Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

I would suggest John that the real diversity the IETF needs istransparency in its process and a competent IPR rule set which meets thesame set of legal hurdles people do in the commercial world so to speak.

I would also suggest that the idea of splitting all of thesecontractually binding practices into a set of technical publications isinherently insane and has lead to the fiasco that we have today. Whatthe IETF needs is a simple set of documents that do not require a freewall to post the various components on to develop a proper reliance map.


Just my own two cents though.

Todd



On 03/20/2013 06:30 AM, John C Klensin wrote:


--On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 06:53 -0400 Margaret Wasserman
<mrw(_at_)lilacglade(_dot_)org> wrote:

...
I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing
this information, just saying that it makes it hard to tell
whether our leadership is reasonably representative of the
community in some of these areas.

Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important
to the IETF that are not on this list, like geographic
location, corporate affiliation and industry segment (vendor,
operator, researcher, etc.).

Margaret,

While I am very much in favor of a more diverse IETF population
and leadership, the above, especially when combined with Martin
Rex's later comment, is part of the reason why I see the problem
as terribly difficult and not yielding easily to petitions,
design teams, instructions to confirming bodies (particularly
problematic as other discussions have shown), or good intentions.

As a specific example, I think the IETF would be considerably
strengthened by more diversity in corporate affiliations and
industry segments as you suggest above.   As with gender
diversity, my impression is that we are getting more homogeneous
rather than more diverse.  One of the problems is time
commitment and associated costs.  For many corporations, most
startups, and a significant fraction of actual individual
participants, service in leadership positions is feasible only
if those positions are really part-time and significant
attention is paid to either cost containment or spreading
marginal costs around the community.  Yet the IESG (and, to a
slightly lesser extent, the IAB) have tended to assign more and
more work and responsibility to themselves,

If we want more diversity along corporate, role, and related
economic axes, we need (as others have pointed out) to shrink
the jobs.  In the IESG's case, that may require reducing the
number of WGs we think we can operate in parallel.
Unfortunately, there are many reasons to continue to _expand_
the jobs: on a point basis, it will always be easier to add
tasks to existing leaders than to consider whether those tasks
are really necessary, to consider sunsetting other tasks, or to
organize and manage alternate ways to get them done.  It also
isn't clear that the community cares: I note that the recent
effort to allow the IAB and IESG to appoint people other than
the Chairs to serve on the IAOC/Trust, and an earlier one to
separate the IAOC and the Trust, went exactly nowhere.  On the
other hand, if we are serious, I think it needs to be something
that Nomcoms are committed (preferably without more rules) to
enforce by asking candidates their positions on job-shrinking
and by retiring incumbents who contribute to job-expansion.
Those expansions are perhaps also influenced by the observation
that, if the incumbents have the time and support for an
expanded role, such expansion doesn't seem to be harmful.  That
is part of a classic example of why already-homogeneous
organizations tend to become even more homogeneous, at leat in
the absence of disruptive changes.

best,
    john