentors a
 framework to work within.

That sounds quite helpful! I'm not completely sure how to be a mentor,
either, I'm just doing the best I can given what I know so far...

Peter

- -- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change for a
 very long time.

You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical, you
used it to support an argument against organizational change, and
when I disagreed you went to the Let's not talk about it place.

Melinda

RE: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Moriarty, Kathleen

A little earlier in the thread, ways to improve things came up.  I presented at 
an international conference in Bangkok this week on the subject area covered by 
MILE.  While the focus was intended to be more on how we can look at the 
problem space to make faster/more effective progress, standards will enable 
some of those activities.  The second half of the talk provided background on 
MILE, what we are trying to do and gave the audience a general challenge as 
well as had specific requests for help.  My last slide was on how to engage in 
the IETF.  Outreach and helping people understand how they can be effective 
within the IETF may be useful for other WGs as well and could help improve 
diversity.  I had 2 requests following the talk to give the same presentation 
at other conferences and will likely do them to assist in this area as well as 
to make faster progress (and hopefully drive people to think about how to share 
information more effectively.  There are many opportunities for people to help 
in this space.  

Best regards,
Kathleen

From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Melinda Shore 
[melinda.sh...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 PM
To: Peter Saint-Andre
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change for a
 very long time.

You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical, you
used it to support an argument against organizational change, and
when I disagreed you went to the Let's not talk about it place.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity

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On 6/19/13 10:00 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been 
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change
 for a very long time.
 
 You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical,

That depends on which historians you've been reading.

 you used it to support an argument against organizational change,

No, I didn't. Please re-read what I wrote.

 and when I disagreed you went to the Let's not talk about it
 place.

I simply don't think it's productive to have a long discussion on the
ietf@ietf.org list about the philosophy of history.

Peter

- -- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 8:12 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 10:00 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been 
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change
 for a very long time.

 You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical,
 
 That depends on which historians you've been reading.

Peter, it's a fact in the US and Canada that court cases preceded
civil rights protections which preceded social change.  This has been
true for racial minorities, women, glbt folk, etc.  I expect that
there are historians who'd argue otherwise but allow me to suggest
that if so they are very, very far out of the mainstream.

It seems to me that without some sort of institutional change it's
likely that for a few cycles nomcoms will try to be sensitive to
the question of the underrepresentation of women and then it will
be back to business as usual, because that's the way these things
go.  It's unusual for people to voluntarily surrender their
privilege.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity

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On 6/19/13 10:25 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 8:12 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 10:00 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have
 been thinking and reading about social, cultural, and
 personal change for a very long time.
 
 You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical,
 
 That depends on which historians you've been reading.
 
 Peter, it's a fact in the US and Canada that court cases preceded 
 civil rights protections which preceded social change.  This has
 been true for racial minorities, women, glbt folk, etc.  I expect
 that there are historians who'd argue otherwise but allow me to
 suggest that if so they are very, very far out of the mainstream.

I'm not a great believer in intellectual mainstreams.

 It seems to me that without some sort of institutional change it's 
 likely that for a few cycles nomcoms will try to be sensitive to 
 the question of the underrepresentation of women and then it will 
 be back to business as usual, because that's the way these things 
 go.  It's unusual for people to voluntarily surrender their 
 privilege.

Thanks for giving me something to think about.

Peter

- -- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Ted Lemon

On Jun 19, 2013, at 11:22 AM, Melinda Shore melinda.sh...@gmail.com wrote:
 Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
 have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
 rights, etc.

Yup.   First the Civil Rights act, then Selma...  ;)

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Noel Chiappa

 From: Melinda Shore melinda.sh...@gmail.com

 it's likely that for a few cycles nomcoms will try to be sensitive to
 the question of the underrepresentation of women and then it will be
 back to business as usual ...
 It's unusual for people to voluntarily surrender their privilege.

Yes, the men of the IETF are just irretrievably opposed to handing over any
power to women. It's going to have to be pried from their cold, dead hands...

Noel

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 09:45 AM, Ted Lemon wrote:

On Jun 19, 2013, at 11:22 AM, Melinda Shore melinda.sh...@gmail.com wrote:

Don't know about that one.  In the US, at least, legal mandates
have typically led social change, at least when it comes to civil
rights, etc.


Yup.   First the Civil Rights act, then Selma...  ;)


Yes, this rather succinctly makes the point that I was starting to think 
about how to write out much more verbosely. Without the grassroots 
movements pushing for attitudes to change the legislation never would 
have been passed. Melinda is correct that the legislation does affect 
attitudes after it comes into being, but it's a cycle, not a strict 
cause/effect chain.


Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse 
participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.


Doug (whatever that is)

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 10:03 AM, Doug Barton wrote:
 Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse
 participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.

I'd like it if that were true but I don't think it is.  For example,
the majority of academic librarians are women (one demographic
survey I saw said 80%) but the majority of academic library directors
are men (again, ~80%).  I'd like to think that good intentions and
happy thoughts will provide a durable solution to the problem but
I'm not convinced.  I am convinced, however, that because of our
decision-making processes we would not be able to do legislation,
in any event.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 11:11 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

On 6/19/13 10:03 AM, Doug Barton wrote:

Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse
participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.


I'd like it if that were true but I don't think it is.  For example,
the majority of academic librarians are women (one demographic
survey I saw said 80%) but the majority of academic library directors
are men (again, ~80%).


It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.


I'd like to think that good intentions and
happy thoughts will provide a durable solution to the problem but
I'm not convinced.


That's not at all what I was suggesting, and others in this thread (and 
elsewhere) have already outlined their actions in regards to reaching 
out to new participants, mentoring, etc. Personally I agree that those 
are the kinds of ACTIONS needed to address the diversity issue ... hence 
my suggestion that people DO what they can.


... and while we're on that topic, what are you doing to help?

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 10:16 AM, Doug Barton wrote:
 It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.

Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
management positions are men.  Everybody's got good
intentions - I'd be very surprised if anybody is sitting
around consciously thinking that women are less capable
of doing a good job in management than men.  But you
end up with some disturbing trends in aggregate.  Meaning
well really is not enough, and as I said my expectation
is that we'll get a few cycles of trying to be more
balanced but we won't get institutional change that would
inhibit backsliding.

 ... and while we're on that topic, what are you doing to help?

That is truly an unfortunate line of argument, and I hope
you don't use it very often.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity


On 6/19/2013 11:31 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
management positions are men.  Everybody's got good
intentions



indeed, almost everyone claims that they are a better than average driver.

individual self-assessment tends to be a very unreliable mechanism upon 
which to base efforts at social change.



d/


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity


On 19/06/13 21:16, Doug Barton wrote:

On 06/19/2013 11:11 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

On 6/19/13 10:03 AM, Doug Barton wrote:

Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse
participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.


I'd like it if that were true but I don't think it is.  For example,
the majority of academic librarians are women (one demographic
survey I saw said 80%) but the majority of academic library directors
are men (again, ~80%).



It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.



On 19/06/13 18:33, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:


Academia is still one of the worst environments for discrimination. 
They don't have formal barriers as in the past but the informal 
barriers are steep.





Relating to the statement above(I assume Phillip is addressing the US 
Academia), not quite sure are we still discussing the same topic?  
sorry, I am bit confused ..  since IETF is an international organization.


If yes, good to know more about it.

Aaron




I'd like to think that good intentions and
happy thoughts will provide a durable solution to the problem but
I'm not convinced.


That's not at all what I was suggesting, and others in this thread 
(and elsewhere) have already outlined their actions in regards to 
reaching out to new participants, mentoring, etc. Personally I agree 
that those are the kinds of ACTIONS needed to address the diversity 
issue ... hence my suggestion that people DO what they can.


... and while we're on that topic, what are you doing to help?

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 11:40 AM, Aaron Yi DING wrote:

On 19/06/13 21:16, Doug Barton wrote:

On 06/19/2013 11:11 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

On 6/19/13 10:03 AM, Doug Barton wrote:

Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse
participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.


I'd like it if that were true but I don't think it is.  For example,
the majority of academic librarians are women (one demographic
survey I saw said 80%) but the majority of academic library directors
are men (again, ~80%).



It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.



On 19/06/13 18:33, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:


Academia is still one of the worst environments for discrimination.
They don't have formal barriers as in the past but the informal
barriers are steep.




Relating to the statement above(I assume Phillip is addressing the US
Academia), not quite sure are we still discussing the same topic? sorry,
I am bit confused ..  since IETF is an international organization.


We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where 
various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those 
problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our 
organization.


That is NOT to say that we don't have a problem, only that making 
conclusions based on unrelated data is bad science.


Doug

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 1:12 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
 On 06/19/2013 11:40 AM, Aaron Yi DING wrote:
 On 19/06/13 21:16, Doug Barton wrote:
 On 06/19/2013 11:11 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 On 6/19/13 10:03 AM, Doug Barton wrote:
 Short version, if everyone does what they can to encourage diverse
 participation, we won't need legislation to fix the problem.

