[Diversity] Starting the discussion

SM <sm@resistor.net> Sun, 14 April 2013 20:37 UTC

Message-Id: <6.2.5.6.2.20130414103846.0b7dab40@elandnews.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:28:46 -0700
To: diversity@ietf.org
From: SM <sm@resistor.net>
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Subject: [Diversity] Starting the discussion
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Hello,

To start the discussion I'll quote Jari Arkko:

   "we think of diversity as something that covers international participation,
    different cultures, gender, age, organisational background, and so on.
    While the IETF has become a very international organisation (with
    participants from 60 countries working on documents, for instance),
    there are many aspects of diversity where we could do much better.  Overall
    participation is concentrated in some areas of the world, with little
    participation from Africa and South America, for instance. Similarly,
    while the IETF has some very active female participants and leadership
    members, the numbers are very small.  Much of the work in the IETF is
    driven by large networking companies, yet academia and small companies
    would have more to give, and operational experience from additional
    operators would be similarly appreciated.

   Importantly, these disparities appear most prominently in our leadership"

There is little participation from developing countries as the people 
identified to participate in the IETF do not do protocol-related 
work.  I don't know whether anyone on this mailing list has seen 
http://www.africafornorway.no/  That's the approach currently being 
taken.  It is not in the interest of anybody to raise the issue.  The 
few people who attempt to participate in a discussion can receive 
disparaging remarks from regular IETF participants.  Nobody raises 
any objection.  I saw a case recently.  I did not say anything as in 
my opinion there would not be any community support.

Someone mentioned "be persistent" in a discussion on an unrelated 
IETF mailing list.  The IETF culture discourages people who are not 
familiar with U.S. culture to participate.  It's not that the people 
are not persistent; it's difficult to understand how the IETF works.

In my opinion the IETF does not understand young people.  There is a 
tendency to either take a paternalistic approach or else expect 
people to go through the same difficulties so that they can learn.

If a person comes to an IETF meeting he/she will see women at the 
registration desk and maybe one or two women in a working group 
session.  He/she won't see any women on the IESG.  It looks like the 
usual stereotypes.  The five women who went to the microphone were 
courageous enough to do so.

It has been mentioned that the values are more important than who 
"represents" whom.  The values do not map to what the average 
participant sees.  There is a saying: "Not only must justice be done; 
it must also be seen to be done".

Regards,
-sm

[Diversity] Starting the discussion SM
[Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (was:… Hector Santos
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (… Eggert, Lars
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (… STARK, BARBARA H
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (… Eggert, Lars
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems Stephen Farrell
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (… Thomas Narten
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems (… Moriarty, Kathleen
Re: [Diversity] Starting the discussion Jari Arkko
Re: [Diversity] Starting the discussion SM
Re: [Diversity] Starting the discussion Arturo Servin
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems Suresh Krishnan
Re: [Diversity] Defining the Diversity problems Jari Arkko
[Diversity] RFCs accepted journal articles (was R… Eggert, Lars
Re: [Diversity] RFCs accepted journal articles (w… Aaron Yi DING
Re: [Diversity] RFCs accepted journal articles (w… Eggert, Lars