Re: [Gendispatch] Meetings summary

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

Oh I'm glad I missed this the other day in my "jetlag" induced stupor (I've been attending CalConnect virtual conference from 2-6am Melbourne time this week), so I didn't get dragged in at the time.

I was very disappointed that the key question that I think needs to be answered by the community, and particular by those who favour draft-knodel, didn't have time for proper discussion at the last gendispatch meeting.

*Does the IETF have confess to some "sins"?*

I believe this is the core issue underlying much of the disagreement.  I feel that there's not consensus on whether we have something to apologise for.

There's also a sub issue hidden under that, which is this question:

*Is the IETF systemically racist?*

Systemic racism is a somewhat poorly defined and amorphous term which is at the same time both unfalsifiable and yet gets conflated across to broader racism which is a very strong accusation of awfulness.

There is broad agreement that the IETF does not have a racial makeup (or even a nationality makeup) that equally represents the various groups of people on the planet.  I do not see consensus that this is due to the IETF systemically denying access to any particular group.

I have observed, and I'm sure that many would agree, that the IETF is systemically "people from organisations willing to spend a lot of money on this project".  Certainly Fastmail pays for me and a few others to attend IETF meetings in order to work on protocols - and the way I sell that investment to the rest of the company is "defense against future walled gardens".

Reading Rich's very excellent public work made this even more clear.  Akamai is willing to not only pay for a ton of travel (when that's happening again) and meeting fees, but also pay his salary to do what is basically a full time job supporting the IETF.  Alissa clearly has a similar situation going on with Cisco.  That's gotta be strongly correlated with a bunch of cultural norms around the types of companies that would make these investments.

And if I wanted to get snarky (without hopefully going to the extent that would get me told off) I would point out that despite the fact that many of the companies who invest heavily in the IETF claim to want to improve diversity along the usual suspect axes (among all the ways in which humans differ) - they largely spend their money sending white, college educated, western middle class technocrats along to the IETF.  

*Iterating my draft*

I would hope to produce a document which is positive statements about where we want to be, and how we want to encourage representation in the IETF for all stakeholders in the internet - including the RFC8890 end users - with a diverse representation of life experience.

This - as I commented in the last session, does NOT mean that we want more people who went to the same colleges but just happen to have more melanin in their skin, or a different set of chromosomes, or a different haircut.

More specifically, we don't want to bring people into the IETF just to grant them equity in terms of representation in the IETF.  We want people who are willing to do the work.  Ideally people with a sponsor (see above where I singled out Rich - sorry Rich: IETF participation is not cheap, even if we reduce the other costs, time is money[tm]).  And we don't need equal numbers of human bodies from each group in order to have them represented - we just need a voice in the room who understands their needs and challenges so that we don't forget about them when assessing work.

*We want people who share the values which matter to the IETF*: Rough consensus, running code, not breaking the existing structures we have built.  There's no room for diversity on these things - encouraging people who disagree on the fundamentals will harm the IETF.

Conversely,* we want a diversity of all the things that are not essential* to the operation of the IETF, including political alignments, geographic locations, educational background, credentials... and of course: gender, race, sexuality, etc.

That's my dream for a document which could get consensus.  If that is not possible, them I'm not your (pale, male and a little bit stale) guy.  If that is something that could get consensus, then I'm happy to work with anyone on it.  I specifically said in the second meeting that I'd be happy to work with the authors of draft-knodel as well, because you don't get consensus and diversity by excluding people that you don't agree on everything with!

Cheers,

Bron.

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020, at 07:17, Pete Resnick wrote:
> Here is a summary of what your chairs have concluded is the result of 
> the two virtual interim meetings we held on the issue of terminology in 
> IETF technical work generally, and draft-knodel-terminology, 
> draft-gondwana-effective-terminology, and 
> draft-moore-exclusionary-language specifically. We'll allow a couple of 
> weeks for discussion of these conclusions on the list before we report 
> back to Alissa the group's final recommendation on how we think this 
> ought to be dispatched.
> 
> --
> 
> First, we find that there was rough support in both meetings for 
> creating a document containing recommendations on terminology to use in 
> technical work, and that such a document should be Informational status. 
> However, there were concerns about describing motivations in such a 
> document for fear of "ratholing"[1], and so any significant discussion 
> of motivations ought to be avoided.
> 
> After extensive discussion, there were objections by the end of the 
> first meeting to making the output of this work AD-sponsored, with a 
> preference for a quick-spin-up WG. In the second meeting, there was more 
> ambivalence as to whether AD-sponsored or quick-spin WG would be better. 
> Putting this together, we think the rough consensus within the meetings 
> was to have a quick-spin WG.
> 
> There was rough support in both meetings for recommending a broader 
> discussion and resulting document on inclusivity beyond the terminology, 
> but there were many concerns for how to structure such work in a WG and 
> have it be successful. Several suggestions were made to have the IAB 
> sponsor such work as part of their program on "Diversity, Inclusion, and 
> Growth". The thought was that perhaps a discussion there could generate 
> a path forward for IETF work.
> 
> We found a clear outcome in both meetings that draft-knodel has too much 
> controversial discussion to be the basis of a document for the above 
> mentioned quick-spin WG on terminology. There was rough support for 
> recommending the use of draft-gondwana as a starting point.
> 
> --
> 
> We are looking for a two important things in the discussion here on the 
> list. First, if you have read the minutes of the meetings and believe 
> that something was not discussed or that a point was missed by the 
> people at the meeting that would change the conclusions in the above, 
> please speak up. Second, if you think we misinterpreted the outcome of 
> the discussion from the meetings and therefore should have come to a 
> different conclusion, please let us know. Of course, you are also 
> welcome to ask questions about how we came to our summary. However, we 
> don't need to hear "+1" or "I agree with the above" (we'll assume you do 
> if you say nothing) and importantly we do not want to re-litigate 
> discussions that happened during the meeting unless you have new 
> information to contribute. Simply restating arguments isn't going to 
> change the outcome. So please do re-read the minutes of the meetings 
> before posting.
> 
> Thanks for everyone's participation,
> 
> Pete and Francesca
> 
> [1] In case you haven't seen the IETF use of that term before: 
> Interminable and often useless or off-topic discussion, as if to fall 
> into a messy pit made by a rat.
> 
> -- 
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> 

--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  [e-mail]