subject:"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?


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?


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?


On 29/04/2013 20:39, Sam Hartman wrote:

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.


Sam,

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

Stewart

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?

At 03:30 PM 4/29/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote:

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?

I believe your statement implies some preconceptions - that you believe the 
IETF culture is not inclusive enough and that more inclusiveness will benefit 
the IETF.  I'm not sure there's evidence to support the first - hence the 
numerical analysis.   It may be the case that we're not inclusive enough is a 
correct evaluation, but see Stewart's note on the human tendency to impute 
patterns into random results.

I would ask this instead - How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an 
effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards?

If one of the answers to that question necessarily involves inclusiveness, then 
the conversation should go forward on that topic, but preferably not in 
isolation, not as the fix this now knee jerk (my perception) type of activity 
that seems to be going on.

Let me ask a couple of specific questions of you.  

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?)?

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)?  

How many non-employee, under-represented population attendees is your current 
employer supporting to go to the IETF?  Have you addressed this with your 
employer?

Why is the inclusiveness question more of an IETF question, as opposed to one 
of personal actions?

I'm asking the above, because I'm trying to get a calibration on what you mean 
by inclusiveness and how important it actually is for you, and possibly for 
your employer.

Mike



Margaret

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On 4/29/2013 12:04 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:

At 01:34 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:
Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement -
that AD select chairs.


It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of 
IETF procedure:  ADs hire and fire wg chairs.





Second point:

You ignored most of the post and went directly to my last question


I went to the meta-point that the line of discussion isn't 
methodologically meaningful or educationally useful.  Possibly you 
noticed one or two additional postings in this sub-thread asserting the 
same thing.


d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Dan Harkins


On Mon, April 29, 2013 12:39 pm, Sam Hartman wrote:
 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.

  Sounds to me like you have the cart in front of the horse. You already
have in mind various proposals (interestingly left unstated) and are looking
for data that can justify them being brought forward. Apparently, this data
does not help you justify these proposals so you find no use discussing in
it. Maybe we should let the data drive the proposals instead of the other
way around.

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Sam Hartman

 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.

Let's take Mike's most recent messages here.  It doesn't actually matter
to me whether the problem in gender diversity is at the nomcom level or
at the wg chair selection level.
So, a statistical discussion of whether there's bias in nomcom choosing
leaders from the wg chairs does not provide input that matters in my
decision criteria, so I disregard that particular analysis.

I certainly did not mean to imply that I disregard statistics, or even
disregard statistics in diversity discussions.  Simply, I don't find the
statistical discussion here pointful, and I think it's a sufficient
distraction that I felt a need to speak out about it.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Joe Abley


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


Joe

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

2013-04-29 Thread Warren Kumari


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.

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?


On 4/29/2013 2:20 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:

At 04:40 PM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:

Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement -
that AD select chairs.


It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of IETF 
procedure:  ADs hire and fire wg chairs.


The AD's do have the final say.  No question.  But  select implies that the 
own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope.



They do own it; that's a formal truth.

That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices 
means nothing, in terms of their authority.


Don't confuse efficiency hacks with formal authority.


d/

ps. I'm sure this was really quite an important point to debate, 
relative to problems with IETF diversity and culture.


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Dan Harkins


On Mon, April 29, 2013 2:28 pm, Dave Crocker wrote:
 On 4/29/2013 2:20 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
 At 04:40 PM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:
 Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement -
 that AD select chairs.

 It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of
 IETF procedure:  ADs hire and fire wg chairs.

 The AD's do have the final say.  No question.  But  select implies
 that the own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope.

 They do own it; that's a formal truth.

 That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices
 means nothing, in terms of their authority.

  But it might mean something in terms of the discussion at hand. If the
ADs are concurring with self-organizing choices as opposed to selecting
WG chairs, then they aren't really imposing a looks like me bias into
the selection process.

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Barry Leiba

Mike:
 Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement -
 that AD select chairs.

Dave:
 It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of
 IETF procedure:  ADs hire and fire wg chairs.

Mike:
 The AD's do have the final say.  No question.  But  select implies
 that the own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope.

Dave:
 They do own it; that's a formal truth.

 That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices
 means nothing, in terms of their authority.

Dan:
 But it might mean something in terms of the discussion at hand. If the
 ADs are concurring with self-organizing choices as opposed to selecting
 WG chairs, then they aren't really imposing a looks like me bias into
 the selection process.

OK, here: I have to step in now.
Let me look at the new working group chairs and BoF chairs in the App
Area (as that's my area) since I've been an AD (one year, so far).

Chair changes:
APPSAWG: added Murray Kucherawy and Salvatore Loreto
CORE: added Andrew McGregor
IRI: added Peter Saint-Andre

New working groups
WEIRDS: Olaf Kolkman and Murray Kucherawy
SCIM: Morteza Ansari and Leif Johansson
SPFBIS: SM and Andrew Sullivan
IMAPMOVE: Ned Freed and Alexey Melnikov
JCARDCAL: Bert Greevenbosch and Peter Saint-Andre
QRESYNC: Dave Cridland and Eliot Lear

BoFs at IETF 83:
SCIM: Eliot Lear and Steve Bellovin
WEIRDS: Andrew Sullivan

BoFs at IETF 84:
DSII: Beth Pale and Ted Hardie

BoFs at IETF 86:
AGGSRV: Peter Saint-Andre
JSON: Joe Hildebrand

In all but one of these cases, we (the ADs) contacted people and
*asked* them to chair.  The exception was DSII and Beth Pale, but this
was not a working-group-forming BoF (and Ted was the one we
solicited).  For the SCIM working group, Morteza was one of the
proponents of the IETF 83 BoF, but he did not ask to be chair, and *I
asked him* only after consulting with folks and getting opinions that
suggested that he would be a good choice.  That has generally been my
approach and Pete's to finding chairs: getting opinions other than our
own.

