Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

[Brian Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Agreed. The problem here is not whether incumbents are re-appointed, but
why the pool of candidates lacks diversity. This is not exactly a new
problem.

Regards
    Brian
    (via tiny screen & keyboard)

On Sat, 23 Jan 2021, 19:11 Loa Andersson, <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Bron,
>
> I agree with John, I think it is bac practice to discuss names and
> selections.
>
> /Loa
>
> On 23/01/2021 13:09, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 23, 2021, at 15:43, John C Klensin wrote:
> >> --On Saturday, January 23, 2021 13:29 +1100 Bron Gondwana
> >> <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hi Rich,
> >> >
> >> > You make some very interesting points here.  I'm interested in
> >> > whether you think the issue is with the pool of available
> >> > candidates who put their hands up for roles, or with the
> >> > selection process not valuing diversity sufficiently.
> >> >
> >> > And of course there is a related question here - regardless of
> >> > which you think the root cause - because we are an
> >> > organisation composed of those who show up.  That question is:
> >> >
> >> > of the available candidates, if you had the choice, who would
> >> > you have selected instead of those who were chosen?  i.e. what
> >> > would your "perfect" slate have been, given the candidates
> >> > that were available.
> >>
> >>
> >> Bron,
> >>
> >> Since Rich was one of the candidates, asking him that question
> >> may be a bit unfair.  More generally, I think the community
> >> might be better off if we avoided second-guessing the Nomcom
> >> decisions in terms of specific people and stuck instead with the
> >> concerns that Rich described and Jason's response.
> >
> > Hi John,
> >
> > I would say quite the opposite.  If he'd been selected and had to work
> > with everyone else, then this would be an unfair question, but otherwise
> > I think it's a vital question and deserves to be addressed.
> >
> > We see many claims that it would be better to increase the diversity of
> > representation among the leadership of people along certain of the axes
> > along which humans differ, and Rich has specifically taken the time to
> > decry a lack of said diversity in the current leadership (both
> > concluding and incoming).
> >
> > I'm actually particularly interested to see whether Rich suggests that
> > he would have been the best choice for the role that he applied for,
> > despite being white, male, cis-gendered and western.  Given those facts,
> > I'm interested in how he squares the request for increased diversity
> > with his candidacy, given that the diversity would by definition have to
> > be created by picking non-{western white male}s for other roles in the
> > leadership.
> >
> > You can't divorce the abstract concerns from the concrete underlying
> > constraints.  It's nice to have those concerns in the abstract, but
> > "rough consensus and running code" - you can't have a rough consensus
> > that "we get more type-X person into leadership" without running "we
> > encourage type-X people to run and we choose them when they do".
> >
> > I observe a lot of "we should have more of people not like me in
> > leadership, and yet I want to keep my place in leadership" in the world,
> > and it's incongruent.  I don't think Rich's statement of a general goal
> > can stand independent of there existing realistic pathways to achieve
> > that goal, and hence I think it's fair to ask Rich what realistic
> > pathway exists to have delivered a result that he would have been more
> > satisfied with than this one.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Bron.
> >
> >
> > --
> >    Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
> >    [e-mail]
> >
> >
>
> --
>
> Loa Andersson                        email: [e-mail]
> Senior MPLS Expert                          [e-mail]
> Bronze Dragon Consulting             phone: [phone]
>
>