Age, IQ, & shoe size? (Ideally, they should be equal.) Irrespectively Yours, John > -----Original Message----- > From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of > Eliot Lear > Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:01 AM > To: Dan Harkins > Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? > > 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