We have a couple of other new chartering efforts in process, and we'll
be handling those similarly: selecting people we think will be
appropriate to chair those working groups.

Of course, if someone comes to us and says that they'd like to chair a
working group, we will take that into consideration.  But we most
certainly do NOT simply appoint people because they're technology
proponents, nor because they ask us to.  My sense of the rest of the
IESG is that they behave similarly.

I can tell you unequivocally that the ADs appoint the chairs, and own
the entire process of [...] staffing a WG.  We are not just taking
the people who come to us and saying, Yeah, sure, you'll do.  We
also want to find new chairs -- in the working-group chairs list
above, Andrew, Morteza, SM, Bert, and Dave are all first-time chairs.

Pete and I are also actively looking to increase the diversity in App
Area chairs -- perhaps you'll notice that we have *no* female chairs
in the App Area, at least partly because we have no women who are
active in the App Area just now.  We're working on that (and on other
diversity aspects) -- see, for example, the first item here:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-apparea-0.pdf

We're always eager for suggestions for people to be on our list of
potential chairs; please send such to app-...@tools.ietf.org.  And,
yes, we *do* own the staffing process.

Barry, Applications AD

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Brian E Carpenter

On 30/04/2013 08:49, Sam Hartman wrote:
...
 Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something
 that matters for your decision criteria.

Yes. And I would like to know, in statistical terms, whether
there are significant differences between (for example) the
M/F ratios among (a) IETF registrants, (b) active participants,
(c) WG chairs  secretaries and (d) I* members.

[Discussion on the objective definition of active participation
is deferred for now.]

The null hypothesis would be that no significant differences exist.
If that turns out to be true, we know that our problem is only lack of
diversity among registrants. If it turns out to be false, we know
that we have an internal problem of some kind as well.

   Brian

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-29 Thread Sam Hartman

 Brian == Brian E Carpenter brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com writes:


Brian The null hypothesis would be that no significant differences
Brian exist.  If that turns out to be true, we know that our
Brian problem is only lack of diversity among registrants. If it
Brian turns out to be false, we know that we have an internal
Brian problem of some kind as well.

Yes.
I'll admit that that particular question--which is far more involved
than the numbers I've seen thrown around to date--is somewhat
interesting.

Although while it influences how I'd think about deciding on proposals,
there's no answer to that question that has a clear set of decisions for
me, even ignoring questions about methodology, definitions of
participants, etc, etc.

1) I may believe that increasing diversity among leadership so that the
leadership is more diverse than the population as a whole will help
increase diversity of the population.

2) I may believe that the diversity of the leadership  is more of a
problem in terms of either quality of spec or credibility of
organization than diversity of the participants/registrants.

But you've definitely started to get into a realm where the statistics
are more interesting to me.
And i'll drop this now, because I realize I'm only one participant and I
discussion that doesn't provide helpful information for me may well
provide useful information for others.

Re: User Culture or Management (was Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?)

2013-04-29 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

retransmited (not received at IETF or published)

On 4/29/13, Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Mike,

 (sorry for my long message, will try to improve)

 I like the concept and reasoning of your message, and would like to
 add, is there other reasons for the results and conclusion your
 message got to? Is there something we can fix in the ietf-culture or
 ietf-procedures to make the diversity more established? I think that
 female managers/leaders are important to any world-organisation to get
 successful, and to be specific, I will recommend all world NPOs
 (Non-Profit Org.) need gender diversity (male or female, which one may
 be minority) at *least* 10-20 percent of management teams. An NPO with
 all male or all female management is not successful for the world of
 diverse *gender* and *users*. Management skills if gender-diversed
 will reflect better community involvement, choices, culture, and
 decisions.

  IMHO, Organisation Management objectives are to make 1) *users*
 increase in numbers, 2) increase in diverse, and 3) increase in
 satisfaction. If only present/current users select the management
 there is no dought that their decisions reflect users-culture and
 awareness, but do they increase the three objectives.

 My concerns in the diversity issue is to focus on the diversity of
 *management-gender* and *ietf-users* to benefit future decisions and
 make *awareness* into the ietf-culture. Your message discussed both
 but for the diversity of ietf-users not in similar depth compared with
 gender, which I think you may help me understand/evaluate its diverse
 in ietf.

 Regards,
 AB

 ++
 From: Michael StJohns mstjohns at comcast.net
 To: Margaret Wasserman mrw at lilacglade.org,t.p. daedulus at
 btconnect.com
 Cc: ietf at ietf.org
 Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:05:37 -0400

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Margaret Wasserman


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.

Margaret

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Glen Zorn


On 04/29/2013 07:53 AM, 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_.

 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.

It seems like everybody in the IETF is already in that pool.  After all, 
any participant can self-nominate for an AD position; how can the pool 
get any bigger?






 _That_ is what this discussion is about.

Really?  It appeared to me that the discussion arose because some people 
were unhappy about the makeup of the IESG, not the selection pool.  
However, if what you're saying is true, that's great: since the 
selection pool is already universally inclusive, problem solved  we can 
turn our seemingly limitless capacity for bickering to other purposes ;-) .



This is not an effort to meet  some externally imposed notion of

 diversity.

 Margaret

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Michael StJohns

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Dave Crocker


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.


d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Christian Huitema

 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. Self-selection, selection by WG chair, selection by the 
nom com. It makes sense to assess the filtering effect of each step 
independently, and in particular to assess the nomcom by comparing the pool of 
WG chairs to the selected nominees.

-- Christian Huitema

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-28 Thread Dave Crocker


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.


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.


d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread l.wood


A statistician? This entire thread is basically arguing that the IETF needs a 
human resources department.