 I'd like it if that were true but I don't think it is.  For example,
 the majority of academic librarians are women (one demographic
 survey I saw said 80%) but the majority of academic library directors
 are men (again, ~80%).

 It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.


 On 19/06/13 18:33, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

 Academia is still one of the worst environments for discrimination.
 They don't have formal barriers as in the past but the informal
 barriers are steep.



 Relating to the statement above(I assume Phillip is addressing the US
 Academia), not quite sure are we still discussing the same topic? sorry,
 I am bit confused ..  since IETF is an international organization.
 
 We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where
 various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those
 problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our
 organization.
 
 That is NOT to say that we don't have a problem, only that making
 conclusions based on unrelated data is bad science.

On the other hand, every organization thinks it is special, and most
aren't. :-)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Yoav Nir


On Jun 19, 2013, at 10:12 PM, Doug Barton do...@dougbarton.us
 wrote:
 
 On 19/06/13 18:33, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 
 Academia is still one of the worst environments for discrimination.
 They don't have formal barriers as in the past but the informal
 barriers are steep.
 
 
 
 Relating to the statement above(I assume Phillip is addressing the US
 Academia), not quite sure are we still discussing the same topic? sorry,
 I am bit confused ..  since IETF is an international organization.
 
 We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where 
 various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those 
 problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our organization.

Looking at how similar problems were solved in other places could help us 
figure out how to solve such problems in the IETF.

And Academia is much more similar to the IETF than is the state of Alabama.

Yoav

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 12:14 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

On 6/19/13 1:12 PM, Doug Barton wrote:


We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where
various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those
problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our
organization.

That is NOT to say that we don't have a problem, only that making
conclusions based on unrelated data is bad science.


On the other hand, every organization thinks it is special, and most
aren't. :-)


I thought I made it clear that I'm not saying, there is no problem. I 
am only saying that pointing to other, unrelated situations and saying 
They seem to have a problem, so we must have a problem is a waste of 
everyone's time.


The more interesting questions are whether or not the current makeup of 
the IETF leadership is reflective of the population (nee membership) 
of the IETF as a whole; and whether or not the IETF population reflects 
the larger population of the tech community it draws from. Those are 
problems that outreach, mentorship, etc. can make concrete impacts on.


But until we understand what WE are dealing with (as opposed to what 
other organizations are dealing with) we're not going to make any actual 
progress.


Doug

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 11:31 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

On 6/19/13 10:16 AM, Doug Barton wrote:

It's not clear to me how this example relates to the IETF.


Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
management positions are men.


So again, it's not at all clear how that relates to the IETF (given that 
we don't fall into the category of the overwhelming majority of 
practitioners [are women].


To be clear, I'm not trying to be critical of your point, I'm simply 
asking you to compare apples to apples.



Everybody's got good
intentions - I'd be very surprised if anybody is sitting
around consciously thinking that women are less capable
of doing a good job in management than men.  But you
end up with some disturbing trends in aggregate.  Meaning
well really is not enough, and as I said my expectation
is that we'll get a few cycles of trying to be more
balanced but we won't get institutional change that would
inhibit backsliding.


Yes, you've made the point rather amply that you think there is an 
institutional problem with lack of women in leadership roles _in the 
IETF_. My experience has been considerably different however, and as a 
result I find it hard to accept your premise unconditionally. At this 
moment in time I think it's correct to say that women are 
underrepresented, but I don't think it's proven yet that this represents 
any kind of institutional bias.


I look at women like Leslie Daigle, Allison Mankin, Margaret Wasserman, 
Lynn St. Amour, Joyce Reynolds ... those are just off the top of my 
head; certainly not my intention to slight anyone ... all of whom have 
now, or have had significant leadership roles, and made lasting impacts 
on the IETF both in its work product and culture.


Can we (and should we) do better? Absolutely. I would love to see more 
participation by different groups, nationalities, genders, etc. And I 
have a vested interest here. I have a daughter who is smart as a whip, 
and when it comes time for her to find a job I want to be sure that 
every door is open to her.


But I also think it's possible for us to agree that we have room to 
improve without constantly banging the drum that we have a deep-seated 
institutional bias, especially when that point is far from proven.



... and while we're on that topic, what are you doing to help?


That is truly an unfortunate line of argument, and I hope
you don't use it very often.


It's not a line of argument, it's a legitimate question. Others have 
described their actions to help improve the situation, which hopefully 
still others can latch onto and emulate. You bring a unique perspective 
to the table, so I'm hoping that you can describe what you're doing to 
help solve the problem so that others can emulate your example.


Doug

Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 1:27 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
 On 06/19/2013 12:14 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/19/13 1:12 PM, Doug Barton wrote:

 We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where
 various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those
 problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our
 organization.

 That is NOT to say that we don't have a problem, only that making
 conclusions based on unrelated data is bad science.

 On the other hand, every organization thinks it is special, and most
 aren't. :-)
 
 I thought I made it clear that I'm not saying, there is no problem. I
 am only saying that pointing to other, unrelated situations and saying
 They seem to have a problem, so we must have a problem is a waste of
 everyone's time.
 
 The more interesting questions are whether or not the current makeup of
 the IETF leadership is reflective of the population (nee membership)
 of the IETF as a whole; and whether or not the IETF population reflects
 the larger population of the tech community it draws from. Those are
 problems that outreach, mentorship, etc. can make concrete impacts on.
 
 But until we understand what WE are dealing with (as opposed to what
 other organizations are dealing with) we're not going to make any actual
 progress.

Very well said.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Yoav Nir


On Jun 19, 2013, at 6:26 PM, Brian Haberman br...@innovationslab.net wrote:

 To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call soon for 
 volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting with IETF 87). Once the 
 web page for the mentoring program with all the information is up, you should 
 be seeing a call for mentors.
 
 We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer members of the 
 IETF community become more involved and productive in our activities.

This may be helpful in getting first-time attendees to stay on with the IETF. 
That is a laudable goal in itself, but I'm not sure if it will help diversity. 
Just bringing in new white male employees of US router companies will not 
increase diversity. It might work if the pool of newcomers is considerably more 
diverse than the pool of veterans, but having been in the last two 
meet-and-greets, I see a lot of the same, except that the newcomer group has 
more people from China. I see few women, hardly any Africans (from Africa or 
the US), and not a lot of company names I recognize as operators.

So unless we find a way to get a more diverse group to the meetings, such a 
mentoring program will only help us get some new blood - same as the old blood, 
but new.

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 12:21 PM, Yoav Nir wrote:


On Jun 19, 2013, at 10:12 PM, Doug Barton do...@dougbarton.us
  wrote:


We can point to all kinds of examples that are outside the IETF of where 
various biases exist. It's not at all clear that the existence of those 
problems elsewhere corresponds to any actual problem within our organization.


Looking at how similar problems were solved in other places could help us 
figure out how to solve such problems in the IETF.


Of course, but we have to be sure that the problems really are similar 
first.



And Academia is much more similar to the IETF than is the state of Alabama.


Yeah, but so what? That's like saying that avocados and oranges are more 
similar than avocados and rocks. But if I want to make guacamole I 
better be able to differentiate the different kinds of fruit.


I'm not trying to be pedantic for its own sake here. It is genuinely 
important to understand the population you are working with if you're 
going to address social issues. Concepts (and more importantly 
solutions) that are relevant for one group may very well not be 
applicable to another group because the populations differ in subtle but 
important ways.


Doug

Re: IETF Diversity


On 19/06/13 22:56, Yoav Nir wrote:

On Jun 19, 2013, at 6:26 PM, Brian Haberman br...@innovationslab.net wrote:


To help facilitate the mentoring aspect, there will be a call soon for 
volunteers to act as mentors for newcomers (starting with IETF 87). Once the 
web page for the mentoring program with all the information is up, you should 
be seeing a call for mentors.

We hope that this type of program will aid in assisting newer members of the 
IETF community become more involved and productive in our activities.

This may be helpful in getting first-time attendees to stay on with the IETF. 
That is a laudable goal in itself, but I'm not sure if it will help diversity. 
Just bringing in new white male employees of US router companies will not 
increase diversity. It might work if the pool of newcomers is considerably more 
diverse than the pool of veterans, but having been in the last two 
meet-and-greets, I see a lot of the same, except that the newcomer group has 
more people from China. I see few women, hardly any Africans (from Africa or 
the US), and not a lot of company names I recognize as operators.

So unless we find a way to get a more diverse group to the meetings, such a 
mentoring program will only help us get some new blood - same as the old blood, 
but new.



That sounds similar to new bottles but still filled with the old type 
wine - long lasting old Chinese saying :)


Personally speaking, mentoring is a viable one to start with, although 
some colleagues told me it has been here for quite a while.. Anyway, as 
we still got several unsolved questions, such as what Doug mentioned,  
until we understand what WE are dealing with (as opposed to what other 
organizations are dealing with) we're not going to make any actual 
progress., unless our community come up with better ones soon 
addressing those, diversity won't make to IETF in a couple months.


