[OSCTC-planning] Getting the diversity language right, on the new campus.openhatch.org

[Asheesh Laroia]

As an update to this, I sat down with Preeya and we came up with some
further changes based on Mike's version at the end, both of which
we're happy with.

You can see them in the doc as:

"Asheesh slight change of Mike retake"

and

"Asheesh slight rewording of Asheesh slight change of Mike retake"

I'll paste the later in here:

<h3>Our newcomer-friendly and diversity seeking philosophy</h3>
<p>Open source can do more to make the world a better place with more
contributors. To get there, we are excited to make open source
communities more diverse and more welcoming to newcomers. We believe
these can be mutually re-enforcing. That's why, from our <a
href="https://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-students-world-open-source-day-1">first
event</a>, we've striven to make Open Source Comes to Campus
newcomer-friendly and have worked with partners such as
women-in-computing organizations to ensure diverse participation.
We're committed to newcomer-friendliness, diversity outreach, and
continuous improvement, and we aim to spread this mindset to as many
open source communities as possible.</p>

As the subject line says, I want this to be something we're all at
least pretty happy with, so no rush on merging it; this is just an
update.


On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 4:46 PM, preeya <preeya at mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi! I'm the one who originally suggested adding more diversity language to
> campus.openhatch.org, and Asheesh asked me to chime in with my thoughts on
> the language currently in the etherpad.
>
> I particularly like the penultimate paragraph (labeled "More asheesh
> thinking out loud"). I think it hits the right mix of earnestness, sincerity
> and showing that there is experience with trying to achieve diversity goals.
> It could perhaps be just one sentence longer, because it feels like it ends
> somewhat abruptly, but I think it's really good. I also really like the
> turns of phrase it includes, such as summing up diversity as trying to
> "match the world's demographics".
>
> I also like the last paragraph, labeled "Mike retake", but it feels to me
> like the phrasing lacks some of the earnestness of Asheesh's take, and it
> doesn't include some of the nice turns of phrase. So overall I prefer
> Asheesh's.
>
> But perhaps I am wrong or have missed something! Asheesh tells me there is a
> lot of IRC stuff I have missed, so I will try to join the conversation there
> and not be a stranger. :)
>
> -Preeya
>
>
> On Tue, 31 Dec 2013, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
>
>> There's a new campus.openhatch.org, and I wanted to make sure that when we
>> talk about diversity in it, we explain why we care about diversity, so
>> readers know where we're coming from and feel comfortable.
>>
>> To that end, here are the kind of things I want people to know:
>>
>> * We have some success running gender-divers events. The first time we did
>> an event, it had >30% women. This trend has continued generally, that our
>> events have somewhat reasonably healthy gender diversity.
>>
>> * Crucially, that 30% at Penn was more diversity than the CS program.
>>
>> * We think lots of people are excited about open source, and want to find
>> their way in, and that the true demographics of that are close to the
>> demographics of the planet.
>>
>> * We think that a key aspect of the reason open source is not as even,
>> demographically, as the planet right now is that knowledge and interest in
>> it typically spreads along friend network lines, and the starting-point is
>> very white and male and rich.
>>
>> * We think women-in-CS organizations are neat. We like working with them
>> as a way to actively move toward the more-even demographics that we believe
>> match the underlying interest on the planet in open source.
>>
>> * A lot of the reason we get reasonable gender diversity is the
>> newcomer-welcoming nature of our publicity for the events.
>>
>> * Another thing is that it's not just the publicity, but the event itself,
>> that (intends to be|is) newcomer-friendly. Certainly parts of it are, and
>> we're committed to improving that iteratively over time. Like the
>> Practicing_Git section.
>>
>> * We've been caring about newcomers in general since 2009, and we still
>> do, so if you don't particularly care about diversity, but you do care about
>> people being nice, we're still your pal.
>>
>> I wrote some sample text for this here:
>>
>> https://etherpad.mozilla.org/diverse-osctc
>>
>> The idea is that my text would live above "Sponsors" but below "Friendly
>> and knowledgeable volunteers", in the same style as "Friendly and
>> knowledgeable volunteers".
>>
>> I'm only sending this because I wanted to make sure that, as Shauna and I
>> both run out of steam and go to sleep, I serialized enough if the
>> conversation to disk so we can try to pick it up tomorrow. Happy to have
>> more voices here.
>>
>> I realize that whatever we say here runs the risk of sounding like
>> tokenism <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tokenism> and doubly so for
>> carelessly-phrased things like the above. I'm hoping the conversation here
>> can occur in good faith. I'm happy to have people raise issue with word
>> choice or actions of ours and express how they feel; that's all part of a
>> good-faith conversation.
>>
>> -- Asheesh.
>>
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