- diversity - mailman.ripe.net

Accessibility at RIPE Meetings
by Ulka Athale 08 Mar '24

08 Mar '24

Hi everyone, Some of you on this list might have participated in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Tech session at RIPE 87 in Rome. We received a lot of concrete feedback on improvements needed to making RIPE Meetings more accessible. Some of our staff will be visiting the RIPE Meeting venue in Krakow next week, and while we usually check for standard accessibility features (availability of lifts and ramps), we would like to know if there are any additional needs that we should be catering to. Some of the requirements we have gathered based on our checklists and the feedback received are: 1. Checking that all meeting areas are accessible via lifts and ramps. 2. Ramps: The ramp gradient should be gentle and the ramp should be wide enough for a wheelchair. There should be enough space around the ramp for someone to turn onto the ramp. 3. Ensure that wheelchair accessible toilets are available, unlocked and functional. Ideally with a mirror at the right height. 4. Having spaces with a reduced sensory overload - the Workspace (formerly called the Terminal room) for example. 5. Markings on steps for improved visibility and handrails along staircases. 6. Transport instructions for accessibility e.g. from the airport to the venue, to social events. We will work with the meeting venue towards supporting these needs as far as possible. If there’s anything that you would like us to take into account, please feel free to email us directly at meeting(a)ripe.net <mailto:meeting@ripe.net> or reply to this thread. Kind regards, Ulka Ulka Athale Senior Marketing and Communications Officer RIPE NCC

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Call for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion proposals for RIPE88, and view back of RIPE87
by Vesna Manojlovic 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

Dear all, there is a space to bring up topics of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at RIPE 88 meeting: session is scheduled for Thursday, 23rd May. Please submit your proposal either through regular CFP: https://ripe88.ripe.net/cfp ... or emailing me directly. RIPE Community is already offering several DEI measures, such as fellowship, mentoring, childcare, Local Hubs, and actively implementing Code of Conduct: https://ripe88.ripe.net/attend/diversity/ Please also take a look at the RIPE87 archives and short notes below, to get inspired on what topics to cover this time. Regards, Vesna https://ripe87.ripe.net/programme/meeting-plan/diversity-equity-inclusion/ Gergana Petrova discussed diversity aspects at RIPE meetings, focusing on academics, newcomers, and women's participation. Concerns are raised about women's representation, and suggestions for age brackets and experience levels are discussed. Valerie Aurora emphasized accurate credit allocation in open-source communities to foster diversity, linking stolen credit to power imbalances and other unethical behaviors. Mannat Kaur discussed the gendered experiences of system administrators, highlighting care work and advocating for a culture of care. Sasha Romijn addressed accessibility issues, emphasizing the diverse range of mobility needs. Annika Hannig and Maria Matejka discussed accessibility challenges during social events, advocating for more inclusive environments. The session concludes with participants sharing personal experiences and feedback on improving accessibility, acknowledging efforts, and emphasizing the importance of continuous improvement. * stenography https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/steno/47 * chat https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/chat/47 -- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/

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Minutes of the RIPE 87 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Tech Session
by Mirjam Kuehne 22 Dec '23

22 Dec '23

Dear colleagues, The draft minutes of the RIPE 87 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Tech Session are now online: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/diversity/ripe-87-diversity-equity-an… Please let me know if you have any comments. Kind regards and Happy Holidays! Mirjam Kühne

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Preferred names in the database
by Harry Cross 03 Dec '23

03 Dec '23

Dear all (copying this to both the Diversity list and the Database list), I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend and recovering from Rome. I’d like to begin thinking about a proposal for preferred names in the database/on resources. Some may have noticed this week (and for a bit prior), I have begun going by Harri instead of Harry. At the moment there is no correct way for me to represent this in the database, as an LIR the details have to match my legal name. I may think about going through the legal processes to change this soon (albeit in the UK this is easier than a lot of places). I know a few people hold their resources under a shell company for this purpose, (e.g I could incorporate Harri Cross Limited to hold the resources and be in the database). This applies to end users who hold PI or ASNs alongside LIRs. It would be good for us to think about a way for these preferred names (and pronouns?) to be shown in the database alongside the process for changing the name of an end user. I know the preferred way a lot of people in this situation would like this to be handled is to totally mask the legal name in the database. The NCC could still validate legal names to know who they are working with - and we will need some compromise here I suspect. A complete lack of verification is of course a bad thing. I have experienced talking to the NCC when handling end users in these situations who have legally name changed and the process seems to be incredibly hard with the lack of understanding on documentation for name changes. Responses from the Registry have included “How can we be sure that <oldName> and <newName> are not identical twins?” (Which in my mind, is rather disrespectful). I also have another name change in process that is being stonewalled by a lack of understanding of documents in different jurisdictions for this. Kind Regards, Harri Sent from Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