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/



From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Brian E 
Carpenter [brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com]
Sent: 18 April 2013 16:43
To: Pete Resnick
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

On 18/04/2013 16:28, Pete Resnick wrote:
...
 That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess
 and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling
 bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because
 we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who
 do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the
 rest of us do.

 This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question
 by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to
 understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and
 subconscious biases get in the way.

Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the
historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the
I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant
bias in the selection process over the years.

   Brian

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

Andrew

Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment,
and we respect those people for their other contributions and would
like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and
therefore we want to make the environment less chilly.  I'm sort of
surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite
plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone
participating.

The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience
(did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined
IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly),
mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not
fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it
is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF
lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they
get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural
argument.

 I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to
lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience.

AB

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread t . p .

- Original Message -
From: Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org
To: Andrew Sullivan a...@anvilwalrusden.com
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 4:59 AM
On Thu, April 18, 2013 6:44 pm, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
 On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:17:21AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote:
   So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of
 diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem?

 Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment,
 and we respect those people for their other contributions and would
 like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and
 therefore we want to make the environment less chilly.  I'm sort of
 surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite
 plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone
 participating.

  Well, that is certainly not the message that I read. What I read was
that the I* leadership is 97% male (and 97% white) and that alone
puts into question the legitimacy of the IETF as an International
Standards Development Organization.

tp
Yes, that is the message I am getting from this thread and it seems to
me to be a canard that originates from outside the IETF, perhaps in
groups promoting Diversity and Rights, as opposed to engineering.

I have encountered many network experts in my day job yet within the
IETF, I encounter a large number of seriously talented people, active on
many mailing lists, who are in a different league to the former group.
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.

And the IETF is unusual in its leadership.  Some organisations promote
the technically able, regardless of their lack of management skills, and
suffer as a result.  Leaders need to lead, and manage, and delegate the
technical aspects of the work.  The IETF is different.  WG Chairs and
ADs must have world-class technical skills - if anything, I think that
this comes at the expense of leadership, and sometimes wish that WG
Chairs and ADs had more management skills, but recognise that that must
not be at the expense of the technical skills.  Even so, being the most
brilliant editor of, say, a new security standard does not mean that the
person would make a good AD.

If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world -
which could in extremis be construed as so many Chinese, so many
Indians, so many Africans etc - then the IETF would be a less effective,
probably an ineffective, organisation.

So what's the problem?  And who says so?

Tom Petch

/tp

If people are encountering a
chilly environment then that is a different issue.

  It has been a few IETFs since I've heard someone approach the mic
and say that is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time and a few
more since it was said to me. That kind of brusqueness is part of our
culture but I think it can be off-putting and a barrier to contributing.
New people get intimidated around a bunch of aggressive type-A
personalities and may be reluctant to present or contribute for fear
of being put down.

  If we want to make the IETF a less chilly place that is more inviting
and we want to encourage participation maybe we should address
our cultural tics and idiosyncrasies that represent a barrier to entry
rather than enumerate the women who have registered for a meeting.
(And yes, I am talking about myself).

  regards,

  Dan.

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread l.wood


Female ADs include Allison Mankin, whose bio recently appeared on this list in 
relation to her new appointment.

There's now a diversity discussion list, where this discussion should move to.

http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/04/diversity/

Does what you think matter, when you clearly don't know anything?

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/



From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam 
Baryun [abdussalambar...@gmail.com]
Sent: 19 April 2013 10:37
To: a...@anvilwalrusden.com
Cc: ietf
Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

Andrew

Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment,
and we respect those people for their other contributions and would
like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and
therefore we want to make the environment less chilly.  I'm sort of
surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite
plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone
participating.

The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience
(did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined
IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly),
mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not
fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it
is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF
lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they
get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural
argument.

 I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to
lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience.

AB

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread Abdussalam Baryun

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. Your input not helping discussion,

AB

On 4/19/13, l.w...@surrey.ac.uk l.w...@surrey.ac.uk wrote:

 Female ADs include Allison Mankin, whose bio recently appeared on this list
 in relation to her new appointment.

 There's now a diversity discussion list, where this discussion should move
 to.

 http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/04/diversity/

 Does what you think matter, when you clearly don't know anything?

 Lloyd Wood
 http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/


 
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam
 Baryun [abdussalambar...@gmail.com]
 Sent: 19 April 2013 10:37
 To: a...@anvilwalrusden.com
 Cc: ietf
 Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

 Andrew

Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment,
 and we respect those people for their other contributions and would
 like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and
 therefore we want to make the environment less chilly.  I'm sort of
 surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite
 plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone
 participating.

 The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience
 (did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined
 IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly),
 mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not
 fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it
 is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF
 lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they
 get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural
 argument.

  I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to
 lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience.

 AB

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-19 Thread Adrian Farrel

On 19 April 2013 at 12:22 Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@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?


  Hi Eliot,

On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote:
 Dan,

 On 4/17/13 9:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
   We already know who we are.

 I disagree.  We make a whole lot of assumptions about who we are, but we
 don't actually know, and that's why the question is being asked.  I
 would clarify that IMHO the only reason this question should be asked is
 for demographic purposes, along with others.

  Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up
of those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us
little
about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not
representative
of who we are because we are more than just the people who register to
go to any particular meeting.

  And ...the only reason...along with others? So then it's not only for
demographic purposes. Those other purposes aside from the only one
are what, exactly?

  This question is trying to decide our
 gender make up and nothing good can come of it.

   It will provide more evidence for people to make use of logical
 fallacies-- if P implies Q then look we now have evidence of Q
 therefore P-- which really have no place in an organization devoted
 to engineering.

