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Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

2013-04-18 11:01:51
Self inflicted confusion.  Please see below:

On 4/18/13 5:17 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
  Hi Eliot,

On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote:
Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up of
those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us
little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not
representative of "who we are" because we are more than just the
people who register to go to any particular meeting. 

And let's stop there.  The point of my originally muddled note was that
we shouldn't just ask about gender.  For that I apologize.  Also, I
wouldn't do this just one time.
  The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly
white and male. The fallacy works like this:

We don't have facts in evidence, and as I wrote above, I'm not even sure
we know which facts we need.  I can say that gender is probably one,
country of residence is something we have, age is something we don't
ask, but we do ask how many meetings you've been to.  We don't ask why
you're at the IETF and we don't ask which groups are important to you. 
We don't ask whether you plan to attend other IETFs and we don't ask
anyone who has attended an IETF but isn't back, why they didn't show. 
We don't ask questions about the experience, in terms of how people are
able to find their way through the process.  There are many questions we
don't ask.  Now granted, some of this is more than who we are, but also
how easy are we to work with.  How does language and location play into
this?

Personally I'd love to survey people going to OTHER standards
organizations and find out why they chose those other organizations to
pursue work, but then I'm not footing the bill for all of this, so...

This is not just about one attribute.  You're ALMOST right in that a lot
of us know each other.  Perhaps that's even a problem, in that others
can't break in.

Much of this is what I would expect the diversity team to explore.

Eliot

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