As an aside, if you follow some of the threads in that ada initiative link, video has also been an issue for some of these organizations. But, I do I think IETF is distinctly different than some of those other conferences due to the amount of video that is used as Eric noted.
I also personally don't think we should have turned this so directly into a women's issue. It's a little bit of a red herring to turn this into the notion that something like this will help us with the diversity issue, in particular in light of the fact that women are not not coming to IETF because of photographs, there are other social interaction issues that are more of a problem and some of those have been highlighted in this thread. Also, if you go back to the hackathon thread that seemed to trigger this whole thing, it wasn't about being photographed or not, but rather someone did not want their badge with their name in the picture. They didn't ask for their picture to be redacted but rather be replaced with one not showing the badge. So, I think this is going a bit too far, but again I'll be very happy to be labeled as "don't photograph me" at meetings.
But, while we're on the topic of mirroring policies of other organizations, we might consider some of their other policies that could be adopted including dealing with allergies: http://www.sirensconference.org/about/questions.html#photography (just below the photography FAQ item).
I feel very disheartened that it's almost 10 years since I first wrote my draft trying to raise awareness of the issue: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-barnes-healthy-food-07
And while we've made some progress, the discussion in meeting venue still left the food issue as a would be nice and not mandatory. Also, my document highlighted 4 requirements in dealing with this:
1. The meetings should be held in a location where markets that sell
foods for special diets are conveniently located.
2. The right food should be accessible to the participants at the
meeting venue.
3. Food that is served at the venue should be prepared and served by
appropriate methods as described above.
4. The meeting coordination and venue staff should be made aware of
participants requiring such food and should be willing to
accommodate such requirements.There is labeling of food at some of the venues some of the time, but we've never had direct access to is a person at the venue that we can contact. And, yeah, I can bug the secretariat and I have done so, and most of the time things are handled, but they have better things to do with their time. And, the number of times that those of us that have dietary restrictions have had to hunt down staff to find out what we could eat is way more than the number of meetings we attend. It's not such a big deal now that I'm no longer on IAB but folks in leadership positions (some of whom do have dietary restrictions) have a lot of meetings and it is hard to even think about finding food elsewhere during their very long days.
And, the issue of cross contamination is thoroughly ignored even when I've explicitly asked nicely when they've been arranging break food, if they could please not put the cookies right next to the veggies at afternoon break. Since people like to use their hands when grabbing food rather than tongs (another social issue we have), I rarely can get something at breaks. But, of course with tongs there, people use the same ones for cookies and veggies. This happened in London last time - while staff were setting up, I asked them to re-arrange and the staff told me that would "upset the chef" but they would do it latter. They never did. If we had access to a person, we could make sure this didn't happen. I've said before that I"m perfectly happy to interact with the staff ahead of time to discuss these issues. And, as I've said before, in many cases I wouldn't have made it through meetings without the contraband food I've brought into other countries. And, yes, we've gotten better about having the meetings with market access (requirement 1), but actually being able to eat at the venue would be nice (requirements 2, 3 and 4). The only time all the requirements have been met was in Beijing and I ended with my personal chef Eric - that was only because I just happened to meet the food service manager on Sunday, who noted that I was eating so healthy and my response was that what was on my plate was all that I could eat from their monstrous buffet. He said that just wasn't acceptable. He then got the head chef, who appointed chef Eric as my personal chef for the week. I certainly don't expect this level of service everywhere, but the point here is that the professionals that run the food services at the venues we use are often very willing to be able to handle this well if they're made aware that it's a requirement for some of the attendees. And, I do seriously mean, as described in my document that the issue should come up during contract negotiations. And, yes, I know about the other people that manage the issue entirely on their own without any fussing, but for me in the past this has involved eating a can of green beans with slivered almonds for dinner in several situations. Although, I have found my sprouted pumpkin seeds, that are probably illegal to bring into all the countries we visit and some US states can serve as adequate meal replacement.
And, yeah, I realize to most of you all, this is just me whining about food yet again. But, just imagine the uproar in this community if you all didn't have cookies for even one day at the afternoon break. Or your sodas and the only beverage available all day was water. And, again, other organizations consider this important, so it's not clear to me why this can't be the case for IETF. Especially, now that we seem to have become so sensitive about what some might consider to be "personal issues".
Now...back to my drafts...
Regards,
Mary.
On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 5:42 PM, Eric Rescorla <ekr@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Joel,Yes, we discussed this video issue in the IESG before we wrote the policy. I think there are three relevant differences:1. Video actually is important to our operations both for documenting the meeting and to allow remote participation.2. The actual act of videography the way we do it is fairly unobtrusive to the subject, by contrast to still photography, which can be intrusive even if the photos are never published [0]3. The video that we take is actually pretty hard to work with to find a specific point, as anyone who has tried to work with the archives to get clarity on the minutes knows.So, yes, this line is a bit fuzzier than I would like, but I think for the reasons above, this is about the right place to draw it.Best,-Ekr[0] Yes someone can really get in your face with a video camera, and I would hope that we would discourage that as well, but that's not what meetecho is like.On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 3:25 PM, Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:So explain to me why we will allow people to prohibit posting of still photos of themselves, but we will not prohibit video of them?
It's not like they can stop others outside our purview from taking stills from the video and re-posting them.
Frankly, given modern technology, the difference between video and still pictures is minuscule. I was trying to stay out of that aspect of this policy. But you have chosen to push it.
Yours,
Joel
On 3/2/18 6:20 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
The fundamental driver here is organizational transparency. Our
leaders are accountable to the community.
Yes. That's why we have videography, minutes, etc. We are talking very specifically about published *still* photography.
-Ekr
I am sorry, the image of declaring that the IEtF chair can require
that photographers not talk pictures of the IETF chair when
presenting to the community seems explicitly wrong to me.
Equally, the image of a Working Group chair saying that he or she
can not be photographed while running a working group session seems
completely counter to the transparency and accountability of our
organization.
We do place behavioral expectations and constraints on our
leadership in many ways.
Yours,
Joel
On 3/2/18 6:07 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 2:57 PM, Joel M. Halpern
<jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx><mailto:jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
One of the aspects that concerns me about the policy is that it
seems to allow our leadership to require that their images be
removed from pictures of them doing their job.
I don't understand the motivation for this proposal, and it has
clear downsides in terms of discouraging participation by people
who wish not to be photographed.
Why should being a leader require you to have your picture
publicly posted? Your appearance isn't any necessary part of the
leadership function.
In case it's not clear, the purpose of the text about panels is,
like the text about large groups, a concession to practicality,
not derived from the notion that leaders inherently have some
diminished right to privacy.
-Ekr
Yes, there is text about panels. But that seems
insufficient. I
would suggest we add:
IETF Leadership (such as IAB members, IESG members, and
Working Group
Chairs) should understand that when they are performing
their formal
duties they may be photographed, and those photographs
may be
displayed in public.
That would be in addition to the existing text about
panels. Thus,
it would cover WG chairs and cases where for example the
IAB Chair
or IETF chair are presenting even without a panel of others.
I will leave it to others as to whether the example lsit of
leadership needs to be more comprehensive. I hope that we
do not
need to be more specific about what we mean by performing their
formal duties.
Yours,
Joel
