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euruko2013 / committee

EuRuKo 2013 organising committee repo
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Conference diversity #40

Closed nikosd closed 11 years ago

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Follow up to the email discussion regarding BritRuby cancellation due to low diversity of speakers and accusations on twitter for racism.

This issue is here to brainstorm on the following:

apantsiop commented 11 years ago

OK. I am adding these to links to showcase the mentality and attitude that may seem somewhat strange to some of us but is a reality we have to face :

This one is from a girl from the Ruby community :

http://ashedryden.com/blog/so-you-want-to-put-on-a-diverse-inclusive-conference

and this is a tweet that shows this "enforced diversity" mentality as well :

https://twitter.com/estellevw/status/270309565394976768

P.S. I put this links here for future reference, so that we can be ready when we are to deal with the issue

petros commented 11 years ago

We can ask http://railsgirls.com/ to help/advise. We can also choose to invite at least one woman.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Chaps lets take a breather and relax on this. Suddenly it has became a major (non) issue. Please.

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

What does gender/ethnicity/color have to do with merit and technical expertise? As a member of a minority group my personal answer is: none. As far as I'm concerned, this is a non issue for EuRuKo 2013 since we are crowdsourcing the RFPs. The Ruby people will decide who's presenting.

We are going to have some discussion about this but I agree with @damphyr that it's not the time for this, yet.

PS: I intentionally write my views on github because I want to be on record on this.

petros commented 11 years ago

I am relaxed :smiley:

Also +:100: for keeping everything in one place on GitHub. Email is so difficult to follow. We also have milestones, maybe we should start using them to better organize?

nikosd commented 11 years ago

I am also relaxed :smiley:

It's a little weird though to see so many "no"s on this... It's not a political issue. I believe in the diversity idea in general and I would like to see more women and more black people and more mexican people and whatever people in the community in any case as much as I would like to see more students following the "ruby way" in general.

And no one said to ask non experts to give a speech. The suggestion (at least in my mind) was to think of a way to promote the diversity of the conference not to ban white male speakers, so take it easy :smile:

damphyr commented 11 years ago

I actually have very concrete requirements and ideas on this subject (I think both @pagojo and @vvatikiotis can testify to this). It's a subject we need to address, there are ways to address it without making it explicit or bringing it to the foreground where I think it does more damage than good. So I'd rather concentrate on solidifying how we want our program to look like first and then discuss how to be as impartial as possible in the selection while enabling as diverse a set of people as possible to submit a proposal to the conference.

apantsiop commented 11 years ago

The thing is (and before the whole thing came up) I was about to suggest that we introduce a non strictly technical speaker to Euruko (such as this http://teachingkids.railsbridge.org/) and the main contributor happens to be a woman (Sarah Allen). I wanted to do that in order to introduce subject diversity but... there you go :)

P.S Just because we're talking about it doesn't mean we're not relaxed. We can have asynchronous conversations you know. If you don't feel the need to respond... well... just don't :)

-- Apostolos Pantsiopoulos Software Engineer

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 7:39 PM, Nikos Dimitrakopoulos < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I am also relaxed [image: :smiley:]

It's a little weird though to see so many "no"s on this... It's not a political issue. I believe in the diversity idea in general and I would like to see more women and more black people and more mexican people and whatever people in the community in any case as much as I would like to see more students following the "ruby way" in general.

And no one said to ask non experts to give a speech. The suggestion (at least in my mind) was to think of a way to promote the diversity of the conference not to ban white male speakers, so take it easy [image: :smile:]

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/40#issuecomment-10522990.

fotos commented 11 years ago

:+1: @damphyr. But please find the time either to write down some thoughts or at least explain them over a hangout or something. This way everybody will feel relieved and more reassured that the issue is in good hands.

In @damphyr we trust (at least I do :smile:)!

chief commented 11 years ago

+1 for milestones @amiridis

petros commented 11 years ago

I know Sarah personally. She's been teaching women Ruby and Rails. Let me know if we want to approach her.

fotos commented 11 years ago

Another nice post on conference diversity with practical steps to follow.

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Excellent post. I will read it in more detail during the weekend. I also found http://oreilly.com/conferences/diversity.csp and http://conferences.oreillynet.com/code-of-conduct.csp. The second is more or a less a separate issue.

