Re: Diversity and Inclusiveness in the IETF

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On 2021-02-23, at 05:33, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> And yet, you shouldn't be required to work with any specific person to get around those idiosyncrasies.  

While this is a desirable goal, it also is a lofty one.

The reality in *any* organization is that it is easier to do things for people who know the organization than for those who don’t.  (We have a German word for that, Stallgeruch, which is hard to translate, so I’m not going into more details here.)

The objective can only ever be to make the organization *more* accessible.
I believe finding a shepherd for new work is exactly the right way to approach the IETF, and I applaud Bron for playing this role with datetime-new.

(I found Bron’s telling of the deleterious effects of fashions like “everything must be done in OAuth” refreshing; our work has also been hit by this one, but is now slowly emerging, albeit in a rather damaged way, from ACE.  But avoiding fashions is maybe orthogonal to making the organization more accessible from the outside — fashions damage insiders, too.  It is also not easy to recognize a fashion from a groundswell.)

Grüße, Carsten