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Accessibility of RIPE meetings [Was: [ripe-list] RIPE 87 Highlights and Thank You!]
by Maria Matejka 02 Dec '23

02 Dec '23

Dear Mirjam and the Diversity mailing list, first of all, thank you, Mirjam, for mentioning the DEI session explicitly in the Highlights. It raises awareness about these topics. Second, I’d like to add some more remarks on accessibility and inclusivity of RIPE meetings. To properly credit their authors, at least from my point of view, I shall namely mention Annika Hannig who often brings these remarks into our frequent discussions, and also Sasha Romijn. (This list is not exhaustive.) Probably none of these thoughts is exclusively mine, and even if it originated in my brain, I would have never been able to boil them down into these points without discussing these points privately for some time. I also decided to not keep these remarks for myself or only for the attendees’ survey. I think that this topic deserves a public or semi-public discussion. Also during Friday, we got a massive amount of thanks for speaking up … so ok, let’s speak up and roast the meeting properly. * I owe to the stenographers so, so much. If any of you read this, THANK YOU. You teached me to actually understand spoken English, and what’s more, to pronounce much much better than ever before. And you know how and why? Attending RIPE meeting talks is like watching a film with subtitles – but live and on an interesting topic. I could finally map the written and spoken form of the language together. And when I stood up and asked my first question on RIPE ever, my English was horrible. It took me 3 iterations to pronounce correctly what I wanted to say – I watched as my speech got transcribed differently and fixed my pronunciation online. I love you and what you actually do for the community. Please stick with us. * Thank you to … was it you, Mirjam, who told the hotel to switch off the “music everywhere”? Thank you. This helped to reduce the sensory overload. * Thanks to Annika who supported me throughout the whole week. Without your love and care, I would be maybe half as productive and now also much more tired. And now for the roast. Please consider this e-mail more of a followup of the thursday talk to continue the discussion which we opened there. The suggested fixes may not work, please feel free to suggest anything else. * To reiterate, Sasha was presenting about physical accessibility: https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1258/ <https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1258/> * Also we were presenting about sensory overload issues: https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1259/ <https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1259/> * Multiple means of transport to get to the venue actually increase accessibility a lot. * The yes-sir overpoliteness misgendering can be at least reduced by informing the venue that the personnel shall use primarily the badges for getting accurate information, and not to do a wannabe qualified guess. * The meeting venue map in the badge was so crappy that i had to find the “other basement” by accidentally wandering there, and by what I perceived from around, almost nobody knew about these places. Most of the map was not to scale, some actual doors and walls were not drawn in, e.g. the “left” lunch area was very much off and also major hotel landmarks (reception, bar) were completely missing to add to the confusion. This can be fixed by acquiring proper floor plans as a map base, e.g. by taking photos of fire security maps while scouting. * BTW now I came across a proposal for newcomers’ session – what about doing a walkaround of the whole venue, to actually show how e.g. the meeting rooms look like? * The mass arrival of the Italian Red Cross on Friday was inconvenient a lot. The lobby was often crowded and being the whole Friday in the basement actually made me feel even more that the hotel actually didn’t want us there at all. * Handling of food allergies was … miserable. o At coffee breaks, both the vegan and gluten-free pastry was so much separate, that I several times had to break off a group and go explicitly there. This can be fixed by simply reorganizing the pastry tables to include these options directly there … they are all packed anyway and with a little bit of care, it would be possible to prevent contamination even without the plastic packages. o BTW what about people with diabetes? Was there even something suitable for them? o At lunches, signs were often missing. And I’m lucky with my gluten allergy that I can gamble a little so I often chose not to bother the personnel with properly marking everything. But even for non-allergic people, wouldn’t it be more convenient to know what I’m in fact putting onto my plate? o Also at lunches, I several times spotted people putting pasta on their plate, then adding something else (e.g. spinach) … and touching the pasta on their plate with the spinach spoon. This inevitably contaminated the spinach with traces of gluten. It didn’t kill me but could do huge harm to others. This can’t be fixed easily but even with a simple sign like “one food = one spoon” with a subtitle “contamination spoils the food for others”, people can get at least more aware. o At socials, the food was not only often unmarked, but even after explicitly asking for allergens, the waiters often didn’t know or (worse!) gave incorrect information. This can be fixed by adding a strict requirement on the catering companies to mark every allergy in every single served thing, including beverages. o Last but not least, giving clear and well-marked information in advance helps a lot to properly prepare and do an informed choice. Basically, every single information about catering shall automatically include information how allergies are handled. * And there is an open question about how to handle the badges and stickers. o Please, could the registration desk actively offer the pronoun stickers? Or what about writing the pronouns directly into the registration form and actually printing them on the badge upfront? o Also I’m missing the covid semaphore stickers with distancing stickers – and actually, I’d even advocate for widening the range, like “6ft and mask” / “6ft” / “elbows” / “handshake” / “hugs” / “hugs and kisses” * Last but not least, there is a request for PC to not have the DEI session directly before such a social when you typically want to change your clothes, do some makeup, … The list is (obviously) not exhaustive (but exhausting to write). I tried to dump what was remaining in my memory and what we omitted from the thursday talk. Thank you for reading to the end, and I’m hoping for a productive discussion with an outcome of having the following meetings even more accessible and friendly than they’re now. Maria On 2023-12-01 15:21, Mirjam Kühne wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > RIPE 87 ended with a total of 557 attendees checked in onsite in Rome > and 463 unique participants on Meetecho across the meeting week, with > more joining in via the livestream and YouTube.Thank you all for > making this RIPE Meeting such a success! > > We were happy to see active participation at this meeting from both > online and onsite participants. We would like to thank all the > speakers, Working Group Chairs, the Programme Committee and sponsors > for their contributions. It was also great to hear more about how we > can make RIPE Meetings more accessible and inclusive at the Diversity > and Inclusion session. Over the past week, we have had several plenary > sessions and lightning talks, Working Group sessions followed by the > Closing Plenary. > > You can find some highlights from the day in the Daily Meeting Blog at: > https://ripe87.ripe.net/programme/blog/ > > All presentations from the meeting are archived: > https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/ > > --------------- > RIPE 88 > --------------- > > Save the date for RIPE 88, taking place in Krakow, Poland from 20 > May-24 May 2024. > > You can get updates via the RIPE Discussion list, social media and the > RIPE 88 website: > https://ripe88.ripe.net > > Best regards, > > Mirjam Kühne, RIPE Chair, and Niall O’Reilly, RIPE Vice-Chair > -- Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.

