IETF 86 Plenary Minutes Orlando, FL, USA Wednesday, 13 March 2013 Minutes by Mirjam Kuehne, RIPE NCC ----- Administrative and Management Plenary 1. Welcome 2. Host Presentation 3. Reporting - IETF Chair - IAOC Chair and IAD - IETF Trust Chair - NomCom Chair 4. Recognition 5. 2013 Postel Service Award Call for Nominations 6. Thank Outgoing IAB, IAOC, and IESG Members 7. Outgoing IETF Chair Comments 8. Incoming IETF Chair Comments 9. Introduce Incoming IAOC Members 10. IAOC Open Mic 11. Introduce Incoming IESG Members 12. IESG Open Mic ----- 1. Welcome Russ Housley opened the administrative plenary session. 2. Host Presentation http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-6.pdf Glenn Reitmeier from NBC Universal gave the host presentation on behalf of Comcast and NBC Universal. Russ presented plaques to the two hosts: Jason Livingood from Comcast and Glenn Reitmeier from NBC. 3. Reporting 3.1. Reporting - IETF Chair (Russ Housley) http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-12.ppt 3.2. Reporting - IAOC Chair (Bob Hinden) and IAD (Ray Pelletier) http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-13.pptx Instead of walking through the regular IAOC report, the IAOC decided to prepare a 'roast' for Russ, because he is stepping down as IETF Chair. Some funny pictures were shown, some funny stories were told, and finally Bert Wijnen sang an old Dutch song to thank Russ for all the years of serving as an IETF Chair. Lynn St.Amour handed a pretty glass bowl ans a plaque to Russ as a thank-you from ISOC. 3.3. Reporting - IETF Trust Chair (Ole Jacobsen) http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-0.pdf 3.4. Reporting - NomCom Chair (Matthew Lepinski) http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-7.pdf 4. Recognition http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-10.pptx Our community lost two people since the last IETF meeting: Milan Sova and Mark Crispin. The participants honoured them with a minute of silence. 5. 2013 Postel Service Award Call for Nominations http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-1.pdf Lynn St.Amour announced the opening for nominations for this year's Jonathan B. Postel service award. Lynn also asked for volunteers for next year's NomCom chair. 6. Thank Outgoing IAB, IAOC, and IESG Members http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-4.pdf All outgoing members were recognised and received a plaque. 7. Outgoing IETF Chair Comments http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-8.pptx Standing ovation for Russ. 8. Incoming IETF Chair Comments http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/86/slides/slides-86-iesg-opsplenary-9.ppt Jari is planning to put together a design team to see how diversity in the IETF and the IETF leadership can be increased. He is looking for individuals to lead such a team. 9. Introduce Incoming IAOC Members Incoming, continuing, and outgoing IAOC members came on stage, and they were introduced. Incoming IAOC members received their purple dot. 10. IAOC Open Mic Leslie and Olaf, two past IAB Chairs, congratulated Russ for his new adventure as the IAB Chair and asked him to realise that this is a very thankless job. They then asked Bernard Aboba to stand up and get his well-deserved applause. Standing ovation for Bernard! Drew Dvorshak shared that he is responsible for raising money for the IETF, and Drew worked very closely with Russ over the last few years. Drew believes that Russ deserves tremendous recognition. The IETF is in a very different position today; it doesn't have to scramble for money at the last minute. Thanks to Russ. Matt Lepinski thanked the IAOC for the informal IAOC session on Sunday afternoon. Future NomComs will benefit from that kind of information. Bob Hinden announced that the IAOC is planning to repeat this for a few meetings to come. 11. Introduce Incoming IESG Members Incoming, continuing, and outgoing IESG members came on stage, and they were introduced. The outgoing IESG members gave dots to the incoming Area Directors. 12. IESG Open Mic Margaret Wasserman mentioned the letter on diversity that was sent and signed by over 50 people. Does anyone wants to comment on it? Jari agreed that the IETF will be far stronger when it will be more diverse in various aspects. But it is good to see that the IETF has become much more international than in the past. Especially there are many more participants from China, also in WG chair positions, and we now also have a participant from China on the IAB. It is however a long process. Some good ideas how to increase diversity were already brought up on the mailing list. International participation can for instance be increased by organising meetings in other regions. Other than that Jari said he didn't have any answers at this stage and also didn't want to preempt the discussions of the future diversity design team. Curtis Vilamizer said that when he started coming to the IETF it was mostly male. We came a long way. Sean Turner mentioned that a year ago someone asked him how to become a WG chair. Asking is the first step! He thinks that if people want to actively participate, they need to volunteer to write drafts etc. Barry Leiba agreed that asking is useful. But the other way round is also important: we need to actively look around for good talent. Pete Resnick realised that we have an idea of what kind of people are appropriate for the position. This means we pick people that are