 This would be putting the cart before the horse.  We first need to
 understand facts.  If we don't understand facts, then people will
 continue on assumptions.

  The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly
white and male. The fallacy works like this:

If there was bias in favor of white males then we would have a
 leadership that is predominantly white and male. We have a
 leadership that is predominantly white and male, therefore we
 have bias.

All this question will do is provide a snapshot in time of just how
predominant it is-- 5% female, oh that's bad, 8% female, oh my look
how skewed the I* leadership is. See, it's skewed therefore we have
bias! If P then Q, and Q (we now have the numbers!) therefore P.

   And it will be used as a baseline for doing work towards some goal
 that has not been justified, work whose very nature requires treating
 people according to what they are instead of who they are.

Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. I
 don't
 recall seeing any evidence of bias being presented on this list. And I
 don't believe there is any problem has been mentioned that we had or
 have that is caused by this predominance of white men. It's just been
 stated as a problem itself. We must have less white men. Why? Because,
 that's why.

 Nobody has proposed that, and I think you can put a bit more faith in
 your peers to not make important decisions based on because.

  What has been accepted is that diversity is good. Further, it has been
stated that we cannot remove the race and gender from the problem
statement about our lack of diversity. As Margaret said, I don't think
it is possible for [sic] remove race and gender from the list of axes,
though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those areas.

  So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of
diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? What
problem can we point to, now or in the past, that is the result of this
lack of race and gender diversity? Well? Hmmm? Anyone? Bueller? No,
nothing. So in lieu of nothing all we have is because. If you don't like
because as a reason then fine, I will concede the point: decisions will
be made for no reason at all! That hardly seems better.

  And now the only action I see out of this whole diversity discussion on
the list is a plan to ask the gender of registrants for the Berlin meeting.

  If this is just some innocent question to find out who we are then why
don't we ask about the size of the organization we work for?  We all
agree that we have a diversity problem on that axis and there is a skew
for large corporations. No, the question is just about gender.

  Sadly, I can't put much faith in my peers to make important decisions
because they're asking the wrong questions so they can gather data
while working on addressing a non-problem.

  regards,

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Pete Resnick

I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to talk 
about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely that there 
are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think it's useful to 
think about.


On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote:

Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been a 
WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted IDs) 
there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women.


Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be 
surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole diversity 
conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through attendance 
lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over the past 10 
years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 18:1 (with so 
much variability due to guessing on the basis of names), and it's seemed 
pretty consistent over the last 10 years. Over the past 5 years, the 
ratio of Nomcom members (randomly selected from the community) is about 
10:1, which is consistent with those numbers.


That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess 
and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling 
bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because 
we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who 
do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the 
rest of us do.


This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question 
by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to 
understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and 
subconscious biases get in the way.


pr

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Carsten Bormann

On Apr 18, 2013, at 17:17, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote:

 Why is this a problem?

I think you are more likely to ask this question if you think that if it is a 
problem, then we *have* to solve it, e.g. by shooting enough of the white 
male people in the IETF that the numbers balance.

It is not that kind of problem.  It is, however, a situation that a sizable 
part of the community have experience with.  The experience that, if you find 
ways to improve diversity where the cure is *not* worse than the ailment, the 
quality of the work actually improves from that.

You may simply not have that experience -- it wouldn't surprise me, as 
differences in personal experience are usually the most important reason why 
people incessantly argue.

Grüße, Carsten

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Brian E Carpenter

On 18/04/2013 16:28, Pete Resnick wrote:
...
 That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess
 and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling
 bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because
 we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who
 do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the
 rest of us do.
 
 This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question
 by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to
 understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and
 subconscious biases get in the way.

Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the
historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the
I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant
bias in the selection process over the years.

   Brian

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Eliot Lear

Self inflicted confusion.  Please see below:

On 4/18/13 5:17 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
   Hi Eliot,

 On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote:
 Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up of
 those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us
 little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not
 representative of who we are because we are more than just the
 people who register to go to any particular meeting. 

And let's stop there.  The point of my originally muddled note was that
we shouldn't just ask about gender.  For that I apologize.  Also, I
wouldn't do this just one time.
   The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly
 white and male. The fallacy works like this:

We don't have facts in evidence, and as I wrote above, I'm not even sure
we know which facts we need.  I can say that gender is probably one,
country of residence is something we have, age is something we don't
ask, but we do ask how many meetings you've been to.  We don't ask why
you're at the IETF and we don't ask which groups are important to you. 
We don't ask whether you plan to attend other IETFs and we don't ask
anyone who has attended an IETF but isn't back, why they didn't show. 
We don't ask questions about the experience, in terms of how people are
able to find their way through the process.  There are many questions we
don't ask.  Now granted, some of this is more than who we are, but also
how easy are we to work with.  How does language and location play into
this?

Personally I'd love to survey people going to OTHER standards
organizations and find out why they chose those other organizations to
pursue work, but then I'm not footing the bill for all of this, so...

This is not just about one attribute.  You're ALMOST right in that a lot
of us know each other.  Perhaps that's even a problem, in that others
can't break in.

Much of this is what I would expect the diversity team to explore.

Eliot

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread John E Drake

Age, IQ,  shoe size?  (Ideally, they should be equal.)

Irrespectively Yours,

John


 -Original Message-
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
 Eliot Lear
 Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:01 AM
 To: Dan Harkins
 Cc: ietf@ietf.org
 Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
 
 Self inflicted confusion.  Please see below:
 
 On 4/18/13 5:17 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
Hi Eliot,
 
  On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote:
  Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up
 of
  those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us
  little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will
 not
  representative of who we are because we are more than just the
  people who register to go to any particular meeting.
 
