Proposal submission: RSE program design for equality

[rkdarst]

I've been preparing a talk on the relation of RSEs to demographic diversity and equality. This was one of the key arguments I used to advance the Aalto RSE program, and by being aware of these issues I have noticed some very interesting patterns. The seed of this was the CodeRefinery collaboration, in this issue: https://github.com/coderefinery/handsonscicomp/issues/8 I'm a bit over developing talks alone, so I am making an issue to develop it collaboratively.

A rough outline:

• How people learn to do scientific computing
• How the university environment and support services can either promote equality among everyone regardless of background, or promote "rich get richer"
• How a RSE program can be designed with equality as a core value
• How we have accomplished that at Aalto and how it allowed us to get started.

I would want help to develop the outline. I have a fairly complete set of slides already, but they need to be made prettier and fitting it in 20 minutes would be difficult. I think this could become a keynote with enough work.

[rkdarst]

This is my outline so far (likely converted to slides later, or else a document with minipres): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1koXr8luwt1j780km9yaI-yrMrNXaklLFgA6uYDoEnC0/edit

The general outline is:

• Anecdotes about supporting people
• How people learn computing
• Specific environmental factors I have noticed (curently long list, could be trimmed down)
• What RSEs should do
• How RSE organizations should act
• Discussion time via HackMD

The last bits need more development still.

[rantahar]

Closing, this was proposed for the 2020 workshop