Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

I see some rough consensus that more diversity/a wider spectrum of  
viewpoints (across various metrics) in various ISTF groups would be  
helpful, with support for Arturo's language:
> The problem is to bring new people (younger people, women, from more
> countries, different languages, etc.) to write RFCs, to participate/be
> interested in the IETF and how we involve/prepare these people to  
> become
> our leaders and not just participants.

This is a goal that everyone can help carry out, and there's no  
reason not to start working individually at this now - especially if  
you are a company that understands the IETF's work. However, the  
original message raised two other points:
>     - Lack of diversity in our leadership becomes a self-perpetuating
>       problem, because people who are not represented in the IETF
>       leadership are less likely to dedicate their time and effort to
>       the IETF.
>
>     - The lack of diversity in the IETF leadership undermines our
>       credibility and challenges our legitimacy as an International
>       Standards Development Organization.

It's telling that the third point wasn't mentioned by anyone else, as  
far as I saw - in fact, the words "credibility" and "legitimacy" have  
not appeared in this thread since it's inception. The "governance of  
the internet" has been an recent topic of international discussion  
(as far as I can see as a news consumer), and this group's leadership  
composition may be a relevant aspect of that discussion. It makes  
Arturo's point even more compelling.
-Will

PS:

> The school studies were done with random (e.g. public school) and  
> non-self-selected (e.g. parent selected) groups as the subjects.   
> AFAIK the IETF is pretty much a completely self-selected group of  
> people and most especially the women are self-selected - and I  
> wouldn't consider that the school study applies much given those  
> difference.  I mentioned it because its conclusion - that women and  
> men are "smarter" when separate (yup - paraphrasing) seems to be at  
> odds with the other mentioned conclusion that "groups are smarter  
> the more women in them".
In fact, the random nature of the participants is the reason we can  
generalize studies across broad populations. The standard you set  
would render pretty much any study applicably irrelevant unless it  
was made of IETF participants.
But I think that entire discussion leads us astray - this is not a  
listserve of social scientists, and these issues and their citations  
are charged in various ways across the world, along with ways we can  
define diversity. We all also carry some of our own viewpoints into  
these discussions; for example, I would initially treat a less  
diverse slate of chosen leaders from a more diverse pool of  
candidates as suspect. I would be happy to engage anyone 1-on-1 if  
they have further questions about this area (or point #2) from my own  
experience as a student on several hiring and governance committees  
with university administrators, dealing with the exact issues raised  
on this thread, or as a young person that joined up thanks to the  
open membership policies and legitimacy discussed elsewhere.