 So welcome to my talk, the title Beyond the Trend, How to Foster Diversity in Open Source. And before we get started, I just want to know where are people from? Just say it out in the room. Where are people? Ha? Haaland. Haaland. Haaland. Okay. Nice. That's very close. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So a lot of Europeans. Are we anyone from North America? Cool. Cool. Well, welcome. I hope you will enjoy the next 40-ish minutes with me. So before we get into what we're actually going to talk about, I just want to introduce myself real quick because I'm actually a first-time attendee and speaker at this conference, so you probably won't know who I am. Well, my name is Jessica. I'm in my 20s. I'm currently studying computer science, and I have started from very early age with coding and getting into tech, both most in the open source world on GitHub through, as you all can probably guess, having issues and tickets and stuff like that. Then I started, I have a project called Pipandock, which is a pretty popular Python library, which gave me the opportunity to be a part of the GitHub accelerator program, which is a program that GitHub hosted in the spring to find new ways to do open source, more sustainable, but more on the financial side. So we could get some product based fully on open source. Then in the summer of this year, actually, I just finished it. I had an internship, a software engineering internship at Uber, where I learned a lot about how they do their systems as well. And I also got to take a look at what they do in open source, because they use a lot of dependencies that some are proprietary and some are open source, and that was great to see how a big tech company kind of integrated open source and worked with maintainers and stakeholders. So what we'll be covering today? Today, we will take a look at what DEI means, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Probably we all have a vague idea of it, but we're going to try to dissect the terms and actually figure out what they mean individually and how they kind of play off of each other. And then we'll have a perspective from someone that is in the minority group, that's me, because I am fully blind. And I also am a woman in tech, which is two groups that's disability and women have historically been more underrepresented in the tech world. So at least we're going to hear from me about how it actually feels. Then we have a case story, and then we get into main takeaway, and then at the end we have some actionable tips, both for smaller projects and for smaller open source projects and for bigger projects and foundations and corporations. At the end, we'll have a very few tips on how to make equity simple, again also very practical, and then we'll conclude and there'll be time to ask questions at the end. So beyond the term diversity, equity, and inclusion. So if we just start from the top diversity, it is an overview of the workforce. It describes who's represented in the workforce. Like if a company takes a, have the surveys at the start where they ask what you identify as or your orientation or your gender. If you identify as being in a disabled group, have any of you ever tried filling out one of those surveys at the start of a new job? Yes. So they use that to get an idea of what, how their composition of their workforce is set up so they can know if the initiatives they take is working or not. Equity is a policy that companies are starting adopting where they try to have fair treatment for all individuals regarding, regardless of their sexuality, orientation, so on and so forth. And of course it's mandated by law. That's, that's, it's been mandated by law for a long time. But the difference is that while equality, as we many times heard, not to be confused with equity, equality says that everyone should be equal. But equity on the other hand says that everyone should be accommodated for so we can get the same result in the sense that everyone should be able to, to perform their work. A good example of this can be, we've heard especially in the US where there's a lot of unpaid internships or versus paid internships and that might not seem like a very big deal. But we've actually, but there's actually been studies figuring out that just making the internship paid is enough to support equity at a very early start in their career. And that's because the people that typically go for the unpaid internships typically already have, they already have enough, like they come from a well, well-in-died background where they have the opportunity to work six months unpaid for a company where as people that come from a less fortunate background, they do not have the means to do such an inclusion is in one sense the direct opposite of diversity. Whereas diversity is seen from the employer's perspective, inclusivity is seen from the employee's perspective. So that's how the workforce experience their, their workplace. Great. And then we get to a e-perspective. And again, it's important to say I'm only speaking for myself and the experiences I've had talking to other people in my and other minority groups. And as you can see, there is three things I want to cover. It's being a diversity hire and imposter syndrome and a diverse leadership. And what does that mean? It means that, you know, everyone in at least most people I have talked to, including myself, has obviously had this thought of, am I just a diversity hire? Are they just filling quotas? Or do they want me for my skill or just so they can say that they have a blind worker, a blind software engineer, as an example. And that's where we have, we in some sense, need to trust the companies. And we can see that in many different ways that you can trust the companies, depending on how, how public they are about hiring specific people that is from a diverse background, or if they just see you as any other hire. And of course, it can also be that it can also be that you don't get any help from your leadership team. It's a very big red flag if you have, if you get hired at a position, and then they don't do anything to accommodate you, as we talked about earlier, that is a sign of very bad equity. And then at last that feeds into imposter syndrome and the thoughts that, you know, it can really be detrimental if people just hire you because you have a specific skin color or you have a disability or something else. So the main takeaway, if you remember anything from the talk, is the mindset that I feel like a lot of diverse groups have that is already summarized with everyone I personally have the pleasure of speaking to, is that you don't want to join a group that wants you as just a member. And that again goes back to filling quotas and just hiring you because you are from a diverse background and not actually also because you are fit for the position. So the story I would like to tell you about is back in November of 2022, I got a message from a recruiter at Uber asking me if I wanted to come to a two-day conference at their offices in Ohus, Denmark, and I am from Denmark myself. So that's really a no-brainer. And at first I was hesitant of going because I for one don't have