Great to see this started. While I assume the initial focus is on RIPE, are there any plans to spread the effort to other NOGs around the world?
Paul, At 2017-05-29 08:34:57 -0600 Paul Ebersman <list-ripe-diversity@dragon.net> wrote:
Great to see this started. While I assume the initial focus is on RIPE, are there any plans to spread the effort to other NOGs around the world?
Since I gave the talk about diversity last year, I have had people approach me about APNIC, ICANN, IETF, NANOG, and DNS-OARC. So there is interest. I do not think that a co-ordinated effort makes much sense. While there are similarities between various Internet-related groups, the communities are extremely varied in terms of who participates, the goals, the activities, and so on. I do think that stealing good ideas and looking at similarities to make things easier make sense; that's kind of how we are getting started in RIPE. :) I feel a strong bond with the RIPE community, so am highly motivated for personal reasons to try to improve the diversity picture here, and there are many like-minded individuals. For most of the other organizations, there are people much better positioned to push efforts forward. I'm happy to do data mining (although I realize now that some people are patiently waiting for me to munge through some raw data) or chat with people, but really people who love each community and who are most familiar with the culture and history in each case are going to have more success. One thing that I am really unsure of right now is whether it makes sense to measure different organizations against each other. On the one hand, it could lead to good things as nobody wants to be left behind. On the other hand, it could lead to accepting the status quo, since the diversity picture is basically horrible so it's easy to say "hey we've met the industry norms for diversity!". In either case it is a difficult task since there are so many differences between groups. Cheers, -- Shane
shane> I do not think that a co-ordinated effort makes much sense. While shane> there are similarities between various Internet-related groups, shane> the communities are extremely varied in terms of who shane> participates, the goals, the activities, and so on. I'd agree that tightly coupling RIPE and other group efforts isn't the best path. But I do think there are a lot of common areas and interests where sharing widely will bemefit everyone. shane> For most of the other organizations, there are people much better shane> positioned to push efforts forward. Also agree on this though I'd say that sharing names of interested parties on all sides so we know who to share with would be handy. I'm happy to be a conduit for DNS-OARC and NANOG. shane> One thing that I am really unsure of right now is whether it shane> makes sense to measure different organizations against each shane> other. I have mixed feelings on this. Different orgs will be at different places on the path and will have different needs. Metrics should reflect the goals of whoever is developing and using the metrics. Publishing metrics would be good; using the same metrics everywhere probably isn't useful. I've been going through the various slides and papers referenced in the RIPE blog article. I think one thing that everyone doing conferences would benefit from is a wider diversity of speakers. But doing that requires that we get folks who haven't necessarily been to RIPE. There are a couple of folks collecting names of women available for technical talks and that's one place to start. I'll see who has something they are ready to share and post here. One concern I have is that we not only actively reach out to speakers beyond the usual suspects but how we'll make them comfortable. It's not fun being the only <NON-MAJORITY> speaker on a panel or program. Do folks here have concrete suggestions on how we can give potential speakers that comfort and support?
Dear Paul, thank you for your contribution and questions! I will only reply to one of the things you mentioned: On 30/05/17 02:08, Paul Ebersman wrote:
I've been going through the various slides and papers referenced in the RIPE blog article. I think one thing that everyone doing conferences would benefit from is a wider diversity of speakers. But doing that requires that we get folks who haven't necessarily been to RIPE.
There are a couple of folks collecting names of women available for technical talks and that's one place to start. I'll see who has something they are ready to share and post here.
Here are some links to the existing collections: http://speakerinnen.org/en For example, in category "Science and Technology" there are 674 speakers (speaker-innen) , on 100 topics: https://speakerinnen.org/en/categories/11 Then there is this collection from 2012: http://bit.ly/ITWomenSpeakers and, what started as not entirely serious conference by only women called KATIE --> https://katieconf.xyz/ .. turned out into a real conference with only female speakers. I Australia, thou, so more appropriate for APNIC, but we did want to share experiences with other RIRs... Also, I have personally made several lists: of organisations for women in tech, Twitter handles of collectives, and mailing lists: https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Ladies_Night#Organisations https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Ladies_Night#Twitter https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Ladies_Night#Mailing_Lists I often reach to these ones, when organising hackathons.
One concern I have is that we not only actively reach out to speakers beyond the usual suspects but how we'll make them comfortable. It's not fun being the only <NON-MAJORITY> speaker on a panel or program. Do folks here have concrete suggestions on how we can give potential speakers that comfort and support?
There are several ways - some of these things we are doing at RIPE meetings already... - having a Code of Conduct - have Meet & Greet personnel to help newcomers - provide funding (fellowship programme; academic cooperation funds) ... others we suggested to improve: - provide childcare facilities - introduce "mentorship" programme - increase support for Net-Grrls (women-only social support group) Here are more tips, that I collected over time: https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Ladies_Night#Increasing_the_gender_diversi... I hope this helps! Regards, Vesna
participants (3)
-
Paul Ebersman -
Shane Kerr -
Vesna Manojlovic