Paul, At 2017-05-29 08:34:57 -0600 Paul Ebersman <list-ripe-diversity@dragon.net> wrote:
Great to see this started. While I assume the initial focus is on RIPE, are there any plans to spread the effort to other NOGs around the world?
Since I gave the talk about diversity last year, I have had people approach me about APNIC, ICANN, IETF, NANOG, and DNS-OARC. So there is interest. I do not think that a co-ordinated effort makes much sense. While there are similarities between various Internet-related groups, the communities are extremely varied in terms of who participates, the goals, the activities, and so on. I do think that stealing good ideas and looking at similarities to make things easier make sense; that's kind of how we are getting started in RIPE. :) I feel a strong bond with the RIPE community, so am highly motivated for personal reasons to try to improve the diversity picture here, and there are many like-minded individuals. For most of the other organizations, there are people much better positioned to push efforts forward. I'm happy to do data mining (although I realize now that some people are patiently waiting for me to munge through some raw data) or chat with people, but really people who love each community and who are most familiar with the culture and history in each case are going to have more success. One thing that I am really unsure of right now is whether it makes sense to measure different organizations against each other. On the one hand, it could lead to good things as nobody wants to be left behind. On the other hand, it could lead to accepting the status quo, since the diversity picture is basically horrible so it's easy to say "hey we've met the industry norms for diversity!". In either case it is a difficult task since there are so many differences between groups. Cheers, -- Shane