Thanks for Brian and folks taking their time to setup the whole thing.

Re: [IETF] Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Warren Kumari


On Jun 19, 2013, at 2:35 PM, Dave Crocker d...@dcrocker.net wrote:

 On 6/19/2013 11:31 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
 practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
 management positions are men.  Everybody's got good
 intentions
 
 
 indeed, almost everyone claims that they are a better than average driver.

Nah, I'm better than everyone else, because I don't suffer from the 
Dunning–Kruger effect.

 
 individual self-assessment tends to be a very unreliable mechanism upon which 
 to base efforts at social change.

Indeed.

W
 
 
 d/
 
 
 -- 
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net
 

-- 
Never criticize a man till you've walked a mile in his shoes.  Then if he 
didn't like what you've said, he's a mile away and barefoot.

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Pete Resnick


On 6/19/13 2:47 PM, Doug Barton wrote:

On 06/19/2013 11:31 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
management positions are men.


So again, it's not at all clear how that relates to the IETF (given 
that we don't fall into the category of the overwhelming majority of 
practitioners [are women].


I think the point was that if organizations that have a majority of 
women in the ranks have trouble getting women into leadership roles 
(where one would think, ceterus paribus, women would have an easier time 
moving up as against other organizations), then an organization that has 
a majority male population won't fare much better unless there's some 
reason to believe it is interestingly different.


Institutional biases in organizations are not uncommon. We almost 
certainly have *some* brand of it here, whether it's Americo-centrism 
(cf. SM's comments about Selma and Dan's comments about baseball), or 
one of gender. I'd be (happily) shocked if there were some reason to 
believe that we're different than other organizations when it comes to 
gender, but I haven't seen much to convince me we're all that different. 
Certainly we should look for evidence of the existence and nature of any 
biases that exist in our institutional practices, but given how 
prevalent such biases are elsewhere, I'm not uncomfortable presuming 
prima facia that we do have some and doing some things that might 
(again, surprisingly to me) turn out unnecessary.


I look at women like Leslie Daigle, Allison Mankin, Margaret 
Wasserman, Lynn St. Amour, Joyce Reynolds ... those are just off the 
top of my head; certainly not my intention to slight anyone ... all of 
whom have now, or have had significant leadership roles, and made 
lasting impacts on the IETF both in its work product and culture.


As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data, but it might 
be interesting to discuss with each of the people you noted their 
experiences getting into leadership and their experiences in it. 
(However, see the last paragraph of this message below.)


Can we (and should we) do better? Absolutely. I would love to see more 
participation by different groups, nationalities, genders, etc. And I 
have a vested interest here. I have a daughter who is smart as a whip, 
and when it comes time for her to find a job I want to be sure that 
every door is open to her.


Agree wholeheartedly.

But I also think it's possible for us to agree that we have room to 
improve without constantly banging the drum that we have a deep-seated 
institutional bias, especially when that point is far from proven.


Even if such a bias does not exist, it can come across a bit 
self-serving to complain about the banging drum. So someone has said 
there is an institutional bias against the (minority and not in 
leadership) group they are in and for the (majority and in leadership) 
group you are in... No use in getting insulted or complaining about the 
words used to express that perception. Looking to make sure that there 
is no bias and addressing any biases you find is a good use of time and 
energy.



... and while we're on that topic, what are you doing to help?


That is truly an unfortunate line of argument, and I hope
you don't use it very often.


It's not a line of argument, it's a legitimate question.


It did sound a bit confrontational in the original message. The MIME 
Intonation Protocol being what it is, this can sometimes be an 
unintended problem. I will take full blame for the lack of deployment of 
that protocol.


Others have described their actions to help improve the situation, 
which hopefully still others can latch onto and emulate. You bring a 
unique perspective to the table, so I'm hoping that you can describe 
what you're doing to help solve the problem so that others can emulate 
your example.


That's a reasonable request. People should in general describe 
experiences and volunteer whatever advice they can for the community. 
However, do keep in mind that some things folks might do (especially 
folks in the minority population) are not things that they necessarily 
want to talk about it public. For example, if some folks were helping 
women off-list to deal with incidents of harassment or sexist behavior, 
or simply poor treatment that seemed different than how males were 
treated, they might not feel comfortable talking about that publicly 
because it would bring up some thorny issues that are difficult to 
discuss in private, let alone in public. And there are certainly other 
things of less serious import that are still dicey to lay open in 
public. So it's probably at least a bit pushy to individualize a message 
saying what are you doing to help?.


pr

--
Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

Re: IETF Diversity vs. White Male ??

2013-06-19 Thread Fred Baker (fred)

On Jun 19, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Aaron Yi DING yd...@cs.helsinki.fi wrote:

Well, if the dominant ones later being replaced by other groups, do we need
to revamp again? What will be the end?

I'm told that white babies are now a minority of the population in the US.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341066/Whites-soon-minority-American-children-age-5.html

It's all about political correctness. It is not politically correct to comment
on women unless you are one and hate men. It is not politically correct to
comment on whatever-they're-called-this-week, black, negro, afro-americans, or
whatever. It is not politically correct to comment on hispanics, or to note
that they are not a race; they might be a culture, but for the most part they
are people who grew up outside spain but speak - or whose parents speak - some
derivative of spanish as a native language. Or Asians, for that matter. But it
is absolutely politically correct to make racist and sexist remarks - the same
remarks that would draw outrage and umbrage if made about any of a list of
other groups - about people who happen to be caucasian and male.

A conversation from the 1993 movie Gettysburg comes to mind.

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: Tell me something, Buster... What do you
think of Negroes?
Sergeant 'Buster' Kilrain: Well, if you mean the race, I don't really know.
This is not a thing to be ashamed of. The thing is, you cannot judge a race.
Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time.

I would replace man or men with person or people in the observation,
and would agree with it. There are a lot of pea-wits in the world. Some of them
are white males. Many are not.

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 05:09 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:

On 6/19/13 2:47 PM, Doug Barton wrote:

On 06/19/2013 11:31 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:

Even in fields in which the overwhelming majority of
practitioners, the majority of people in leadership or
management positions are men.


So again, it's not at all clear how that relates to the IETF (given
that we don't fall into the category of the overwhelming majority of
practitioners [are women].


I think the point was that if organizations that have a majority of
women in the ranks have trouble getting women into leadership roles
(where one would think, ceterus paribus, women would have an easier time
moving up as against other organizations), then an organization that has
a majority male population won't fare much better unless there's some
reason to believe it is interestingly different.


Yes, Pete, I understand what the point was supposed to be. The point *I* 
am making is that unless you have a solid understanding of the 2 
populations the comparison is not only at best meaningless, it is almost 
certainly actively harmful because it leads to a short-circuit of the 
very path to understanding that is required to actually address the 
problem. I could count all of the unfounded assumptions you're making 
just in the paragraph above for you, but you're a smart guy, I'm sure 
you can take that on as a side project if you're interested.



Institutional biases in organizations are not uncommon. We almost
certainly have *some* brand of it here, whether it's Americo-centrism
(cf. SM's comments about Selma and Dan's comments about baseball),


So again, there is absolutely zero evidence that those kinds of comments 
are a form of institutional bias. The fact that people use cultural 
references that they are familiar with IS evidence that they are human, 
but you cannot extrapolate from Ted's comment (directed at Melinda who 
Ted had a reasonable belief would be familiar with it) that Ted is de 
facto biased against non-Americans. In fact, one of the things I enjoy 
about working in the I* realm is being exposed to other cultures, and 
learning a bit about their culture, idioms, humor, etc. And $DEITY 
forbid we actually achieve some of that diversity stuff, how are you 
going to react to even MORE people bringing their own cultural 
experience to bear in the IETF?!? The nerve of them!



or
one of gender. I'd be (happily) shocked if there were some reason to
believe that we're different than other organizations when it comes to
gender,


For the Nth time now, let me be clear that I do not think we have zero 
problems in this area. But we can improve is different from we have a 
widespread and deep-seated problem with institutional bias. More about 
the importance of the distinction below.



but I haven't seen much to convince me we're all that different.


... remember what you said to me about anecdotes vs. data? :)


Certainly we should look for evidence of the existence and nature of any
biases that exist in our institutional practices, but given how
prevalent such biases are elsewhere, I'm not uncomfortable presuming
prima facia that we do have some and doing some things that might
(again, surprisingly to me) turn out unnecessary.


I find this perspective highly disturbing, and potentially very dangerous.


I look at women like Leslie Daigle, Allison Mankin, Margaret
Wasserman, Lynn St. Amour, Joyce Reynolds ... those are just off the
top of my head; certainly not my intention to slight anyone ... all of
whom have now, or have had significant leadership roles, and made
lasting impacts on the IETF both in its work product and culture.


As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data, but it might
be interesting to discuss with each of the people you noted their
experiences getting into leadership and their experiences in it.