like all the others in that position before. This is more comfortable. However, we need to consciously think about people that we don't normally think of for leadership positions. This could be one of the things that could increase diversity in leadership. Michael Richardson suggested to more formally recognise people in the WGs that are actively participating (beyond just the chair and the secretary. That could mean more position slots in a WG, such as document shepherds and document authors so that they can be recognised for their work. This would also make it easier to se who has actively contributed. And it will also allow those people to show their supervisors or manager that they play some formal role in the IETF. Jari thought this is a good suggestion. Phillip Hallam-Baker didn't think it was true to say that we cannot recognise people moving through the ranks. He has been involved in the IETF since 1992, and there were women then. But now there aren't any women on the panel in front. The IAB and the NomCom didn't realise that by rejecting 15 people who volunteered to be the Transport Area Director they blew off 15 people who volunteered to spend a lot of time. You need more women! And yes, there is a problem. The notion that the NomCom is better than democracy reminded him of a stalinist model and it ensures that you keep power to yourselves. The way to solve this is to blow up the Nomcom. If you qualify for the NomCom, you are part of the electorate and they elect the slate. Mary Barnes said that 130 people gave input to the NomCom, which is not a lot and is not an improvement since we have the open list. There are many more people in this room including many people who seem to care about diversity. How many people were aware that the diversity within this year's pool of candidates was higher than ever before? But the results do not reflect the diversity of the pool. Jari acknowledged that. But of course there are multiple criteria when looking for positions. Of course we want the best people for the job. It is hard to draw too many conclusions from these numbers. Matt Lepinski said that Mary is absolutely right: we had a very diverse pool this year, both in terms of geopolitical background and gender (the companies that send people here weren't as diverse as he would have liked though). The challenge that the NomCom has was that they were talking to many different people, and many different people told them different things. Some people find diversity very important, other people find other things very important. The NomCom then has to find a balance. Some additional guidance to the NomCom how they should think about diversity would be helpful. Arturo Servin is very eager to promote diversity in the IETF. But h asked not to polarise too much. We don't only need to bring new people, we also have to prepare new people to write documents and standards and be prepared for leadership positions. He also had one suggestion for the NomCom Chair: don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and pick people that you maybe would not have thought of before. Peter Saint-Andre mentioned that during a WG meeting, SM and he were chatting about how to get more people on the Applications Area Directorate. Some people are shy about going to the mic. If you are not a native English speaker or if you are not comfortable to speak in public or if you are a woman in a room of 50 males, you might not feel comfortable. We might want to think about other ways to reach out and get other people's input than the ways we have right now. Jari agreed, and he added that relatively aggressive discussion culture here at the IETF is not necessarily welcoming to everyone either. Keith Drage noted that it is possible to be a newcomer and a WG chair. Should it be possible to be a newcomer and be appointed to the IAB or the IESG? Harald Alvestrand said he has been listening to this problem for twenty minutes now. Whatever the IETF community has done over the last years did not help, so he feels that we need to do something different, but doesn't have a suggestion. Jari mentioned the ISOC fellowship program, which brings new people to the IETF from different parts of the world. Maybe this can be expanded. Toerless Eckert commented on having elections for the NomCom. Purely public elections would bear the risk that "whoever kissed the baby best" would win the election. If we start to combine factors that are evaluated under confidentiality with other factors like diversity, it would become very hard to weigh them. It would be helpful if the diversity design team could think about which factors in diversity would make somebody a better candidate for that role. Dave Crocker pointed out that we have a tool you that allows you to look up all the documents that person wrote. He suggested to also include other roles the person has help in that tool as well. And maybe also the reverse: give me all the WG chairs over the last years. We may or may not have the raw data preserved right now. Jari responded that it is probably not only a lack of information, but a problem of "going out of the comfort zone" as someone called it previously. We need to give other people a chance. Dave clarified that he was only suggesting to facilitate input. The other comment he wanted to make is that we seem to believe that if we organise an IETF in a certain region, we increase participation from that region. He doesn't believe that this is