Re: [Diversity] Participation in active IETF work (was: Interim step on meetings site feedback for sites currently under active consideration)

>Thanks alot. I had a great mentor (mentoring remotely) in 2013. I had started in IETF discussions remotely from about 4 or 5 years (before the mentoring program) it was a disaster but I >kept good discussions. The problem I faced was that I needed a mentor that is a participant in the WG I am working in and I found that the best practical solution is having mentors per WG >not per region. However, I am happy we have mentors per region which is good and I will work that we have mentors per WG as well. I hope the IETF general area looks into this issue as >well.
We DO have mentors per WG.   When we get a mentee who expresses interest in a certain WG, then I ask mentors if they can help for that WG.
 I think the confusion may be that we are still developing our remote mentoring.  I feel that remote mentoring is probably best done via the Internet Draft Review Teams & such initiatives.  We have tried individual remote mentor / mentees before & it was not very successful.
If you need a mentor for a particular WG, please email me directly & I will see if I can find one.
Nalini

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 5:06 PM, <nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com> wrote:

>Thanks for your email. My opinion is that the IETF needs to work harder on these issues. IMHO, the problem is mainly that mentors are still in few numbers, and the IETF needs to look >into the IETF culture or better to say their WG culture. I recommend we need one or two mentors for each WG, so the mentor MUST not be the Chair or AD, the mentor MUST be a >participant in that WG (better if he/she was a Chair before).
 Abdussalam, thanks for your comments.  As head of the IETF Mentoring Team, we actually have quite a few mentors.   In fact, far more mentors than mentees.  Also, if we need mentors from a particular Working Group, I ask the WG and people are very generous with their time.   (For which, I thank everyone!)
Are you speaking of remote mentors or regional mentors?
What would you like the mentoring program to do?   We welcome suggestions!  
NaliniIETF Mentoring Team

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 10:58 AM, SM <sm@resistor.net> wrote:

Hi Nalini,
At 12:50 18-04-2016, nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com wrote:

I wonder if there has not been more participation in active IETF work before from other regions because there was no structured way to start participating and language insensitivity.  (BTW, there is a new member of the Mentoring Team from Latin America, that I met in Buenos Aires who will translate the Mentoring emails into Spanish.)

Attendance figures were used as a substitute for Participation figures. The IETF Community did not show much interest in doing anything about that.  A few years ago, an IAOC Chair posted the following to justify the meeting policy: https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/pdfgakgOuij_5.pdf

There wasn't any formal effort (as the one you are doing) to train people from other regions to start participating except for the meeting training sessions.  A person who is not used to discussing in English faces a higher learning curve in comparison with someone from Australia.

The regional mentors (in the Cc) might be able to comment about why there has not been more active participation before.

Regards,
-sm 
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