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

Thu Jan 2 06:14:37 UTC 2014

*Open source can do more to make the world a better place with more*
*contributors.*

What does this mean?  Is "more contributors" an inherent part of making the
world a better place?  A causal part?  Do you mean, "Open source can do
more to make the world a better place through encouraging broader
contributions."?

*To get there, we are excited to make open source*

*communities more diverse and more welcoming to newcomers. We believethese
can be mutually re-enforcing. *

It's not 100% clear from this statement that you mean that "making
communities more diverse" and "making them more welcoming to newcomers" are
mutually reinforcing.  It might need a slight reword.

*That's why, from our
<ahref="https://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-students-world-open-source-day-1
<https://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-students-world-open-source-day-1>">firstevent</a>,
we've striven to make Open Source Comes to Campusnewcomer-friendly and have
worked with partners such aswomen-in-computing organizations to ensure
diverse participation.*

"Ensure" sounds misleading, given that we have in fact had low-diversity
events.

*We're committed to newcomer-friendliness, diversity outreach,
andcontinuous improvement, and we aim to spread this mindset to as manyopen
source communities as possible.*

I like this line!  Just thought I'd say so, since everything else I've been
saying is critical.

*

Okay, here's another attempt by me.  I will do my best to emulate Asheesh's
earnestness.  This is also on the etherpad.

*We believe in the power of open source to make the world a better place.
 We also believe that open source needs a broad and diverse group of
contributors and community members to do so.  We're doing our best to make
open source communities more diverse and more welcoming to newcomers - two
mutually reinforcing goals.  Ever since our <a
href="https://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-students-world-open-source-day-1
<https://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-students-world-open-source-day-1>">first
event</a>, we've worked to make Open Source Comes to Campus events fun,
safe, and newcomer-friendly and have worked with partners such as
women-in-computing organizations to attract diverse participation.  We're
commited to these goals, as well as to continuous improvement, and we hope
you'll join us in our efforts.  *

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Asheesh Laroia <lists at asheesh.org> wrote:

> 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.
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > OSCTC-planning mailing list
> > OSCTC-planning at lists.openhatch.org
> > http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/osctc-planning
> >
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