necessarily the case. And it also makes the travel very inconvenient and expensive for all existing participates. Jari acknowledged that this was a well understood opinion, and he also thinks that it is true to a large extent that just by going to a certain country or region, participation from that area doesn't necessarily increase. But as a part of a bigger package, for instance a combination of the fellowship program plus going to that region could have a bigger impact. Syed Hasan, returning ISOC fellow from Bangladesh noticed that there are very few people from universities. There is a huge potential to bring leadership from universities. Will the IETF try to get more people form universities to the IETF? Stephen Farrell said that unfortunately the work here at the IETF often does not count as first class publication topic for academics. Ralph Droms agreed that the IETF does not give an incentive to get their work done here. Students have to go elsewhere to get their academic recognition. Thomas Narten said that the diversity topic is a very hard problem to solve. But it is very important, and he is glad that we are talking about it. He urged the audience to resist the temptation to be engineers and try to solve the problem on our own. It might be good to take a look at how other organisations have dealt with similar problems. One of the reason we are in this situation is that the IETF community is a rather small circle. We have a system that perpetuates itself. We have the tendency to pick the people we know and trust, which is understandable. Some WG Chairs are in their roles a very long time. Thomas suggested to do a self-review from time to time. Pete Resnick agreed with Thomas, and Pete said this is an important point: Not only do we have standing chairs, but we are also locked into the opinion that firing a chair means they have done a horrible job. We need to get more into the habit of rotating chairs every so often. Barry reported that in the Applications Area they are trying to appoint one new chair for every new WG. The ADs are also trying to appoint short-term chairs. Spencer Dawkins reported on the discussion during the Transport Area meeting on Tuesday, moderated by Allison Mankin. The purpose was to discuss the requirements for the Transport AD. The discussion was very civilised and many good suggestions were made that could also be useful for other Areas. Keith Moore said that he got the impression we're trying to solve the problem of diversity as engineers and that the problem can be solved and will then go away. What we're really trying to do is to produce consensus-based solutions. But consensus is only meaningful if it includes a broad spectrum of interests. This is an ongoing goal. Independent of the role you hold, we constantly need to think: will this decision bring a good range of interests? Ted Lemon was thinking about what worked in his particular WG, and he thanked Yang Sijes, who pushed a number of students to him, and some of these people became active participants in the IETF. It is difficult for a newcomer to have the courage to stand up and contribute. The best way to help them to do this is to push them. And the best people to push are the people who know them. He hopes that people will follow that example. Lorenzo Colitti was wondering what problem we are trying to solve: He looked at the IESG and they all look the same as the people in the audience. Is the problem that the people on the IESG don't represent the people in the audience? Or is the problem that the IETF participants are not diverse enough. These are two different problems, and they cannot both be solved with one solution. Pete Resnick suspects that we have both problems and that the two are being mixed in the discussion right now. Ron Bonica thanked Lorenzo to bring this up. He believes we have to identify which problem we need to solve first, because they require different methods. Ralf Droms said that from his experience from university programs, there is also a lack of diversity, especially the number of women in technical studies is very low. Ron Bonica asked to please get an answer to Lorenzo's question before we discuss this any further. Jari said that he doesn't think we can answer this right now, but he also believes we have both problems. Joseph Hildebrand said that it might be tempting for us to say that the larger community we are drawing from (such as science and math) has a lack of diversity, so we are doing the best we can. He would argue that we can do better. In theory we are leaders in that community and part of that leadership responsibility is to fix the diversity problem. Maybe we are not doing an adequate job on this topic. Bob Hinden commented on the topic of WG Chairs being in potion for a long time. He himself was in that role for a long time, but he likes to think that he was pretty successful in mentoring people in co-chair roles. He would like to encourage others to do the same. This helps people to become more experienced in the IETF. Brian Haberman agreed that while the IESG can do this to a certain degree and WG Chairs can do it to some degree, anyone can do it. He encouraged everyone to help others who look lost, and so on. Adrian Farrel said that he is currently looking for a mentor for a new IETF participant, and he asked for volunteers. Margaret Wasserman said that it may be due to where she was sitting, but she saw something different than what Lorenzo saw. She saw that