Assuming they (and other similar folks) are willing, I agree. Just to be 
clear, I was not volunteering anyone for anything. :)



Can we (and should we) do better? Absolutely. I would love to see more
participation by different groups, nationalities, genders, etc. And I
have a vested interest here. I have a daughter who is smart as a whip,
and when it comes time for her to find a job I want to be sure that
every door is open to her.


Agree wholeheartedly.


But I also think it's possible for us to agree that we have room to
improve without constantly banging the drum that we have a deep-seated
institutional bias, especially when that point is far from proven.


Even if such a bias does not exist, it can come across a bit
self-serving to complain about the banging drum.


Agreed, which is why I have waited so long to speak up.


So someone has said
there is an institutional bias against the (minority and not in
leadership) group they are in and for the (majority and in leadership)
group you are in... No use in getting insulted or complaining about the
words used to express that perception.


Well I'm sorry to say, I actually DO find

RE: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread GT RAMIREZ, Medel G.

Kathleen,
Thanks, well understood  indeed... I hear you.

Medel Ramirez
Globe Telecom, Inc.
Manila , Philippines.
+++


-Original Message-
From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
Moriarty, Kathleen
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:11 AM
To: Melinda Shore; Peter Saint-Andre
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: RE: IETF Diversity

A little earlier in the thread, ways to improve things came up.  I
presented at an international conference in Bangkok this week on the
subject area covered by MILE.  While the focus was intended to be more
on how we can look at the problem space to make faster/more effective
progress, standards will enable some of those activities.  The second
half of the talk provided background on MILE, what we are trying to do
and gave the audience a general challenge as well as had specific
requests for help.  My last slide was on how to engage in the IETF.
Outreach and helping people understand how they can be effective within
the IETF may be useful for other WGs as well and could help improve
diversity.  I had 2 requests following the talk to give the same
presentation at other conferences and will likely do them to assist in
this area as well as to make faster progress (and hopefully drive people
to think about how to share information more effectively.  There are
many opportunities for people to help in this space.  

Best regards,
Kathleen

From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Melinda
Shore [melinda.sh...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 PM
To: Peter Saint-Andre
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: IETF Diversity

On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been 
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change for a

 very long time.

You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical, you used it
to support an argument against organizational change, and when I
disagreed you went to the Let's not talk about it place.

Melinda

This e-mail message (including attachments, if any) is intended for the use of 
the individual or the entity to whom it is addressed and may contain 
information that is privileged, proprietary, confidential and exempt from 
disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any 
dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly 
prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the 
sender and delete this E-mail message immediately.

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Moriarty, Kathleen

Thanks, Medel.

I just wanted to clarify that my closing 'in this space' was intended for 
diversity improvements.  Getting more users, operators, and vendors involved 
will help.  Having diverse input will help us have better solutions come out of 
the WG.

Thanks,
Kathleen 


Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 20, 2013, at 11:42 AM, GT RAMIREZ, Medel G. me...@globetel.com.ph 
wrote:

 Kathleen,
 Thanks, well understood  indeed... I hear you.
 
 Medel Ramirez
 Globe Telecom, Inc.
 Manila , Philippines.
 +++
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
 Moriarty, Kathleen
 Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:11 AM
 To: Melinda Shore; Peter Saint-Andre
 Cc: ietf@ietf.org
 Subject: RE: IETF Diversity
 
 A little earlier in the thread, ways to improve things came up.  I
 presented at an international conference in Bangkok this week on the
 subject area covered by MILE.  While the focus was intended to be more
 on how we can look at the problem space to make faster/more effective
 progress, standards will enable some of those activities.  The second
 half of the talk provided background on MILE, what we are trying to do
 and gave the audience a general challenge as well as had specific
 requests for help.  My last slide was on how to engage in the IETF.
 Outreach and helping people understand how they can be effective within
 the IETF may be useful for other WGs as well and could help improve
 diversity.  I had 2 requests following the talk to give the same
 presentation at other conferences and will likely do them to assist in
 this area as well as to make faster progress (and hopefully drive people
 to think about how to share information more effectively.  There are
 many opportunities for people to help in this space.  
 
 Best regards,
 Kathleen
 
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Melinda
 Shore [melinda.sh...@gmail.com]
 Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 PM
 To: Peter Saint-Andre
 Cc: ietf@ietf.org
 Subject: Re: IETF Diversity
 
 On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been 
 thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change for a
 
 very long time.
 
 You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical, you used it
 to support an argument against organizational change, and when I
 disagreed you went to the Let's not talk about it place.
 
 Melinda
 
 This e-mail message (including attachments, if any) is intended for the use 
 of the individual or the entity to whom it is addressed and may contain 
 information that is privileged, proprietary, confidential and exempt from 
 disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any 
 dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly 
 prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify 
 the sender and delete this E-mail message immediately.

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-19 Thread Randy Presuhn

Hi -

It seems as though participants in this thread are operating
with different understandings of what constitutes institutional
bias.  A critical difference is whether *intent* is necessary
for bias to exist.  As I understand it, institutional bias
can exist in the absence of ill intent, and can even be an
unintended consequence of efforts to *reduce* bias.

If something about the way we do business makes it more difficult
for otherwise qualified individuals from some group to participate
at a given level, then we have to admit the possibility that
we have a case of institutional bias.  The available remedies
might be worse than the problem, but we shouldn't fool ourselves
into thinking that we're any better at this stuff than any other
well-meaning bunch of people, and we shouldn't pretend that
privilege doesn't exist, no matter how much that conflicts
with our self-image fantasy of being a meritocracy.  Embracing
an ideal does not mean ignoring reality.

For a hopefully non-controversial example, consider how excessively
idiomatic English, over-reliance on sports metaphors, and obscure
cultural references all serve as barriers to participation.
It doesn't matter whether I intend to exclude anyone through,
for example, my use of long sentences.  But if my long sentences
make it too much harder for others to participate, then I *am*
part of the problem, and need to think about how that effect might
be mitigated.

Randy

Re: IETF Diversity


On 06/19/2013 10:13 PM, Randy Presuhn wrote:

Hi -

It seems as though participants in this thread are operating
with different understandings of what constitutes institutional
bias.  A critical difference is whether *intent* is necessary
for bias to exist.  As I understand it, institutional bias
can exist in the absence of ill intent, and can even be an
unintended consequence of efforts to *reduce* bias.


I would disagree with your definition, but that's a minor issue. I don't 
care if you want to call it a barrier to entry, as you did later in 
your post, bias, or whatever other term is trendy atm. Personally, I 
have been explicitly addressing the issue of intent, which has rather 
strongly been hinted at, if not an accusation directly leveled.


Meanwhile, I personally have said explicitly that we can do better at 
removing the barriers to entry that unquestionably do exist, so one 
wonders what your point may be.


Most importantly however, the reason I think we need to focus more on 
positive actions around outreach and equal opportunity is that by 
focusing on bias we run the very real risk of making self-flagellation 
its own goal.


Doug (and its own reward)

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Peter Saint-Andre

On 6/18/13 10:52 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 I am rather disappointed that there hasn't been any followup to the
 diversity discussion that took place at the plenary.

Speak for yourself. Some of us are taking concrete actions (e.g.,
recruiting people for document shepherd and WG chair roles) instead of
pontificating at the mic.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Jari Arkko

Phillip,

For the record, there have been several ongoing efforts. First, there is a 
diversity design team. We expect some results from them before IETF-87, lets 
deal with those when they come. Second, the IAOC has looked hard at the 
possibilities for reaching further out in the geographical world - you must 
have seen the big discussion about South America a while ago. I expect some 
news from the IAOC on this front soon. Third, we have worked with ISOC and 
others to look at how we could expand outreach efforts, be it geography, new 
types of participants, or other factors. Fourth, I think many of us have had 
the topic in our minds in our daily work, e.g., when looking at competence 
profiles for tasks, etc. See Peter's mail.

All in all, I'd of course be happier if we had made a big change and impact 
immediately. But the reality is that these types of changes are hard and take 
some time. But there is definitely efforts on the way. Those will have effects, 
long term.

That being said, I don't think we've done enough. Do you have suggestions on 
what additional things we could do? (Or you, or others on the list?)

Jari

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

On 6/18/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker hal...@gmail.com wrote:
 I am rather disappointed that there hasn't been any followup to the
 diversity discussion that took place at the plenary.


I thought there are some people following/working this up, and made
some progress. However, I agree that I seen no progress
written/reported to us,

 I do applications and I do security and so having a diverse range of input
 is critical if the final product is going to be useful. There are no gender
 or cultural issues in packet routing that I am aware of. But once we get to
 the application layer they become central.

I agree that at that layer you will face the community.


 It does not take 100 people to write a specification but it does take a
 large number of people to adequately gather requirements. Taking
 requirements from 100 people from almost the same background and
 perspective is not very productive. I am aware that I have a limited
 personal perspective which is why I actively seek out other perspectives.

I mentioned similar idea of that before, and I agree IETF needs
diversity to progress.


