On Apr 12, 2013, at 4:01 PM, SM <sm(_at_)resistor(_dot_)net> wrote:
Let's take IAOC members as an example. NomCom chose two men from the United
States. The IAB chose a man from the United States. The IESG chose a man
from the United States. The ISOC Board of Trustees chose a man from the
United States. There is a chart of IETF attendance by regions for the last
seven meetings. There isn't any publicly available information about
attendance by men and women. It's going to be difficult to argue that the
IAOC reflects the interests of the IETF community unless a very large number
of participants are men from the United States.
I'd like to take slight exception to one thing that this paragraph implies:
that only a person who looks like me and comes from the same region can
represent my interests. I realize that given that I happen to be a white male
from the United States, the world's smallest violin is playing somewhat
unenthusiastically on my behalf at the moment. But in fact I would object
quite strongly to another white male from the United States representing me
rather than a non-white, non-male not from the United States with whom I shared
more views in common. And this is not a matter of purely academic interest:
there are many white males from the United States whose views I find vary
across the range from puzzling to upsetting.
So in fact you don't need to put some percentage of white males on the IESG,
the IAB or the IAOC to make me happy. I want people on these bodies who feel
strongly about open standards, rough consensus and running code. That's the
kool-aid I have drunk, and I want them to have drunk it too.