the group in the audience is more diverse than the one on stage. That doesn't mean that those people are not good enough. She thinks the problem is a cultural problem. The problem is the attempt to find the "best candidate". There is no best candidate. There are various criteria that can be interpreted in various ways. There is also the question: what is the best IESG, IAB, IAOC, etc. for the IETF. The answer might be that there is no "best". More diversity can actually help create a "better" leadership group. Jari agreed with this notion. Ron was wondering if the problem we're trying to solve is that the IESG is not diverse enough? Margaret said she thinks that we have both problems, and she encouraged people to talk to other IETF participants and find out why it is harder for some people to be successful than for others. Mary Barnes added that if we fix the first problem, it might be easier to solve the second problem. It can be scary, for instance, for women to enter a predominantly male group. Allison Mankin emphasised that we should be careful not to come up with an engineering solution, because it is much more subtle than that. The IETF is one of the best fields for engineers in the world. One can participate by email, remotely, etc. But she also said that she is always really uncomfortable to encourage women to come to the IETF, because they will feel very lonely in the WG sessions. She would like to attract other people to attend the IETF and make them feel more comfortable and welcome -- the idea of a mentoring program. Alissa Cooper responded to Ron's question about the two problems. She said she thinks it is a little short sighted to see them as two problems. If you never see someone on that stage that looks like you, then you might think you will never make it there. It is a re-enforcing circle. Making a real commitment to mentorship could be very useful. There are different options, for instance one-to-one mentorship. If Dorothy Gellert would not have reached out to her in the first year or so, she would probably not have continued to come to the meetings. In addition to that, there is also a way to build a community by carving out a space for a group or minority, similar to what the Systers (the mail list for women at the IETF) are doing during the IETF. Benoit Claise believed that it is also a matter of perception. If there is a perception that certain people cannot become leaders, then we have a problem. Pete Resnick quoted a saying: "If you are in the group that is in power your task is to get out of the way." He said we have to make it more inviting and create space for others so they feel more comfortable. Sean Turner suggested that going out to lunch with people works. Ted Lemon was wondering if he could help or if he would he become part of the problem if he would mentor someone? Alissa responded that he can of course help. She just wanted to point out some of the female mentors who usually don't get recognition. Generally having more sensitivity that the problem is out there, is a good start. Yong Cui mentioned that he always encourages his students to come to the IETF. But as a participant from China, he is aware that there might be language problems and there might also be problems with technical understanding. He said he appreciates the encouragement and understanding during the WG sessions even if their English and presentation skills are not very high. Kathleen Moriarty said that in addition to the technical fellows, ISOC also brings a number of policy people from around the world to the meetings. That also increases diversity. In terms of looking at other organisations: what women and young girls need are examples. In the IETF that could mean giving examples that women or people from other regions can be good leaders in a technical environment. Steve Conte added that for every single meeting, ISOC has problems to find mentors for these 10 to 12 fellows that come to the meetings. So, if it is already difficult to find mentors for these people, how will a larger mentor program work? Adrian thanked Steve and ISOC for the work on the fellowship program and suggested to build a pool of mentors in each IETF Area. Steve said that they are taking the work of the fellows into account and that they usually reach out to the WG Chairs to identify mentors. Steve will be at the ISOC table during the Bits-N-Bites on Thursday evening, and he will be happy to take the names of volunteers. Sean suggested sending an announcement to the IETF discussion list. Keith Moore felt that over the last few years, there seems to be a lot of recycling going on, and he said he was surprised to see that. That means, we seem to have difficulties to bring new people in. He believes that a lot of it comes down to cost. If you don't have 10,000 USD per year, it is very hard to attend on a regular basis (he knows this from personal experience). This is a serious problem. But he is not sure what to do about it. Phillip Hallam-Baker added that the amount of time it takes to be an AD also seems to be a problem. There are two parts to the job: managing the WGs and the technical work. Since the IAB stopped doing Internet architecture since the Kobe meeting, he would like to see a document that describes default ways to use a protocol. Such guidance would mean that we don't have to spend time in each WG session on this topic. Jari concluded that it is good to see that the community cares greatly about this topic.