[Chapter-delegates] more diversity, was On funding dedicated to chapters

[Dave Burstein]

Practical suggestions

The most important thing I've learned about building diversity is that you
must go to where the others are rather than expecting them to come to you.

India now has as many Internet users as the US + Western Europe combined.
China has hundreds of millions more than India. Africa has returned to
rapid Internet growth, probably passing the total population of the US.

China has a vibrant tech press that prints a large volume of contributed
articles. Any competent pr person could get regular coverage in, among
others, sina.com & cww.com. (I read them daily in Google translation.) IETF
definitely is doing work that would be covered if we reached out.

Dave Farber, a former ISOC board member and an Internet pioneer,
just was invited to speak at the big and well-covered  Wuzhen World
Internet Conference.

Economic Times in India has vibrant coverage of telecom and the Internet
and a large audience. I regularly read a dozen other pubs in Pakistan,
Africa, and Latin America. ISOC has a large and underutilized
"communications" staff that could help.

>From classical dancers, gymnast, science fiction writers, and of course
actors, I'm constantly hearing "It meant so much to me to see someone who
looks like me." IETF does have active member of color. Their work and
pictures should be on the home page often.

Africans and Asians are very active at the ITU, including in the Study
Groups. We already have IETF liasions that could easily grow and do direct
outreach. Remember, the Secretary-General of ITU reminded our CEO that ISOC
as a sector member can send a large delegation to any meeting, pointing out
that some accredit as many as 100 delegates. ITU is the best single place
to connect with technologists from the global South; I've paid my way to
several meetings and was warmly received. We should send a large delegation
from IETF and ISOC.

We don't have the budget to translate everything, but we certainly can do
basic documents. In particular, I asked for the call for board
nominations in Hindi and Chinese. Top management said "ISOC doesn't do
that." Having even a few documents linked from the home page in major
languages is a way to let people know they are welcome.

More to come.
2/3rds or 3/4ths of Internet users are in the global South. ISOC (and I
believe IETF) are becoming less and less effective because we haven't been
able to cross the North-South divide. I see that overwhelmingly in
standards, where ETSI, NTT, Verizon, and the big European telcos are
joining the Chinese and driving towards deterministic networking and
control of everything end-to-end.



On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 10:51 AM Livingood, Jason via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> > The key takeaway is the IETF has failed miserably at solving its
> diversity problems.
>
> Diversity & inclusion are difficult problems and they will not be solved
> quickly or easily - it takes a long-term commitment. The IETF also cannot
> solve it alone for the whole tech industry. As well, for the IETF, our
> community is focusing on a very broad definition of diversity which
> includes things such as country of residence, working in a developing vs.
> developed economy, education/work background (e.g. comp sci, human rights,
> privacy, software dev, etc.), and more.
>
> The ISOC board certainly raised this issue during the funding discussions
> with the IETF last year and we discussed the subject in ISOC board meetings
> at that time. For example, the IETF presented at the ISOC 2020 AGM (
> https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/meetings/153/) and
> spoke about this on Slide 6 of
> https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/10-IETF-LLC-Presentation-to-ISOC-Board-August-2020.pdf
> .
>
> More recently, when the COVID pandemic forced a shift to online IETF
> meetings, we created a fee waiver program for those for whom cost was a
> barrier to participation - a specific concern in certain countries,
> regions, and job types and a great many people have taken advantage of this
> program (287 people at the last IETF meeting for example). Funding comes in
> part from the newly created Diversity & Inclusivity sponsorship program -
> details at https://www.ietf.org/about/support/#diversity-inclusivity.
>
> One thing that helps drive decisions & measure progress is data. So
> recently the IETF conducted a first ever all-of-IETF survey. A report can
> be found at https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-community-survey-2021/ - and
> given your interest in this subject this is important reading. Not only
> does data help drive decisions but it also helps to create a foundation for
> building consensus on issues at the IETF & charting a path ahead.
>
> > The Internet Society clearly doesn't have the skills to help IETF on
> this. Our ex-chair, Gonzalo, tried unsuccessfully to persuade IETF to do
> better, but did not succeed.
>
> I believe there is an understanding and people are focused on taking
> action. The issues are far-reaching and go back really to the point at
> which new participants come into the IETF -- the earliest part of the
> so-called participation funnel. So IMO it seems important to be able to
> attract a diverse range of new participants and to then be able to support,
> encourage, and retain their engagement thereafter as their participation
> develops. Then, in the future, the IETF potentially ends up with a more
> diverse and larger candidate pool for various IETF leadership roles, from
> document editor to working group chair, Area Director, etc.
>
> But there are lots of ways to address these issues - these are just some
> my off-the-cuff personal views. Our next IETF LLC board meeting is on 14
> October if you'd like to join and raise this issue for discussion (
> https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/llc-board/meeting-info/).
> Alternatively, any specific suggestions on things the IETF should consider
> doing would be quite welcome.
>
> JL
>
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