 And let's stop there.  The point of my originally muddled note was that
 we shouldn't just ask about gender.  For that I apologize.  Also, I
 wouldn't do this just one time.
The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is
  predominantly white and male. The fallacy works like this:
 
 We don't have facts in evidence, and as I wrote above, I'm not even
 sure we know which facts we need.  I can say that gender is probably
 one, country of residence is something we have, age is something we
 don't ask, but we do ask how many meetings you've been to.  We don't
 ask why you're at the IETF and we don't ask which groups are important
 to you.
 We don't ask whether you plan to attend other IETFs and we don't ask
 anyone who has attended an IETF but isn't back, why they didn't show.
 We don't ask questions about the experience, in terms of how people are
 able to find their way through the process.  There are many questions
 we don't ask.  Now granted, some of this is more than who we are, but
 also how easy are we to work with.  How does language and location play
 into this?
 
 Personally I'd love to survey people going to OTHER standards
 organizations and find out why they chose those other organizations to
 pursue work, but then I'm not footing the bill for all of this, so...
 
 This is not just about one attribute.  You're ALMOST right in that a
 lot of us know each other.  Perhaps that's even a problem, in that
 others can't break in.
 
 Much of this is what I would expect the diversity team to explore.
 
 Eliot

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Andy Bierman

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote:
 Dan,

 On 4/16/13 2:00 AM, Dan Harkins wrote:

 Under the belief of garbage in, garbage out, I tend to lie on these
 sorts of repugnant questions. I invite others to join me. The more
 suspect the quality of the data, the less value it has. Dan.

 Please don't.  We are trying to understand who we are.  Is that SO
 unreasonable?


I don't object to filling out forms, and I would certainly answer honestly.
Who is we?  Just people who go to the Berlin IETF?
   - does it include remote participants via Jabber or other tools
   - does it include people who participate only on WG mailing lists?

The only bias I see is that it takes a lot of employer backing
and funding to participate in the IESG.  It is therefore the
companies that sponsor these participants have the most influence of all
over the selection process.

Hold another IETF in San Jose or San Francisco and I bet we get
way more balanced data than a site that requires a lot of travel,
especially since we have day passes now.

 Eliot

Andy

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On Thu, April 18, 2013 8:34 am, Carsten Bormann wrote:
 On Apr 18, 2013, at 17:17, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote:

 Why is this a problem?

 I think you are more likely to ask this question if you think that if it
 is a problem, then we *have* to solve it, e.g. by shooting enough of
 the white male people in the IETF that the numbers balance.

 It is not that kind of problem.

  Well that's a relief! As a white male (I know, a surprise, right?) I'm
glad to know I am not going to get shot.

It is, however, a
situation that a
 sizable part of the community have experience with.

  I have been attended at least 40 IETFs over the past 18 years or so.
I certainly have experience with this situation. What is new, though,
is the statement that this situation is, in fact, a problem.

   
 The
experience
that,
 if you find ways to improve diversity where the cure is *not* worse than
 the ailment, the quality of the work actually improves from that.

  What is this cure of which you speak? This diversity discussion has
included statements like:

  If the intent is to emphasize diversity (for some metric) over one of
the core skills [technical clue, admin skills, ability to work with others],
that's certainly possible.

and,

  A small point to watch for, if there is a focus on a defined list of
groups [and there certainly appears to be one-- gender], is the
difference between discriminating /against/, versus ensuring
representation /from/.

  So? Are we going to emphasize diversity over core skills? Say that
one's gender or skin color matters more than their technical clue or
their ability to work with others? By what method are we going to
ensure representation? And what do we do if these efforts have not
resulted in the  proportions that are deemed to be acceptable? Use a
little more force? Quotas?

  Nobody has stated what the cure is for this situation so we don't
know whether it will be worse than the ailment. There is a huge gap
between encouraging more women to volunteer and shooting
white men. And I really don't think we need to count the gender
make-up of a meeting if our cure was going to something close
to encouraging more women to volunteer.

  regards,

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Michael StJohns

At 11:43 AM 4/18/2013, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the
historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the
I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant
bias in the selection process over the years.

   Brian 

Yup.

We have:

1) The difference in composition between the world as a whole and the IETF.
2) The difference in composition between the industrialized nations as a whole 
and the IETF.
3) The difference in composition between the set of small medium and large 
networking companies as a whole and the IETF.
4) The difference in composition between the IETF (for some measure of that) 
and the composition of the set of IETF working group chairs.
5) The difference in composition between the set of IETF working group chairs 
and the set of members of the IAB and IESG.
6) The difference in composition between the IETF and the composition of the 
IAOC.


All of these are somewhat interesting statistical analysis problems.  My guess 
(without looking at the numbers) is the (1) is pretty large.  (2) is still 
large, but substantially less than (1), (3) is quite a bit smaller than (1) or 
(2) - all of these for pretty much any axis you want to evaluate.  

For your question, I differentiated between the IAOC and the IAB/IESG for one 
specific reason - an injected bias for the second group that mostly says that 
paying your dues as a working group chair is a pre and sometimes co requisite 
for becoming a member of the IAB or IESG.  I'm pretty sure the injected bias 
for the IAOC is business experience of some sort.

I haven't seen anything on the list that suggests there's selection bias for 
working group chairs - it's possible there is, but I can't actually recall any 
complaints going back say 10 years where the selection of a working group chair 
was intimated to be biased based on gender or any other criteria.  Given that 
the positions are about 90% self-selection and 10% area director approval, I 
don't know how you could do bias analysis there and get meaningful results.  
That's question (4).  We can provide a statistical number for the difference, 
but the why is going to be elusive.

So going forward, what I think we should be more interested in is not so much 
the composition of the IETF, but the composition of the set of WG chairs and 
how that population compares to the set of IESG and IAB members.  That's 
question (5).  That question doesn't need to be asked on the registration forms 
for Berlin.