 At the plenary I pointed out that there have been women involved in IETF
 ever since I started in IETF over 20 years ago now. Yet we have an IAB and
 an IESG with only one female member who is not ex-officio (according to
 their Web sites)

 That situation should be something that has the IETF management worried but
 I can't see much sign of that.

I suggested also that we need more women in management, so I support
that, however, majority men may not want that, so what can we do

 The IETF is unlikely to die but it can lose
 influence beyond the IP and DNS core. Sooner or later someone is going to
 work out how to establish an applications standards process that is gender
 and culture inclusive. And  we know from experience that in our environment
 there can be a remarkably small time between the idea and establishing an
 institution.

It is good if IETF realise that it can loose, so it will work harder.
The IETF is mostly doing its meetings in North America so its culture
is closer to North America culture.


 Minecraft was launched in 2011 and they had 4,500 people at their first
 international conference that year, they are now about to have their third.
 So they went from having nothing to having a larger participant community
 than the IETF in a matter of months.

I think that is good news, and that IETF should realise how did that
happen, and realise what is wrong in IETF. I suggested before that
IETF encourages participants, and gave many responses but still I was
feeling ignored.


 The IETF is a community known for valuing consensus rather than seeking
 diverse views. I see a real risk that the consensus being built here is a
 false consensus built by excluding opposing views rather than a real
 consensus built on reconciling them.

I already mentioned that before, I found out that many say we want
consensus when they don't have good engineering reason, and when there
is no consensus they go back to technical reasons.

 Bringing opposing views to this forum
 is invariably a thankless task. The assumption is that if you can't hack it
 here well that is your fault and your problem. Case in point,  each time I
 get something wrong in RFC2HTML and I get the error message 'You Lose', my
 natural response is 'why the heck am I bothering wasting my time here'.

We waste time only if management don't listen to the
minorities/diversed of the community.


 I do not think that gender is the only diversity problem in IETF but it is
 one that can be measured and the IETF is conspicuously failing. We also
 have a rather severe age problem, twenty years ago EKR and myself were
 among the youngest participants in most discussions and setting aside the
 grad students the same is usually true today.

I agree,



 The perspective is going to need to change. Rather than looking for ways to
 encourage a few token women to work their way up through the existing
 selection regime we need to look at what sort of selection and
 participation and representation structures will encourage diversity.


I think it is very easy to encourage people, and very easy to
discourage people, the difficult part is to maintain people encouraged
and liking to continue participating in the IETF. Many people in life
hate CHANGE, so that is another difficulty, the IETF should get use to
CHANGE.


Thanks for your input it makes a greater impact than my inputs maybe
because my english.

AB

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Phillip Hallam-Baker

When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple people
come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't consider it
pontificating.

I do however consider your own response to be an example of the type of
exclusionary behavior that I was talking about. Dismissing those concerns
as 'pontificating' does not help matters. And you have no idea what actions
I have taken to attempt to recruit people to get involved.

The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention of a
followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list.




On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.imwrote:

 On 6/18/13 10:52 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
  I am rather disappointed that there hasn't been any followup to the
  diversity discussion that took place at the plenary.

 Speak for yourself. Some of us are taking concrete actions (e.g.,
 recruiting people for document shepherd and WG chair roles) instead of
 pontificating at the mic.

 Peter

 --
 Peter Saint-Andre
 https://stpeter.im/





-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Dave Crocker


On 6/18/2013 10:17 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:

Second, the IAOC has
looked hard at the possibilities for reaching further out in the
geographical world



Jari,

The only action that's been cited has been holding a meeting in that 
region.  A number of us have posted comments suggesting that this is 
unlikely to be an effective recruiting technique; a few also offered 
thoughts of other approaches.  I won't rehash the rationales that have 
been offered.


If other avenues of recruiting are being explored by the IAOC, what are 
they?


If the only avenue being considered is a meeting in the region, it would 
be helpful to see some response to the concerns raised about this as a 
recruiting tool.



d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Peter Saint-Andre

On 6/18/13 12:08 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple people
 come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't consider it
 pontificating.
 
 I do however consider your own response to be an example of the type of
 exclusionary behavior that I was talking about. Dismissing those
 concerns as 'pontificating' does not help matters. And you have no idea
 what actions I have taken to attempt to recruit people to get involved. 

No, I don't. I'm happy to hear that you're getting busy from the ground
up, instead of waiting for official action.

 The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention
 of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list. 

Fair enough.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Stephen Farrell



On 06/18/2013 07:42 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
 On 6/18/13 12:08 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

 The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention
 of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list. 
 
 Fair enough.

Not quite. My local ietf@ietf.org folder has 392 messages that
match a search for diversity all but of few of which are since
this March, e.g. most recently before this thread [1].

There is a lot of noise on this list so I can understand that
threads might be missed but its not true to say there's been
nothing on here.

S.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg80076.html


 
 Peter

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Dave Crocker




The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention
of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list.


Fair enough.




I'm probably misunderstanding something basic here, because I thought 
there already was/is a list established:


   Diversity open mailing list

   https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/diversity


d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Suresh Krishnan

Hi Phil,

On 06/18/2013 02:08 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 When I make a statement at the microphone and then have multiple people
 come to thank me afterwards for making that point I don't consider it
 pontificating.
 
 I do however consider your own response to be an example of the type of
 exclusionary behavior that I was talking about. Dismissing those
 concerns as 'pontificating' does not help matters. And you have no idea
 what actions I have taken to attempt to recruit people to get involved. 
 
 The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention
 of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list. 

Apologies. The announcement of the diversity list was sent to the IETF
announcement list and not the discussion list. The diversity list can be
found here as Dave C. mentioned.

https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/diversity

Thanks
Suresh

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Phillip Hallam-Baker

I am getting my ietf@ietf.org on my gmail account.

I have no filters that delete mail, no mails with 'ietf' in them in my spam
folder and no copies of 80% of the mails to this list.


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Stephen Farrell
stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.iewrote:



 On 06/18/2013 07:42 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
  On 6/18/13 12:08 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 
  The issue was raised in the IETF plenary I would have expected mention
  of a followup mailing list to be made here on the ietf discussion list.
 
  Fair enough.

 Not quite. My local ietf@ietf.org folder has 392 messages that
 match a search for diversity all but of few of which are since
 this March, e.g. most recently before this thread [1].

 There is a lot of noise on this list so I can understand that
 threads might be missed but its not true to say there's been
 nothing on here.

 S.

 [1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg80076.html


 
  Peter
 




-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread David Morris



On Tue, 18 Jun 2013, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

 I am getting my ietf@ietf.org on my gmail account.
 
 I have no filters that delete mail, no mails with 'ietf' in them in my spam
 folder and no copies of 80% of the mails to this list.

That reads like you are missing 80% of the email distributed via this
list? That somehow, you are missing many emails w/o your filters
being responsible?

Re: IETF Diversity

2013-06-18 Thread Arturo Servin

Dave,

We created an IETF-TF in LACNOG; as you we also think that only a
meeting is not enough and along with ISOC, ccTLDs, LACNIC and other
organizations we are trying to encourage and prepare more people to
participate in the IETF by sending comments, reviewing documents and
writing RFCs. There are some specific actions that we are doing to
fulfill that goal (I can give more details if somebody is wanted to know).

As Jari pointed out, the results are not immidiately but we are
working on that.

If interested, anybody can subscribe at:

https://mail.lacnic.net/mailman/listinfo/ietf-lac

Regards,
as


On 6/19/13 1:20 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
 On 6/18/2013 10:17 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:
 Second, the IAOC has
 looked hard at the possibilities for reaching further out in the
 geographical world


 Jari,

 The only action that's been cited has been holding a meeting in that
 region.  A number of us have posted comments suggesting that this is
 unlikely to be an effective recruiting technique; a few also offered
 thoughts of other approaches.  I won't rehash the rationales that have
 been offered.

 If other avenues of recruiting are being explored by the IAOC, what
 are they?

 If the only avenue being considered is a meeting in the region, it
 would be helpful to see some response to the concerns raised about
 this as a recruiting tool.


 d/

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-05-06 Thread CJ Aronson

I was getting ready to send a note that basically said I give up when I saw
this post from Randy. Thanks Randy.

Then a friend posted this TED talk and it landed in my facebook feed.   It
gives me hope that there are a few men out there who might get the issue.
 I personally would love to see the IETF consult someone like this speaker.


http://www.upworthy.com/a-ted-talk-that-might-turn-every-man-who-watches-it-into-a-feminist-its-pretty-fantastic-7?g=2

I have found this whole thread discouraging and I felt the need to say
something.  This TED talk pretty much sums it up.

Thanks!

---Cathy


On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote:

 you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
 -- bob dylan

 we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly
 non-diverse.  it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly
 non-diverse culture.

 we need to do what we can to remedy this.  progress not perfection is
 our goal.

 measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what
 things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...).

 we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate
 what we can do to help.

 randy

Re: How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards? Was: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread S Moonesamy


At 13:15 29-04-2013, Michael StJohns wrote:

Let me ask a couple of specific questions of you.


