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.
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.