I'm not sure we have enough history yet for question (6).

I will note that besides the must have been a WG chair bias, we also have a 
sell by date bias, especially for IESG members.  By that I mean that a 
perfectly qualified candidate for the IESG who has been serving in that 
position for say 6 years is less desirable than one who has similar 
qualifications but hasn't yet served and may end up being considered 
disqualified even if fully qualified.  That bias is written into the 3777 
considerations as is the WG chair bias.  It may be useful to take the set of 
current (or last 5 year) chairs, and subtract out any chair who has served at 
least 2 or 4 years as IAB or IESG and do the comparison with the IAB/IESG again.

Mike

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Jari Arkko

Dan: the original reason for wanting to understand who the meeting participants 
are (as a subset of all IETF participants) was a desire to track our 
participation. Similarly to how we already track where they come from, and 
present that pie chart in the plenary. 

You raise an issue about making deductions about the leadership bias based on 
these numbers. I agree that such deductions would be highly questionable. But 
enabling such comparisons was not the intent. It truly was merely to understand 
where we are in terms of participation, and how it evolves over time.

Jari

RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Adrian Farrel

The perception is important.
It probably shows many things including attendance is not participation.

Just for the completely unscientific hell of it, I just counted up the mic-sex
in CCAMP's marathon meetings in Orlando. I counted minuted interventions and
presentations. I counted each intervention in a conversation.

I found a ratio of 7 male to 1 female.

This proves nothing.

Adrian

 -Original Message-
 From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Pete
 Resnick
 Sent: 18 April 2013 16:29
 To: James Polk
 Cc: ietf@ietf.org
 Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
 
 I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to talk
 about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely that there
 are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think it's useful to
 think about.
 
 On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote:
 
  Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been a
  WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted IDs)
  there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women.
 
 Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be
 surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole diversity
 conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through attendance
 lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over the past 10
 years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 18:1 (with so
 much variability due to guessing on the basis of names), and it's seemed
 pretty consistent over the last 10 years. Over the past 5 years, the
 ratio of Nomcom members (randomly selected from the community) is about
 10:1, which is consistent with those numbers.
 
 That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess
 and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling
 bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because
 we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who
 do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the
 rest of us do.
 
 This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question
 by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to
 understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and
 subconscious biases get in the way.
 
 pr
 
 --
 Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/
 Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread James Polk


At 10:28 AM 4/18/2013, Pete Resnick wrote:
I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to 
talk about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely 
that there are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think 
it's useful to think about.


On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote:

Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been 
a WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted 
IDs) there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women.


Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be 
surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole 
diversity conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through 
attendance lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over 
the past 10 years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 
18:1 (with so much variability due to guessing on the basis of 
names), and it's seemed pretty consistent over the last 10 years. 
Over the past 5 years, the ratio of Nomcom members (randomly 
selected from the community) is about 10:1, which is consistent with 
those numbers.


I believe I did myself a disservice in assigning such a high ratio 
without saying it feels like 70:1, which it does. But I'd truly be 
surprised if it's only 10:1 - and you can't make effective and 
accurate estimates based on guessing the gender of the names of an 
international organization like the IETF is.


Now, and this is purely from a defending myself pov, the feel of a 
70:1 crowd that's right in front of you from a 18:1 crowd isn't that 
much, especially if you're part of that larger number. There is a 
matter of the number of the group you happen to be part of is so 
overwhelming you tend to guess on the high side.



That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball 
guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an 
unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. 
And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously 
discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or 
even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do.


I have to disagree with you here. In my mind, this feels like a 70:1 
ratio has nothing to do with the ratios of leadership to the 
community within the IETF, it's from the gathering places and 
hallways where there are just wave after wave (after wave) of men. 
It's also from sheer lack of numbers of women within the WGs I've 
attended over the years (SIP related, MMUSIC, GEOPRIV, ECRIT, the 
whole TSV area, etc).



This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this 
question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we 
do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our 
guesses and subconscious biases get in the way.


whether it's 70:1 or 18:1 - that's significantly more of one group 
that the other.


Thanks Pete for making this point, and causing me to clarify what I 
originally wrote.


James



pr

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Ted Lemon

On Apr 18, 2013, at 1:06 PM, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote:
  What is this cure of which you speak? This diversity discussion has
 included statements like:

Personally, not wearing an AD hat or attempting to anticipate the conclusions 
of the study group, I think the cure is to encourage more talented people to 
participate who do not share the same characteristics as the existing members, 
specifically with respect to age, sex, culture and/or geography.   I think 
discouraging participation or limiting participation of existing participants 
is a bad idea, but encouraging new talented participants is always a good idea.

And then I think we need to have a kind of ongoing consciousness-raising about 
how cognitive bias works, and how it might be affecting our decisions as 
participants.   It's not enough to simply get a 50-50 male/female ratio, for 
example; if it were, the U.S. would elect female presidents slightly more than 
half the time, but of course we don't.

But fixing either problem without fixing the other will not have much impact on 
diversity; if we fix the cognitive bias problem (should it even exist, which I 
am not asserting to be the case), that won't matter if the pool of candidates 
lacks diversity; if the pool of candidates is diverse, that won't matter if we 
don't correct for cognitive bias.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Ted Lemon

On Apr 18, 2013, at 2:33 PM, James Polk jmp...@cisco.com wrote:
 I believe I did myself a disservice in assigning such a high ratio without 
 saying it feels like 70:1, which it does. But I'd truly be surprised if 
 it's only 10:1 - and you can't make effective and accurate estimates based on 
 guessing the gender of the names of an international organization like the 
 IETF is.