I think that these are good questions.

Who have you mentored in the past 5 years?  Have  they ended up as 
working group chairs, or ADs or IAB members?   Do they mostly 
represent under-represented groups?  How many of them were employed 
by your employer (e.g. was this a work related task?)?


I don't mentor IETF participants as I consider everyone who does not 
have a title as a peer.  None of the peers I have interacted with 
ended up as working group chair, Area Director or IAB member.  I have 
not given much thought about whether most of the peers I have 
interacted with represent under-represented groups.  My guess is that 
it is a significant number.


During your time as an AD, how many women did you arm twist/recruit 
specifically  (or ask nicely) to take WG positions in your area (as 
opposed to them coming to you or your co-AD)?


I do some things on behalf of the Applications Area directorate.  At 
the last IETF meeting I asked four women whether they would like to 
do some reviews.  There was one positive answer.  There are people of 
different ages.  There are people who work for a range of vendors on 
the directorate.  There are a few people who work for 
universities.  There are people who come from different parts of the 
world.  The list of reviewers and the work they perform is published 
on an IETF web site [1].  If anyone has questions about 
under-represented groups in relation to the directorate please post a 
message to this mailing list and I will reply.


Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/app/trac/wiki/ApplicationsAreaDirectorate

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

I was counting femal ADs. I ment no female names in the AD list apears (in
my understandning I mybe wrong because in my culture some families name
their memebrs with names that we cannot notice gender). As I am a remote
participant I am not aware and may never notice difference. But I can refer
now for better than my count [1].

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg78882.html

AB

On 19 April 2013 at 12:22 Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambaryun at gmail.com
wrote
on this list:

 No name in the AD list appear so far, but if your the discuss-list is
 right then it may be good progress, hoping for more names for
 diversity.

I count three ADs on the diversity discussion list at the moment.  Why is
my
count different from yours?

Adrian

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread t . p .

- Original Message -
From: Margaret Wasserman m...@lilacglade.org
To: t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com
Cc: Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org; ietf@ietf.org
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 1:53 AM

Hi Tom,

On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote:
 If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are,
 e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for
lack
 of ability.
[…]
 If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world -
 which could in extremes..

Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of
these groups?  Where is this coming from?  You are putting up strawmen,
so that you can tear them down…

The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF
leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_.

There is no inherent reason why 40+-year-old, white, western males who
work at large networking equipment vendors are inherently more capable
of serving on the IESG than people from other groups within the IETF,
and there would be _considerable internal benefit_ to having an IESG
that was more diverse, because diverse groups make better decisions and
better represent the needs of the whole organization.  Therefore, if
there is something about our culture, our structure, our selection
process, or the way we run our meetings that is causing us to
predominantly select our leadership from a restricted group, we would
have _more capable_ and _better_ leadership if we could find a way to
broaden that pool.

_That_ is what this discussion is about.  This is not an effort to meet
some externally imposed notion of diversity.

tp
Margaret

The first I saw of this idea was the post by Ray, which said

 The IETF is concerned about diversity.  As good engineers, we would
like
 to attempt to measure diversity while working on addressing and
increasing
 it.  To that end, we are considering adding some possibly sensitive
 questions to the registration process, for example, gender.

For me, this came out of the blue.  I have no idea why it is considered
that the IETF - note, IETF not IAB or IESG or IAOC - has become
concerned nor what evidence there is of concern.

And note, 'for example, gender' which seems to have become the only
measure under consideration; was that Ray's intent, or was he being coy
and leaving out other frequent lacks of diversity which are more
delicate to discuss? I immediately assumed the latter, based on no
evidence at all!  Given the way the discussion has gone, perhaps he
meant
'only and exclusively gender but I could not possibly say that':-)

As Michael StJohns has said,
How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and
relevant source of high quality Internet standards?
which I think is spot on.  I do not see diversity (lack of) as being
part of that until it is shown to be.  I do see the IESG as key to the
work of the IETF and see
filling positions there as challenging, perhaps a risk to the long term
existence of the IETF.  The requirements - technical knowledge,
experience,
time to spend on IETF business, e.g. - make the candidate pool rather
small
and I believe that any more constraints will weaken that pool and could
hazard
the IETF.

There are workshops for (potential?) WG Chairs; I would see merit in
more such sessions on how to work effectively within the IETF, at any
level, with a subtext of it is possible to do more, to 'advance', it is
really not (quite) impossible.  Diversity would have no place in such
workshops but it could increase the candidate pool for a variety of
posts.

Tom Petch
/tp

Margaret

Re: [IETF] Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread t . p .

- Original Message -
From: Warren Kumari war...@kumari.net
To: Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca
Cc: Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu; ietf@ietf.org;
stbry...@cisco.com
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 10:01 PM
On Apr 29, 2013, at 4:55 PM, Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca wrote:

 On 2013-04-29, at 16:49, Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu wrote:

 Stewart == Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com writes:

   Stewart Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems
   Stewart akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and

 Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you
something
 that matters for your decision criteria.

 http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png

Wow, that *was* useful, and has helped reinforce my belief that I chose
the right browser -- Think of the children, don't use IE.

tp
Warren

The correlation that has attracted attention near me is the marked drop
in crime rates compared with a reduction in the use of leaded petrol;
here, you can make a comparison with countries that have or have not
reduced the use of leaded petrol at different times, and the correlation
stands up, so perhaps Microsoft is not implicated in this one.

Tom Petch

Couldn't resist: http://xkcd.com/552/

W

 Joe

--
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally
religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without
warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the
need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat.
Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to
be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and straong-minded kind of
atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other
armpit and shout, Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!
or Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!
  -- Terry Pratchett

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread Jari Arkko

I think the statistics are very interesting and we should continue developing 
them, but we should also not be driven by them. I'll repeat again what I've 
said before: I can see increasing both participation diversity and leadership 
diversity being useful for the IETF. We are limited by various constraints, 
type of people who are in our field, where the industry is located in the 
world, funding resources, expertise gained by various participants, etc. But 
within those constraints, I'd see plenty of benefits to increasing diversity 
along many axes. (Or indeed even relaxing some of the constraints, such 
lowering participation costs by remote participation, or lowering leadership 
costs by requiring less than 100% time commitments.)

Jari

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread Randy Bush

you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
-- bob dylan

we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly
non-diverse.  it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly
non-diverse culture.

we need to do what we can to remedy this.  progress not perfection is
our goal.

measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what
things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...).

we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate
what we can do to help.

randy

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread David Meyer

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote:

 you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
 -- bob dylan

 we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly
 non-diverse.  it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly
 non-diverse culture.

 we need to do what we can to remedy this.  progress not perfection is
 our goal.

 measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what
 things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...).

 we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate
 what we can do to help.

 randy


Nicely said Randy. --dmm

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-30 Thread Ralph Droms


On Apr 30, 2013, at 4:53 PM 4/30/13, David Meyer d...@1-4-5.net wrote:

 
 
 On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote:
 you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
 -- bob dylan
 
 we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly
 non-diverse.  it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly
 non-diverse culture.
 
 we need to do what we can to remedy this.  progress not perfection is
 our goal.
 
 measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what
 things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...).
 
 we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate
 what we can do to help.
 
 randy
 
 Nicely said Randy. --dmm

Agreed - without consulting a weatherman, we've been having a discussion (among 
a rather un-diverse group of participants) about where we are, as opposed to 
asking the questions Randy suggests.

- Ralph

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Christian Huitema

 All of which is why we should limit our attempts to do numerical analysis for 
 this topic, and worry far more about the basics, 
 including such things as interaction (in)sensitivities, group tone and style, 
 and observable misbehaviors, all of which are likely to produce biasing 
 results.

Certainly useful, but it is easy to inject one's own bias into such processes, 
and to overlook other factors. I may be biased, but I have the impression that 
the largest source of bias in IESG selection is the need to secure funding for 
the job, which effectively self-select people working for large companies 
making networking products. Gender may be the least of the problems there; 
there are other dimensions of diversity, e.g. academic vs. industry, network 
equipment versus internet service providers, software versus hardware, etc. 
Only a fraction of these segments can afford to have someone working full-time 
on the IESG. Now, having to work full time is a bit much for a volunteer 
position, and we may want to consider ways to remedy that.

-- Christian Huitema

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On 29/04/2013 01:53, Margaret Wasserman wrote:

Hi Tom,

On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote:

If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are,
e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack
of ability.

[…]

If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world -
which could in extremes..

Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of these 
groups?  Where is this coming from?  You are putting up strawmen, so that you 
can tear them down…

The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership 
doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_.


The evidence seems to be that human's are terrible at guessing
statistics, and the only statistics that are reliable as those
objectively gathered and subjected to rigorous statistical analysis.
You can often see this in human assessments of risk. It is
also in the nature of statistics that you get long runs of outliers, and
that only when you take a long view to you see the averages you
would expect. Again Humans are terrible with this, assuming
for example that a coin that comes up heads 10 times in a row
the assumption is that this is bias, and not a normal statistical
variation that you would expect in an infinite number of throws.

