Incentivizing participation by black technologists

[agreiner]

It occurred to me today that we should consider more impactful ways to incentivize participation by black technologists. For example, what if we offered free membership for any organization that has a rep who is black? At first, I'm sure that will seem "unfair", but the fact that we have pretty near zero black members right now tells me that equal cost is not equity.

[agreiner]

From the email thread: Tobie Langel wrote More diversity within the AC is great. Just as important would is more diversity within the WGs themselves. I find it particularly disturbing that large companies sending large numbers of technologist to multiple working groups aren’t doing even a small effort to improve the diversity of their own cohorts. Could we consider making W3C members sign (on a voluntary basis) a pledge with concrete steps to improve this situation, communicate about it, and then hold them accountable?

Jeff Jaffe wrote I'm not sure how to do it, but Kim's point: "if you don't have the power ... push it to the people with power" resonated with me. The power to name a more diverse set of participants lies mostly with the Members. I would like us as a CG to have a Call to Action to Members to get involved. Right now IDCG folks are participating as individuals. It would be good to have Members working with us to come up with a common platform of commitments we can all make. Tobie's suggestion is certainly one good option. Wendy, perhaps in your AC presentation, you can raise the issue of how we make common cause. If you don't mind, I would like to include that in my CEO Overview as well. W3C Team can also help with participation, e.g. more freely approving a diverse set of Invited Experts.

[agreiner]

From a subthread:

On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 1:09 PM Reid, Wendy wendy.reid@rakuten.com wrote: I love this idea, but I think there’s a way to take it a little further. We currently have a pretty big gap in participation from companies and participants in regions like South America, Africa, and parts of Asia (I believe in academia this is often called the “global south” but I’m not sure of this term and it’s appropriateness in this context). There’s been tech booms in parts of these regions, in particular Africa, where there’s been movements to stop brain drain and encourage people to start businesses in their home countries, as opposed to travelling to the US/Canada/UK/etc for work. I wonder if a more sustainable and beneficial program would be that the W3C offers free membership to these startups, or even to startups in general with a demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion (women-led, BIPOC-led, etc). I also like the idea of the AC being held to more standards in terms of who they bring to W3C activities, especially the largest companies with the most members. -Wendy

On 9/15/2020 4:17 PM, Heather Vescent wrote:

All, piping in a little here... recruiting diverse participants will not work, if we do not have an inclusive environment for them to land in. Based on my direct experience with some W3C groups, we still have a lot to work on to make this organization more inclusive. Otherwise, you have a cycle of recruiting diverse participants, they come in for a while, challenge all our assumptions, we don't like that, blame them for us feeling uncomfortable, the organization alienates them, they can not be their authentic self and eventually they leave. It's a well documented cycle. We do not realize that we have brought people into a system where they can not succeed -- and we often blame them (they style was wrong, they didn't fit the culture blah blah blah excuses. And this ultimately does more harm than good. This is why work on unpacking unconscious biases - much like was described in the Mascline Bias paper is a prerequisite to successful diversity programs. Also an enforceable Code of Conduct is critical - with an anonymous hotline and dedicated people to resolve the issues brought to it. I'm very glad we have already made progress on parts of that. -Heather

Judy Brewer wrote Hi Heather, I think that there's an argument to be made for doing both, actually many things, at once. There are already black people participating in W3C. We need to be making W3C a more welcoming environment for people who are already here, as well as for new people who come in. Tangent: In the past, W3C was not a very welcoming environment for many women in the tech field, including women who were already in the organization. Those of us who were already here, along with allies and advocates, helped recruit more women to join, at the same time as we were trying to change the culture from within to make it more welcoming. And we have a very long ways to go on that, including being deliberately intersectional in our approach. But it was important to have new faces coming in. And yes it was hard for many women who joined the discussion, but their voices helped ground the discussions in reality, while also underscoring the urgency. IMO W3C has a long ways to go on making the organizational culture more welcoming, and getting serious about recruiting for every marginalized group in the tech field, and especially around racial justice in tech. And yes building a critical mass of diverse and intersectional representation can be extremely helpful, as we learn how to be better allies and advocates for each other. But let's not wait till we've fixed our culture. That may be a long time. I'm glad for the discussion today, and the bits of progress we're starting to make on how we're thinking and talking about this, and the different kinds of ideas people are suggesting for actions that can lead to change. Let's add more urgency. Best,

• Judy