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IETF & Gender / Cultural Diversity
by Vesna Manojlovic 31 Oct '23

31 Oct '23

Here are two recent reports about IETF - and since there is an overlap & similarities between IETF & RIPE communities, I find this relevant for those interested in "diversity": "Experience of Women Participating in the IETF", by Merike Kaeo (IETF) https://www.ietf.org/blog/report-experience-of-women-participating-in-the-i… & "Loud Men Talking Loudly: Exclusionary Cultures of Internet Governance", Dr. Corinne Cath for Critical Infrastructure Lab https://criticalinfralab.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/LoudMen-CorinneCath… These are both very detailed reports, so I've selected 3 areas from each report where improvements were needed: * (increase) Diversity Awareness and Inclusion to cover awareness raising and inclusion efforts * (support) Initiatives For Increased Participation * (modify) Behavior and Tone & * Get an Accurate Picture of Access to Internet Governance Organizations * Create Conditions for Civil Society to Flourish in Internet Governance * Target Exclusionary Cultural Practices within Internet Governance Organizations both Procedurally and Socially Enjoy the long reads! Vesna -- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/

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Call for volunteers for RIPE Code of Conduct Team
by Vesna Manojlovic 03 Oct '23

03 Oct '23

Hi, please see this call, originally sent to RIPE list. Regards, Vesna On 27/09/2023 10:54, Mirjam Kuehne wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > The RIPE Code of Conduct Team is in place since RIPE 86 [1]. > > We are looking for additional volunteers to join the team. > > If you are interested, please carefully read the information on this page: > > https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/code-of-conduct/code-of-conduct-team-… > > Please do not hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions. > > Kind regards, > Mirjam Kühne > RIPE Chair > > [1] Announcing RIPE Code of Conduct Team > https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ripe-list/2023-May/002867.html > > > -- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/

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RIPE87: RACI, Fellowship, Call for Presentations
by Vesna Manojlovic 13 Jul '23