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Fotos Georgiadis notifications@github.comwrote:

Another nice post on conference diversityhttp://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.htmlwith practical steps to follow.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/40#issuecomment-10726050.

apantsiop commented 11 years ago

and a recent podcast were they talk "about the controversy around the cancellation of BritRuby, and the larger issues of diversity and inclusiveness at tech conferences"

http://devhell.info/post/2012-11-25/the-bozo-brush/

nikosd commented 11 years ago

http://jrubyconf.eu/policies

fotos commented 11 years ago

Another interesting article on diversity by Aral Balkan:

http://aralbalkan.com/notes/on-false-dichotomies-and-diversity/

(disclaimer: haven't gone through it carefully so I can't stand by it 100%, but given the personality I suspect it's well thought out)

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Conference Diversity Distribution Calculator

apantsiop commented 11 years ago

Where to find women to reach out to for Ruby or Python conference speakers

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qlfFViGWX_XLmAej4zITs8LqJ8qRzIbPB1oZmREPPq8/edit

This doc was released yesterday and in a few hours a few dozens of people were reading/contributing to it. It would be good to use some of these "channels" and inform them about our CFP opening etc.

I don't think we should favour any minorities whatsoever, but by communicating with such groups certainly helps gradually resolving conference diversity issues in the long run.

a few other good reads on the subject :

http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/why-conference-diversity-matters

http://www.threechords.org/blog/diversity-in-tech-still-an-issue-2013/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/a-simple-suggestion-to-help-phase-out-all-male-panels-at-tech-conferences/266837/

http://wallblog.co.uk/2013/01/05/men-should-you-refuse-to-speak-on-all-male-panels-at-tech-conferences/

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html

A very detailed CFP which even if it doesn't state anything about diversity, accomplishes it.

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Again, as a white heterosexual male, I’ve never experienced discrimination. It saddens me that anybody has and that people continue to experience it. Solving this problem is incredibly difficult. I know people may look at things like the Rooney rule and say that it was doomed to failure from the start, but doing nothing never brings about change. Change only happens through action, and action can be ineffective, but I would much rather people try than just give up because the problem is too hard.

I don’t have any easy answers. All I know is that I want things to get better and that I’ll take every opportunity I can to help. But the first thing we all have to do is approach the problem of diversity with compassion. People will try a lot of different things in the next few years to improve diversity in technology. Some will work and some will fail. Let’s promise to give credit to the people who make an effort even if the effort doesn’t result in change, because we will never get anywhere by not trying.

http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2013/01/21/what-the-nfl-can-teach-us-about-diversity-in-technology

fotos commented 11 years ago

@vvatikiotis actually they used the approach Courtney Stanton blogged about here: http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/

Her blog post is tagged as conference and diversity. She actually hunted for female speakers in order to have a diverse conference!

So! Getting women to submit content: easy? Um. When I’d talk to men about the conference and ask if they felt like they had an idea to submit for a talk, they’d always start brainstorming on the spot. I’m not generalizing — every guy I talked to about speaking was able to come up with an idea, or multiple ideas, right away…and yet, overwhelmingly the women I talked to with the same pitch deferred with a, “well, but I’m not an expert on anything,” or “I wouldn’t know what to submit,” or “yes but I’m not a lead [title], so you should talk to my boss and see if he’d want to present.”

I promised mentoring, I promised practice sessions, I promised one-on-one slide deck reviews with people who have spent hundreds of hours speaking at conferences. I emailed my Women in Games Boston group, I attended events and encouraged groups of women in person, I sought women out online, I met with women over coffee. I encouraged/begged them to consider translating the hours and hours I’d spent with them in the past talking about their careers, their specialties, their ideas, into a 45-minute presentation. I told them how much I respected their reputations and their ideas and that I’d be thrilled if they had the time or interest in submitting a talk.

Both blogs write about anonymous submissions and lots of encouragement. Must read!

pagojo commented 11 years ago

I think that the whole diversity thing is getting a bit too much.

The women engineers that I've met at work demanded no special treatment and in-fact scoffed it.

Our best take at 'diversity' is to be fair to everyone irrespective of their gender, race, (dis)abilities and sexual orientation. Anything else is just "skewing the numbers" and it makes me uneasy.

nikosd commented 11 years ago

I believe we are set for this for the time being, right?