Encouraging wider participation from women and POC

[hueniverse]

Can we offer a discount code to significantly increase women participation? If the hapi day was selling its own ticket I would give free tickets to women to attend.

[jennschiffer]

that's a can of worms you probably don't want to open

[hueniverse]

Clearly we haven't met :-) There is no can of worms I don't want to open (and then shove in someone's face). What's your main concern? I would not do it if it will lower the chances of getting women to engage. I can take on the assholes on the other side.

[jennschiffer]

I think it would be perceived that we are assuming women aren't attending because it's too much money for them but not too much money for the guys.

Typically events that I know of, like at night clubs - which charge less or nothing for women, but regular price for men - are trying to get more women so the guys can enjoy the environment. It singles out the women as lesser, you know? As much as the idea behind it - trying to attract more women - is great, I don't think this is the way to go about it. Also how would we handle ticketing women vs men, as well as gender neutral attendees?

[karthik]

:100: :thumbsup: to what @jennschiffer said.

Setting aside a women only discount is the wrong approach. The right approach is to actively reach out various groups that strive to increase participation of women in events like these. It will take a lot of effort, but this is the best way to ensure participation and an even gender balance. My team and I ran an event back in March and we pretty much contacted everyone, including friends of friends (and beyond), and reached ~50:50 balance at our event.

Regarding the discount, Jenny's nightclub analogy is perfect. Why can't we just offer a need based waiver regardless of gender if the cost of attending is what's keeping some people away?

[hueniverse]

All good points. I'll try to figure out other ways to increase participation.

[mikeal]

Some quick history:

JSConf.eu did this a while back and there was a predictable backlash of assholes claiming "reverse discrimination" (cause us white guys never get anything, except when we get everything by default).

While I don't really care about pissing off a bunch of people on twitter I'd rather not have at my conference anyway, this isn't great for the women who are speaking, organizing and attending because the worst abuse that drama like this kicks up is directed at them. I'm not one to shy away from controversy but knowing that I would actually be putting a bunch of women in the middle of it who never asked to be there is a good reason to avoid it.

That all said, one idea I had was to give out credit codes to various groups we want to encourage to attend. I'd like to give one to OaklandJS to try and get some of the local newbies there. Similarly, any groups doing great work with women in JavaScript should get some codes as well.

[max-mapper]

My two cents: I recently put out a job posting that had gender specific language in the description. I realize now that was a mistake - the job description should have been generic and gender-neutral. Outreach is where I was able to get awesome women to apply for the job, e.g. my emails could say 'Do you know any women interested in a data science job'? and that can be separate from the job description itself which should be neutral. I think doing outreach is the hardest part, but it makes the biggest positive diversity impact.

tl;dr IMO making 'women only tickets' is not as effective as doing lots and lots of outreach

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Lin Clark notifications@github.com wrote:

As some know, I left an open source project where I was a major contributor in part because of sexual harassment at events.

One thing that exacerbated the issue was that while there were a number of men who consider themselves allies at the event, they hadn't actually spent much time learning what they should do to support women who were being targeted, and some of them ended up contributing to the problem.

I will go out of my way to attend particular conferences where top contributors and organizers have shown that they've spent time listening to women's explanations of what allies can do to help (and have read the blogposts about what not to do, too). Conversely, I won't even attend conferences (even those where I'd have a speaking slot) if I don't see that commitment.

Strongly signaling that the organizers and top contributors are working on getting these skills down would have a huge impact on women's participation, I think. It would show women that they have the leadership in their court if an unsafe situation arrises.

Here are two ways that I can see to do that:

1. Schedule an Allies Skills Workshop for one of the first days and request that organizers and top contributors come. The Ada Initiative offers such trainings.
2. Contract advisors who specialize in making events safer for women. XOXO did this for their event last weekend, and it made a huge difference. It was the first conference where I felt 100% comfortable the whole time. I could get the contact for the people XOXO used if we want to go that route.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mikeal/jsfest-oakland-2014/issues/23#issuecomment-55818820 .

[hueniverse]

My main focus right now is first changing the optics of the community I'm in (which is hapijs) and through that, change how underrepresented groups feel about participating. We're doing tons of outreach but I hope that this is just the bootstrapping phase. It is clearly not sustainable. But based on feedback so far, and how much easier it is getting to recruit contributors to join as we change the makeup of the group, I'm optimistic.

IOW, instead of thinking about getting more women to the event, I'm focused on getting more women involved in the community, and hopefully that will translate to active participation in the event.

[mk30]

Hey all, I'm peripheral to the planning of this event, but I just wanted to add that there are a number of large community groups of women in programming in the area. If we send an email invite for circulation in those groups, it can include something like "we're providing a discount for members of your group." Avoids the "ladies get in free" issue while also making clear that the event is actively inclusive.

Groups I thought of off the top of my head are: Women Who Code (huge meetup groups in SF), PyLadies, LOL Makerspace (women- and POC-led hackerspace in Oakland), and Double Union.