Part of the problem here is figuring out what you mean by 70:1.   I think if 
you try to come up with a single ratio like this, you're oversimplifying to the 
point of uselessness.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Jari Arkko

Pete:

 Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about (snip)

FWIW, I took a database of first names, added a little piece of code on my 
document statistics page to guess genders to calculate aggregate numbers. I get 
results such as 13% of recent RFCs having female authors. Perhaps inline with 
some of the eyeballing numbers from this thread. (Details in 
http://www.arkko.com/tools/docstats.html - btw it does *not* retain 
per-individual information anywhere). However, there are a number of caveats.

To begin with, there's a horrible 20-30% recognised error rate (unclassified 
names). And an unknown unrecognised error rate. And I looked at the recognised 
errors, and was able to tell my computer a few more names that it should 
recognise, but not much. Secondly, the situation is getting worse. Early RFCs 
were often unrecognisable, since first names were abbreviated. Then it got 
better, but now it is getting worse, drafts have a 30% recognised error rate. 
My theory is that our participation gets more international, and the databases 
that we can find for this sort of thing tend not to be so good with 
international names. I'm guessing participant lists would be worse than drafts. 
My conclusion is that it is difficult to come up with numbers either by 
eyeballing or data mining. Information from registration (country, 
newcomer/not, gender) might be useful from this perspective. But see below.

Anyway, enough with engineering the measurements for now. I think some of these 
numbers are interesting, but only from a trend perspective, not in their 
absolute value or comparison to other numbers. We should get back to discussing 
how we can encourage more talented people to participate, as Ted put it. That 
is the important thing. Clearly, we like engineering. Obviously I went for it 
as well. But we should recognise that measurements are just a tiny detail. The 
best we could hope for is that a couple of years down the road we could pat 
ourselves in the back for making an improvement that is actually visible in the 
measurements. But that's it.

Jari

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Pete Resnick


On 4/17/13 2:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:

Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable.


Dan, leaving aside all of your other comments for the moment (many of 
which are straw men that nobody but you have suggested, speaking of 
fallacies), this one comment is a serious problem since it is so 
demonstrably false. Bias creeps in in all sorts of undetectable ways; if 
it was always detectable, lots of statisticians and psychologists and 
survey designers would be out of jobs. Aside from simple methodological 
data collection problems, bias is often caused by completely unconscious 
(and sometimes well intentioned) behaviors when it comes to human 
endeavors. The literature on this topic is so extensive that I can't 
even imagine why you would even suggest the opposite.



We already know who we are.


That's an interesting claim, and at least at first glance given other 
comments on the list, again seemingly false. As Adrian commented, 
perception is important. If it seems to some folks that the ratio of men 
to women throughout the IETF is 70:1, should it turn out that it is 
closer to 10:1 and the numbers in leadership are closer to 30:1, that 
would not only indicate that we don't already know 'who we are', but 
it could also be an interesting indication of why there might be 
statistical bias in the selection of leadership. (Or not. But it seems 
worthy of examination.)


That's my two message limit for the day on the IETF list.

pr

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On Thu, April 18, 2013 1:51 pm, Pete Resnick wrote:
 On 4/17/13 2:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
 Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable.

 Dan, leaving aside all of your other comments for the moment (many of
 which are straw men that nobody but you have suggested, speaking of
 fallacies), this one comment is a serious problem since it is so
 demonstrably false.

  I'm sure I speak alone when I say that I hope you are only leaving my other
comments aside for a moment and will return to them later. I would actually
like to see a response that doesn't snip a 30-40 line post into 1 sentence.

  If you would like to engage me off-list, I welcome that.

 Bias creeps in in all sorts of
undetectable ways; if
 it was always detectable, lots of statisticians and psychologists and
 survey designers would be out of jobs. Aside from simple methodological
 data collection problems, bias is often caused by completely unconscious
 (and sometimes well intentioned) behaviors when it comes to human
 endeavors. The literature on this topic is so extensive that I can't
 even imagine why you would even suggest the opposite.

  Now we're playing a subtle word game here. A bias that a statistician
might add is demonstrably different than what Melinda Shore has
_repeatedly_ referred to as gender bias. So when I'm talking about
bias I'm talking about a form of discrimination based on gender. It is
the intentional passing over of a more qualified woman in favor of a
less qualified man. Exactly the same thing that is being referred to
when she says:

  I'm telling you that I think the numbers are highly suggestive of bias.

What numbers are those? The observable numbers about I* leadership.
What is the bias being suggested? It is a bias against women. Straw
man? I think not.

  A statistician might put bias in his statistical result and a survey
designer might put bias in a question to elicit a favored result,
intentionally or unintentionally. But we both know that is not what
we're talking about here.

 We already know who we are.

 That's an interesting claim, and at least at first glance given other
 comments on the list, again seemingly false. As Adrian commented,
 perception is important. If it seems to some folks that the ratio of men
 to women throughout the IETF is 70:1, should it turn out that it is
 closer to 10:1 and the numbers in leadership are closer to 30:1, that
 would not only indicate that we don't already know 'who we are', but
 it could also be an interesting indication of why there might be
 statistical bias in the selection of leadership. (Or not. But it seems
 worthy of examination.)

  We are a volunteer standards organization that operates on a
consensus basis. For the purposes of who we are the number of
women that register for a meeting should be as relevant as the number
of people who register that are left handed, flat footed or double jointed
(for the record I am all three). In other words, not at all. There may be
a statistical bias in the selection of leadership that favors left-handedness
or maybe it disfavors left-handedness. Is that interesting? Maybe to
someone. Is it worthwhile in finding out who we are? No.

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Pete Resnick


Damn. Breaking my two message rule.

On 4/18/13 4:47 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:


   Now we're playing a subtle word game here. A bias that a statistician
might add is demonstrably different than what Melinda Shore has
_repeatedly_ referred to as gender bias. So when I'm talking about
bias I'm talking about a form of discrimination based on gender. It is
the intentional passing over of a more qualified woman in favor of a
less qualified man.