13 Jul '23

Dear colleagues, The RIPE NCC is accepting applications for RIPE Fellowship and academics to attend RIPE 87, in Rome, from 27 November to 1 December 2023. You can read more about the RIPE Meeting at: https://ripe87.ripe.net/ ----------- We encourage our long-standing community members to share this announcement with others who could benefit from these opportunities. ----------- ----------- RACI ----------- RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative (RACI) is supporting talented academics in the field of Internet technology. Successful applicants receive complimentary tickets, accommodation and travel to the meetings and the opportunity to present their research. To apply, submit a short abstract and draft slides via: https://www.ripe.net/participate/forms/apply/raci-application-form-2023/ *The application deadline is Tuesday, 11 September 2023.* More information: https://www.ripe.net/raci Subscribe to the RACI list: https://www.ripe.net/raci/mailing-list ----------- RIPE Fellowship ----------- Having participants with diverse backgrounds, expertise, opinions and experiences enriches the RIPE community. With the RIPE Fellowship, we aim to create opportunities for individuals from underrepresented regions, minority backgrounds, or others who would otherwise be unable to attend without funding, to participate in the RIPE Meetings. The RIPE Fellowship covers the cost of a meeting ticket, travel and accommodation for successful candidates in the RIPE NCC service region. Apply: https://www.ripe.net/participate/forms/apply/ripe-87-fellowship/ *The application deadline is Tuesday, 11 September 2023.* More information: https://www.ripe.net/fellowship ----------- CFP ----------- And finally, if you do not qualify for these grants, you can still propose a talk or a workshop at https://ripe87.ripe.net/cfp/ RIPE 87 will be a hybrid meeting, so both in-person and remote presentations are encouraged and will be accepted. Warm regards, Vesna Manojlovic -- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/

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Today: online & in Rotterdam: Diversity in Tech & Youth
by Vesna Manojlovic 25 May '23

25 May '23

Dear all, today, Thursday, 25 May 18:00 – 19:00 (UTC+2/CEST) https://ripe86.ripe.net/attend/diversity/diversity-in-tech/ we are hosting Diversity in Tech session: We believe that diversity is one of our strengths. The Diversity in Tech session aims at helping us shape a safer, more inclusive, open and welcoming RIPE community. We aim to remove barriers that prevent participation, particularly those that affect underrepresented groups in the community. This session provides space for the RIPE community to reflect on its own practices, to learn from what has worked in other communities, to allow less-heard voices to emerge and above all, to listen to one another respectfully. At RIPE 86, we would like to hear from the younger voices in our community. What can we do to make it easier for you to participate in and find your way around the RIPE community? How do we as a community make sure that we have representation from people of all ages, and that newer voices get heard? How do we make sure that the cumulative knowledge and expertise we have gleaned as a community is shared? If this is your first RIPE Meeting, we would particularly like to hear about your experiences! The Diversity in Tech session is also a great opportunity to learn from other communities. We will have short lightning talks from: * Claudia Leopardi, RIPE NCC * Edward McNair, NANOG * Mirja Kuehlewind, IETF * Željko Blace, Wikimedian, member of Wikimedia LGBT+, youngER LGBTIQ+ and CentralEasternEuropean Wikimedians Our panellists will speak about the efforts in their communities to include younger participants, followed by an open mic discussion. If you are involved with any communities that are doing interesting things in this area, feel free to share your experiences during the discussion. Everyone is welcome! Watch: https://ripe86.ripe.net/live/main/ Register (for free) to give comments & ask questions: https://ripe86.ripe.net/attend/register/ Regards, Vesna -- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/

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Fwd: Consensus reached on RIPE Code of Conduct Process and RIPE Code of Conduct Team Appointment
by Mirjam Kuehne 22 Apr '23

22 Apr '23

Hi all, In case you missed this announcement on the RIPE List. Kind regards, Mirjam -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Consensus reached on RIPE Code of Conduct Process and RIPE Code of Conduct Team Appointment Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:55:35 +0200 From: Mirjam Kuehne <mir(a)zu-hause.nl> To: RIPE List <ripe-list(a)ripe.net> Dear colleagues, The Last Call for the documents "RIPE Code of Conduct Process" and "RIPE Code of Conduct Team Appointment" has ended. During Last Call, we did not receive any comments. Therefore I am happy to declare consensus for these two documents. I asked the RIPE NCC to publish the documents. I would like to remind you that we are looking for volunteers to serve on the RIPE Code of Conduct Team. If you would like to volunteer, please read the information on this web page: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/code-of-conduct/code-of-conduct-team-… You can find more information on the RIPE Code of Conduct Team and its responsibilities here: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-documents/other-documents/draft… Kind regards, Mirjam Kühne RIPE Chair

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