Given the diversity ratios that we see, it is unclear to me whether
we are observing a systematic effect or a statistical effect.

It would be useful to the discussion if we could see data on diversity
that was the output of a rigorous  statistical analysis. i.e. one that
included a confidence analysis and not a simple average in a few
spot years.

- Stewart

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

On 29/04/2013 05:05, Michael StJohns wrote:

At 08:53 PM 4/28/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote:

The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership
doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_.

Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead,
consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of
the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate
population for the IAB and IESG.

By my count (using the WG chairs picture page), there are 202 current working
group chairs. Of these 15 are female - or 7.4% of the population [It would be
more reliable to do this for any WG chair in the last 5-10 years, but the above
was readily available and I think provides at least the basis for discussion.
Anticipating the argument, I would assume for the sake of discussion a fairly
similar percentage of ex-working group chairs per gender unless there is
evidence to the contrary]

There are 14 (current area directors plus the chair) members of the IESG, of
which none are currently female.

There are 12 current IAB members of which 1 member is female.

Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 14 * (15/202) or 1.03
IESG members should be female.

Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 12 * (15/202) or .89 IAB
members should be female.

Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 26 * (15/202) or 1.93
IAB + IESG members should be female.

And pretending for a moment that picks for the IAB and IESG are completely
random from the candidate set of Working group chairs, the binomial
distribution for 7.4% for 27 positions is:

0 - 12.5%, 1 - 27.0%, 2 - 28.1%, 3 or more - 32.5%. (e.g. about 40% of the
time, the IAB and IESG combined will have 0 or 1 female members).

for 7.4% for 15 positions (IESG) is:
0 - 31.4%, 1 - 37.8%, 2 - 21.2%, 3 or more - 9.5%

for 7.4% for 12 positions (IAB) is:
0 - 39.6%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 16.8%, 3 or more - 5.4%

But the actual one you should consider is 7.4% for 14 positions (annual
replacement):
0 - 34%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 19.9%, 3 or more - 8%.

This last one says that for any given nomcom selection, assuming strict random
selection, 72% of the time 0 or 1 females will be selected across both the IAB
and IESG. You should use this one as the actual compositions of the IAB/IESG
are the sum of all the nomcom actions that have happened before.

There are statistical tests to determine whether there is a statistically
significant difference in populations, but my admittedly ancient memories of
statistics suggest that the population size of the IAB/IESG is too small for a
statistically valid comparison with either the WG chair population or the IETF
population.

Of course, the nomcom doesn't select and the confirming bodies do not confirm
based on a roll of the dice.
But looking at this analysis, it's unclear - for this one axis of gender - that the question
why the diversity of the IETF leadership does not reflect the diversity of the set of IETF WG
chairs has a more correct answer than the luck of the draw.

My base premise may be incorrect: That you need to have been a WG chair prior
to service as an IAB or IESG member. I hope it isn't as I think this level of
expertise is useful for success in these bodies.

Assuming it is correct, then the next question is whether or not there is a
significant difference in percentage of female attendees vs percentage of
female working group chairs and is there a root cause for that difference that
the IETF can address in a useful manner.

Mike

This is in line with my own estimate based on an approximation of 1:10
which with random selection gives an error approximation of sqrt(1)=1

The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates
are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of
bias that only average out in the long run. So you will get long runs
of 0. Very infrequently you will also get long runs of 27. In both cases
it is in human nature to would assume something is wrong, when it is an
artifact of random numbers. Humans have considerable difficulty
discriminating between systematic and statistical problems, and taking
the long view rather than the short view.

For that reason, as I noted in my previous post, we need a rigorous
statistical analysis with proper confidence intervals, rather than
simple averages on spot years.

- Stewart

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On 29/04/2013 06:57, Dave Crocker wrote:

On 4/28/2013 10:52 PM, Christian Huitema wrote:

Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your
baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing
factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions.


Mike actually mentioned that. Let's assume a simplified curriculum of
participant - author/editor - WG chair - IESG, which more or less
reflects increasing seniority in the IETF. We may suspect that there
is bias that, at each step, privileges some candidates over others.
However, the mechanisms are different at each step.



Exactly.  Complicated processes, needing high quality data that gets 
complicated analysis, that we aren't well-enough trained to do well 
and aren't going to be doing.




Dave

Of all the social mixes  you would anticipate the IETF to be in the 
likely to do it, likely to do it correctly quadrant.


Stewart

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Dave Crocker


On 4/29/2013 2:15 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote:

On 29/04/2013 06:57, Dave Crocker wrote:

Exactly.  Complicated processes, needing high quality data that gets
complicated analysis, that we aren't well-enough trained to do well
and aren't going to be doing.



Dave

Of all the social mixes  you would anticipate the IETF to be in the
likely to do it, likely to do it correctly quadrant.



If by 'it', you mean statistical analysis of human behavior, no.  I'd 
expect our group methodology to be exactly as poor at it as we are...


d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread John C Klensin



--On Monday, April 29, 2013 09:55 +0100 Stewart Bryant
stbry...@cisco.com wrote:

 The question that people are asking is why the diversity of
 the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the
 IETF_.
 
 The evidence seems to be that human's are terrible at
 guessing
 statistics, and the only statistics that are reliable as those
 objectively gathered and subjected to rigorous statistical
 analysis.

I mostly agree with this, but it means that attempts at
statistical measurement of populations we can't really
characterize are irrelevant.  In particular, as soon as one
talks about the diversity of _the IETF_, one is talking about
the participant population.  There is no evidence at all, and
some evidences to the contrary, that the attendee population is
a good surrogate (approximation to a random sample, if you
prefer) for the participant population.   Making that assumption
by polling or measuring the attendee function and assuming it is
representative of the IETF may introduce far more biases than
most of what we are talking about.

 You can often see this in human assessments of risk. It is
 also in the nature of statistics that you get long runs of
 outliers, and
 that only when you take a long view to you see the averages you
 would expect. Again Humans are terrible with this, assuming
 for example that a coin that comes up heads 10 times in a row
 the assumption is that this is bias, and not a normal
 statistical
 variation that you would expect in an infinite number of
 throws.

On the other hand, as a loyal empirical Bayesian, I suggest
that, if I observe a run of 10 heads and, as a result, bet on
the next toss being heads, I am somewhat more likely to carry
home my winnings at the end of the day that you are if you
continue to bet on a 50-50 chance no matter how long the run
gets... _even_ if the rules are normal statistical variation.
Now, after an infinite number of coin tosses occur, you may be
proven correct, but part of the reason for that Bayesian
judgment (or a judgment based on moving average properties of
the time series) is that few of us are going to be able to wait
for that infinite number of tosses. 

 It would be useful to the discussion if we could see data on
 diversity
 that was the output of a rigorous  statistical analysis. i.e.
 one that
 included a confidence analysis and not a simple average in a
 few spot years.

I agree.  But I also suggest that humans are pretty good at
binary comparisons and some longitudinal relationships that do
not involve population samples.  For example, with no effort to
compare the population statistics of the IESG with the
population statistics of the IETF (the precise comparison that
is most susceptible to the statistical problems both of us are
concerned about), it is easy to look at IESG membership
longitudinally and observe that, between the early 1990s and
2010, there were always at least one, and often two or three,
women on the IESG.  Since then, zero.Now, based on around 17
years of moving average, I feel somewhat justified statistically
in believing that something odd is happening.  

I would feel much more justified if we went a couple years more
with no change in our procedures and how we think about things
and the zero women trend continued, but that illustrates the
other problems with this sort of analysis and an attempt to base
it on population statistics, especially the population
statistics of experimental design.  First, our having these
discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities to
the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about it.  If
we end up with a woman or three on the IESG a year from now, it
will basically be impossible to know whether that was 

-- simply a return to normal behavior after a period of
deviation that could be attributed to statistical
variation or 

-- whether it was because this discussion was
effectively a consciousness-raising exercise that
changed how decisions are made.

The second issue is that, as in a clinical trial in which it
becomes obvious (with all of those subjective human judgments as
well as strict statistical ones) that one of the treatment
groups is doing much better than others, it may be socially and
morally unacceptable to continue the experiment in order to get
cleaner statistical results.


--On Monday, April 29, 2013 06:14 + Christian Huitema
huit...@microsoft.com wrote:

 Certainly useful, but it is easy to inject one's own bias into
 such processes, and to overlook other factors. I may be
 biased, but I have the impression that the largest source of
 bias in IESG selection is the need to secure funding for the
 job, which effectively self-select people working for large
 companies making networking products.

Or at least large companies and mostly those with a significant
stake in the Internet.  I agree with this impression.   In
principle, we could separate gender (or other) bias

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Dave Crocker


On 4/29/2013 9:38 AM, John C Klensin wrote:

First, our having these
discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities to
the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about it.