It's so nice when the straw men stand up and say, Here I am! Look at me!

Intentional passing over? Intentional???

I defy you to find anywhere in Melinda's messages Strike that: I 
defy you to find anywhere in *anybody's* messages on this topic where it 
says that the problem suspected is *intentional* gender bias.


Overt intentional sexists and other such bigots are never a problem of 
this sort; they're sincere in their beliefs easy to identify. Finding 
and eliminating their sort of bias is a walk in the park. It's the 
*unintentional* and *institutional* and *structural* biases that are the 
ones that creep in all over the place and are the least detectable.


If you think that all of this discussion is about intentional bias, you 
have been talking to yourself.



   A statistician might put bias in his statistical result and a survey
designer might put bias in a question to elicit a favored result,
intentionally or unintentionally. But we both know that is not what
we're talking about here.
   


Nonsense. That is exactly what we are talking about, whether it's how we 
ADs choose chairs, or how chairs choose document editors, or how we all 
choose nominees for the IESG or IAB, etc. If any of us thought we were 
talking about intentional bias, we would have packed up and gone home 
long ago.



   We are a volunteer standards organization that operates on a
consensus basis. For the purposes of who we are the number of
women that register for a meeting should be as relevant as the number
of people who register that are left handed, flat footed or double jointed
(for the record I am all three). In other words, not at all.


All of those features *should* be equally relevant (i.e., not at all). 
And if you could design an interesting addition to the Harvard Implicit 
Association Test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ that 
showed whether people are or aren't unconsciously biased when it comes 
to left-handedness or flat-footedness or hypermobility (I hate that 
other term), I'm sure the Harvard folks would love to hear from you. But 
there *is* loads of nice evidence about unconscious bias when it comes 
to gender, especially when it comes to leadership roles and roles in 
engineering. I suspect (but until you design that test, can't provide 
evidence) that we *do* ignore (even subconsciously) left-handedness and 
flat-footedness and hypermobility when it comes to leadership positions 
in the IETF. But I also suspect that we are subconsciously influenced 
when it comes to gender bias; indeed, given what I know of the 
literature, it would be hard to imagine that we in the IETF are the 
astounding exception. So I think it's worth examining, especially given 
some of the interesting perceptual anecdotes seen already.


So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating 
that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or 
corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias?


pr

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

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?


On Thu, April 18, 2013 3:24 pm, Pete Resnick wrote:
 So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating
 that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or
 corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias?

  Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended
to be done. If you think that we are subconsciously influenced when
it comes to gender bias then I'd like to know what is going to be done
about it. And if it's more than nothing then I'd like to know what our
goal is vis-a-vis the gender breakdown of leadership positions and
the lengths that we will go to ensure we reach it.

  If we're just gathering data to make a pie chart for the plenary then
it seems like a waste of time.

  Dan.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread David Morris



On Thu, 18 Apr 2013, Dan Harkins wrote:

 
 On Thu, April 18, 2013 3:24 pm, Pete Resnick wrote:
  So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating
  that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or
  corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias?
 
   Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended
 to be done. If you think that we are subconsciously influenced when
 it comes to gender bias then I'd like to know what is going to be done
 about it. And if it's more than nothing then I'd like to know what our
 goal is vis-a-vis the gender breakdown of leadership positions and
 the lengths that we will go to ensure we reach it.
 
   If we're just gathering data to make a pie chart for the plenary then
 it seems like a waste of time.

Without gathering a baseline, it makes no sense to postulate mitigations
because there is no way to judge progress.

Others have already noted that there are several different points of
concern. By measurement, it may be possible to establish that IESG
gender membership tracks general meeting attendance (or doesn't
track meeting attendance). If it tracks meeting attendance it
seems reasonable to finds ways to increase participation by
the underrepresented population in the whole IETF. If it doesn't
track the general population, then more detailed analysis is
needed of the process of selecting IESG members.

Collecting population characteristics is the first baby step.

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Ted Lemon

On Apr 18, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote:
  Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended
 to be done.

This is what we are trying to figure out!

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 Thread Andrew Sullivan

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:17:21AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote:
 white and male. The fallacy works like this:
 
 If there was bias in favor of white males then we would have a
  leadership that is predominantly white and male. We have a
  leadership that is predominantly white and male, therefore we
  have bias.

Just for the record, that is not a line of reasoning I am taking.

The line I am taking is something more like the following.  First,
assume that, if there were bias in favour of (we're not testing for
white, so I'm leaving that out) males, there might be an observable
pattern of difference between the percentage of women in leadership
positions and the percentage of women in overall participants.  So,
look at the leadership and the general participant populations over
time.  If there appears to be a difference, then that is reason to
encourage further inquiry.  If there appears to be no difference, then
we are justified in saying that there is no evidence of an issue.

That approach is just basic empiricism, and not the fallacy of
affirming the consequent that you're claiming people are making.  If
such an approach is controversial, then every modern empirical science
is on a shaky footing.  It's certainly true (Hume makes this point
rather more eloquently than I can) that such empirical argument is
_formally_ false.  But that's the wrong criterion, because empirical
argument is useful.  Even Hume played billiards.
 
   So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of
 diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? 

Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment,
and we respect those people for their other contributions and would
like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and
therefore we want to make the environment less chilly.  I'm sort of
surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite
plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone
participating.

   If this is just some innocent question to find out who we are then why
 don't we ask about the size of the organization we work for? 

We don't need to.  A large number of participants include an
affiliation, and using by and large public data we could just find
this out using the data we already have.  I agree it would be useful.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
a...@anvilwalrusden.com

Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?