Also, I am friends with folks at the Hidden Genius Project (http://www.hiddengeniusproject.org/) and inviting POC high schoolers who are learning progamming would be geat I think!

[mikeal]

Ok, a few things:

• I've created an email list for all the organizers jsfest-oakland-organizers@tenconf.com so that we have a way for anyone to submit proposals or give us feedback without posting to a public GitHub group. I should have done this sooner as @thefoxis has already gotten some submissions from women in her personal email who weren't comfortable posting publicly. I'll go ahead and add all the people in this conversation to the organizer email list.
• I've created a 50% discount for each of the groups previously mentioned, they are:
  • DoubleUnion
  • WomenWhoCode
  • PyLadies
  • LOLMakerspace
  • HiddenGeniusProject
• I also don't mind "sponsoring" attendees who still can't afford the cost provided we know they will actually attend. The free student tickets last year had a 100% no-show rate which has soured me on doing free tickets unless we know they will actually get used.
• I've contacted Ada about the Allies Skills Workshop, we'll see what the price list is and if they have the availability.
• As far as hiring a consultant, the main issue would be price, as I already expect to lose money on JSFest. But, I think it's a great idea for NodeConf next year which will should have plenty of budget to cover it, it's not XOXO which is basically a million dollar conference now but it does well enough that we can afford something like this. In fact, I'll try to engage someone as early as possible in the new year (payment needs to go out in the new tax year for next years event or else the books get... difficult).

@linclark would you mind drafting a good email we can send to these groups to encourage them to submit proposals and attend along with these discount codes. Once we have the messaging right it's probably best if people who have a connection with these groups reach out to encourage them to participate.

[thefoxis]

@mikeal you just made my day :sparkles:

I think the idea of sponsorships is awesome—we had a lot of replies for both Human JavaScript and ^Lift training scholarships and people even crowdfunded they way to fly to Tri-Cities. I think it might be worth getting companies to cover travel+ticket for those who are willing to attend. We targeted it specifically at minorities; being it women and people of colour but I don't see why not offer it to anyone who wouldn't be able to attend otherwise. I'm happy to help coordinate too.

I'm really happy with the statistics we have so far, which is something around 21 men to 13 women. Looking at other events I've helped run or knew the organizers of as @maxogden said it just requires real commitment to reaching out and encouragement. That's what I've been doing at least and I think it works pretty well.

[linclark]

I agree, these are great steps to take.

I'd be happy to draft language and also to reach out to people. Through Double Union I know folks who have ties to most of those groups, so I can ask for their help in getting the message out.

[mikeal]

BTW, we're doing the workshop, please RSVP here https://github.com/mikeal/jsfest-oakland-2014/issues/28

[jessepollak]

Do we want to add that submissions email to the public CFP site?

[mikeal]

Yes, anyone can add it now that it's in the same org/team. If it doesn't get added by the end of the day I'll get to it.

[jessepollak]

Done :)

[mikeal]

I think it's time to execute on all of this. We've got some good talks up but are still accepting proposals. @mk30 and @linclark do you want to contact these organizations and give them their promo code?

[thefoxis]

@mikeal @linclark I would love to see us do something like we did with scholarships for &yet events. It would probably require getting companies paying a stipend to potential attendees. Unless we would have such funds since a lot of speakers will be local. I dunno but I really want to do this and I've already heard from several women who won't be able to come without this, which makes me even more excited about the idea.

[hueniverse]

Not much I can do to help with this thread, but I did post this talk proposal which is what I'm actually doing to improve diversity within my own community: https://github.com/jsfest/oakland-cfp/issues/67

[mikeal]

@thefoxis it might be a little late for a successful scholarship program, we're still short on sponsorship and ticket sales so most of my effort is getting poured in to that. But, we have plenty of time before NodeConf to put something like that together, and if we have the program ready when we announce the dates and website it could be really big.

[thefoxis]

@mikeal gotcha. let's for sure do it for nodeconf.us! I'm happy to coordinate and prepare a post, reach out to people etc.

I'll also reach out to other potential sponsors.

[mk30]

i contacted hidden genius and they declined (their program participants are back in school and the hidden genius folks thought that we might not get a lot of uptake).

@linclark was there an invite letter that you wrote?

[hueniverse]

I am abusing this thread just a bit.

I just posted an open invite for new module leads to take over one of the 20 hapi.js modules that need a new owner. We've put a lot of work lately to lay the groundwork for an open, welcoming, safe, and supportive community where beginners to experts can feel comfortable contributing. It would be great if you could reach out to under-represented groups (some mentioned above) to see if their members would be interested in joining our little project. I wrote about here: http://hueniverse.com/2014/10/22/wide-open-or-are-you-in/

Thanks!

[linclark]

Sorry for the late reply in this thread, GMail decided that I only needed to see notifications from half of the repos I'm involved in.

I've sent the invite to Double Union, to contacts at Girl Develop It and Hackbright, and am working on getting contacts for folks at WomenWhoCode, PyLadies, and LOLMakerspace (let me know if you have any affiliated friends).

Any other groups that we should reach out to? I can create discount codes.