Actually, it probably hasn't.

It has raised awareness that there are people who are sensitive to the 
topic.  It probably has raised some people's awareness that there are 
serious issues here and that the IETF ought to pay attention to them 
(better).


I seriously doubt it has afforded many folk a sense of how to behave 
differently, and how to evaluate community and management choices in 
terms of diversity concerns.


Let's not confuse activity with progress.

d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Melinda Shore

On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote:
 The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates
 are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of
 bias that only average out in the long run. 

Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us
a long period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long
run we might expect the same statistical fluctuation
to deliver unto us a stretch in which women are overrepresented
in the leadership.

Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread John C Klensin



--On Monday, April 29, 2013 09:46 -0700 Dave Crocker
d...@dcrocker.net wrote:

 On 4/29/2013 9:38 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
 First, our having these
 discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities
 to the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about
 it.
 
 
 Actually, it probably hasn't.
 
 It has raised awareness that there are people who are
 sensitive to the topic.  It probably has raised some people's
 awareness that there are serious issues here and that the IETF
 ought to pay attention to them (better).
 
 I seriously doubt it has afforded many folk a sense of how to
 behave differently, and how to evaluate community and
 management choices in terms of diversity concerns.

I am trying (temporarily) to be more optimistic than that, but I
fear that you may be correct.  

If so, we may be in big trouble and/or wasting our time by even
having this discussion.  If raising awareness and sensitivity
isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions
differently and the only criteria the community will accept for
either the existence of a problem or evidence that progress is
being made is hard, frequency-based, statistical (or statistical
analyses of experimental) data then,

 -- we can quibble endlessly about what should be
measured and what the measurements mean and probably
will, and

 -- we will never agree on quantitative criteria for
progress or adequate diversity because such criteria
will have the odor of preferential treatment and quotas
(whether they are or not).

And that applies not just to selections by the Nomcom but to all
of the selections that are affected by the select people whom
you know and know can do the job behavior that has been
discussed at length in another thread.
 
 Let's not confuse activity with progress.

Indeed.  Let's also try to avoid defining progress in a way that
makes even useful activity impossible.   But, again, I fear you
are correct about all of this.

   john

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread John E Drake

What a concept.

Irrespectively Yours,

John


 -Original Message-
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
 Melinda Shore
 Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 9:52 AM
 To: ietf@ietf.org
 Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
 
 On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote:
  The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional
 estimates
  are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs
  of bias that only average out in the long run.
 
 Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us a long
 period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long run we might
 expect the same statistical fluctuation to deliver unto us a stretch in
 which women are overrepresented in the leadership.
 
 Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Ted Lemon

On Apr 29, 2013, at 1:08 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote:
 If raising awareness and sensitivity
 isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions
 differently 

Statistical analysis shows that even when peoples' awareness is raised, biases 
continue to exist, not because the people are bad people, but because cognitive 
biases are simply not affected by consciousness raising alone.   So IMHO at 
least, what we are looking for here is not consciousness-raising, but some 
method of determining if we are indeed suffering from cognitive biases here, 
and if so, some method for actually addressing the problem.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Lou Berger

Did anyone notice the NPR piece this AM?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/29/178810467/blazing-the-trail-for-female-programmers

Perhaps it's time for an IETF equivalent/chapter of
http://railsbridge.org/, http://blackfounders.com/,
http://wisecampaign.org.uk/, etc. ...

Lou

On 4/29/2013 12:46 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
 Let's not confuse activity with progress.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

At 01:38 PM 4/29/2013, Ted Lemon wrote:
On Apr 29, 2013, at 1:08 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote:
 If raising awareness and sensitivity
 isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions
 differently 

Statistical analysis shows that even when peoples' awareness is raised, biases 
continue to exist, not because the people are bad people, but because 
cognitive biases are simply not affected by consciousness raising alone.   
So IMHO at least, what we are looking for here is not consciousness-raising, 
but some method of determining if we are indeed suffering from cognitive 
biases here, and if so, some method for actually addressing the problem.


Yup.  The problem here is that the sample set of leadership positions is so 
small its difficult to get any reasonable measure one way or the other.   When 
you start mixing and matching gender, race, citizenship etc into the pot as 
possible determiners it just gets worse.

The normal measure for determining whether one population is distinct from 
another appears to be the Chi Squared test.  

Throwing in a matrix of 

WG Chairs IAB/IESG Members
Male 187 25
Female15 1

And running the calculation (http://www.quantpsy.org/chisq/chisq.htm) using the 
Yates' values (because the sample size is so small), there is a 79.13% chance 
that any observed differences in the composition of the two groups is solely 
due to statistical variations.

And playing off of John's message, if you look around 2005 when there were 4 
female members of the IAB and IESG (and assuming the same composition of WG 
chairs), that calculation yields  something 31.4% - or 2 chances in 3 that the 
differences were due to something other than statistical variations.

When I look at this as a pure numbers problem, I'm unable to say there is a 
cognitive bias in the selection process and in fact the numbers would argue 
against being able to say that without a much larger set of IAB/IESG members.

Mike

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

At 01:34 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 4/28/2013 9:05 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct 
question.  Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership 
doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs?  I believe 
this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG.


Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline 
stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the 
allocation of wg chair positions.


A couple of points: 

Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD 
select chairs.  I believe that most chairs are self-selected [e.g. hey AD, I 
want to run a BOF on this topic with the idea of forming a working group - 
here's the other person who might chair, what do you think?  Sure - go ahead, 
we may twiddle with things a bit at charter formation, but you look like you 
know what you're doing].  With one exception (where I was asked to chair an 
evaluation panel), that's been my experience.

Would you have evidence to the contrary? 

Second point: 

You ignored most of the post and went directly to my last question - 'If there 
is no statistical difference between the IAB/IESG and the WG chair set, should 
we then consider the relationship between the IETF attending constituency and 
the WG chair set?Say the average meeting had 1500 attendees.  7.4% would 
suggest that there are 111 female attendees.  If the actual number is higher or 
lower it MAY represent a  statistically significant difference in the 
composition of the two groups.  Or it may not.   And even then, may only have a 
very indirect impact in the composition of the IAB/IESG.  Care to do the 
analysis?

Later, Mike



d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

At 01:57 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:
including such things as interaction (in)sensitivities, group tone and style, 
and observable misbehaviors, all of which are likely to produce biasing 
results.

But in which direction?

The same thing could be said of pushing personal or cultural biases into the 
interpretation of group tone, style, and taking offense at behaviors which one 
culture might construe as offensive but for 50 other cultures is just the way 
things work.  

We have an IETF culture - like it or not.  It changes over time, as the 
population changes.  We can't and shouldn't expect to be able to change it by 
fiat, or to adopt as whole cloth a bias free culture (for some values of bias).

Mike

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

At 12:51 PM 4/29/2013, Melinda Shore wrote:
On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote:
 The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates
 are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of
 bias that only average out in the long run. 

Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us
a long period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long
run we might expect the same statistical fluctuation
to deliver unto us a stretch in which women are overrepresented
in the leadership.

Hi Melinda - 

Actually, look at the time frame around 2004-5.  Multiple women on the IAB and 
multiple women on the IESG.  Almost double the expected value of 2 given the 
WG proportions.  

One of the things I saw, but didn't comment on elsewhere, was that I had noted 
that a number of the women who had participated as IESG or IAB members have 
since stopped participating (attending actually) IETF meetings.  I didn't 
comment on it because I didn't have a good feel for whether that proportion was 
higher or lower than the men who have been IESG/IAB members and are now not 
participating.  Analysis of this might yield some data on whether or not we're 
losing long term female participants at a higher rate than long term male 
participants - if so, it may be worthwhile to ask former members the why 
question to see if there's anything we can do to mitigate.  Long term 
participants appear (my opinion) to be more attractive candidates for IAB/IESG 
positions.

Mike



Melinda

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Margaret Wasserman


Hi Mike,

On Apr 29, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote:
 We have an IETF culture - like it or not.  It changes over time, as the 
 population changes.  We can't and shouldn't expect to be able to change it by 
 fiat, or to adopt as whole cloth a bias free culture (for some values of 
 bias).


How you do you think a culture evolves to be more inclusive?  Might that start 
with discussions like these?

Margaret

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Sam Hartman

For what it's worth, I'm not finding the current discussion is providing
me useful information for making decisions.  It doesn't really matter to
me whether the problem is selection of WG chairs or selection of
IAB/IESG/IAOC after WG chairs are selected.  I think it is valuable to
attempt to improve both situations in parallel, and the sorts of
conclusions being drawn from the statistical discussion we're currently
having cannot possibly change my opinion on that issue.

I'm not saying that my mind is closed to being changed; simply that I've
considered all the possible conclusions that I think could be drawn from
the analysis being considered and from my standpoint they don't affect
how I'd feel about various proposals that could be brought forward.

Which I guess speaks to John's point that I at least am a member of the
community who doesn't think the hard statistical analysis is useful
here.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?