Re: Diversity considerations

[Ted Hardie <ted.ietf@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 3:34 PM Daniel Harkins <dharkins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

  Hi Ted,

<snip>

 

  I was not simplifying their "struggle", only pointing out that there are
examples of tech valuing a mono-culture so we can't say we want "diversity
of all kinds." We need to say what kinds of diversity we want. And I'd hope
it won't be done with statements designed to avoid discussion such as:
"diversity is a competency."

As I've said before, efforts to increase to diversity represent a long term optimization.  By making more visible that opportunities are present for all, diversity initiatives attempt to broaden the pool of talent over time.  If
people who would previously have left a field stay or folks who had not thought of entering a field do so, that field wins.  The scale of that win can be the field of  "Science, Technology, Engineering, Math" or it can be "working group leadership" or "the IETF".  But a bigger pool of talent to draw from is a good result for almost any sized field.  As others have pointed out, different perspectives improve the results of many engineering efforts; larger pools of potential contributors may also lower the amount of work any individual contributor has to do to get a goal met.  Both are better outcomes than you'd get, in other words, with less diversity.

You've asked several times what kind of diversity we're aiming to enable, but the answer to that for any organization is embedded in the question of who is excluded, discouraged, or not valued.  That means looking seriously at economic barriers, at systems that promote based on social networks, and at structural inequality.. 

Before we take on that fairly difficult task, the simplest possible thing we can do here is to ask the NomCom, when they have multiple candidates each of whom could do the job, is to consider the impact of their selection on the pool of talent over time.  That amounts to asking them to consider the long term optimization rather than a simple stack rank.  Given the short time frames and heavy loads we place on the NomCom, asking for that and no more may be the best thing we can do at the moment.

I think that is worth doing now, even if I don't get to be part of the NomCom discussion of which particular form of diversity might contribute to the optimization.

Again, just my personal response,

Ted Hardie