the means and I'm also studying. So I, you know, it's getting a lot of money to go somewhere and you don't really know what it's what's about other than what they tell you. And it initially seems very sketchy to say the least. But then they told me that they paid for everyone to come there. Like they paid for the transportation there and the stay there so we could have the chance to come and see their offices and talk to them. And that's where I actually started thinking, okay, maybe I should give it a try. So the conference is called G++. It's a two-day conference for women in tech that's just getting started to meet with diverse leadership in Uber and talk about how to get hired and how to negotiate and get to know a little about Uber. But most of the conference were actually more focused on how they could help us and not so much on they wanting us to join specifically. And one of the biggest reasons I could see that initially was obviously one because of the energy. When you come from a diverse background, you get really great at spotting when people just want you for your labels and not for who you are. And the second was that there weren't a single journalist or a single cameraman or something inside. They posted about it once but on their LinkedIn or on other social channels. But other than that it was not a show for them so to speak. They really did it because they actually wanted to help us. So if we take, if we go through that in the lens of DIE, it's because they helped us with our resumes. They helped us test negotiating strategies. For that ensemble, it was mostly salary. They paid for everything so we could all attend regardless of background or yeah. And they weren't too focused on us joining them specifically. So in that sense, they reversed in the sense that they got a lot of different women. They got women of color, women with disabilities and women without. And women from all walks of life, from that was 20, that was 30, that was 40, they had thought of all that when they invited all of us. Equity in the sense that they paid for our stays regardless of your economical status. You could attend and get an opportunity to at least improve your resume or your negotiation skills which could also be used both in salary discussions and also in open source discussions when it comes to pull requests or issues or commits. And again, with the PR, it is that visibility into a project or a project's diversifying strategies are good. But if you have a focus on it, it just feels fake. And in that sense, it's because a lot of people, at least in my diversity group, which is being blind, they talk to each other. So just a little visibility reaches far wider than it would normally because everyone, at least from all the blind people I've talked to, they know a good diverse company. So you can ask them or they know a good diverse project where they feel welcome and accepted and like everyone else. And whereas with your hyper focus on being diverse and only wanting to be diverse because it's what you what people say you should, then that people will be able to feel that and they will spread like wildfire. So now with a maybe hopefully another perspective, we can get into the actual tips for smaller projects. So the small things you can do is have inclusive language. As an example, these can just be simple things as if you're doing a video tutorial or writing documentation. It can be removing gender language or updated term like Blacklist, Whitelist and changing them with something less straight like Denialist or Allowlist or something simple like having master or slave written somewhere. It's probably better to do like Worker and something else. And again with and again just write your documentation. If you have documentation that you have for your project, write it so everyone regardless of skill level can understand that can be simple as having a glossary or explaining what a command should do or explain technical terms like, as an example, DEI could be considered a technical term. So just explain those or link to a glossary. Second is having open communication. That's very very important for a project to have open communication, not just on pull requests or issues, but if it's a project where you want a community or have a community, make sure they have ways to openly discuss or describe feedback that they have for the project and of course, include your non-technical contributors and maintainers in that discussion in those decision making processes. So you have a non-coding perspective on the actual project that you are managing. And probably the last thing for smaller projects at least is appreciate the non-coding contributions you get because a lot of people they write the code at least in smaller projects. I know that from my own experience they write the code first and then they kind of do documentation later. Okay, so for bigger projects and corporations, the things that I said about smaller projects still apply that is always good to have at least a starting point of basis. So another good thing for bigger projects and corporations, especially if you have a governance structure that's more than just a few people, is have a diverse leadership team. So the leadership team mirrors the contributors you want to have on your project that goes especially if it's a more open source project instead of a cooperation because obviously that's chosen by hiring process. But more or less to the point is have the people in charge that you also want to be mirrored downstream your governance structure. Another thing, especially as I talked about before, is if you are hosting an event or if you have some other means of doing it giving financial support to everyone so they have the equal opportunity of attending or putting effort into it or contributing to your project because that way you'll get people that might not come from that great that fortunate background but are still very talented that otherwise would have to skip out. And of course a mentoring program where you can help people that are just getting started that's always a good idea regardless of the labels attached especially but it becomes especially important when people from a diverse background might not have that many they can mirror themselves in higher positions or that's further along in their career so it would be very good to have a mentoring program. And last but not least reach out to organizations that help people in minority groups in tech like the lovely sponsors we have like Black women in tech, women in women coding and so on and so forth because I guarantee they have a massive talent pool of great great people and I've done that myself multiple times at least introduced myself and then very again the very practical steps to make equity simple this probably this applies to everyone both smaller projects and bigger incorporations is just ask get that conversation going because that's at least one way to very immediately see that you actually take it serious that every that whoever you work for the company that the person you're asking is working for or at least the project takes this diversity serious and be prepared because they might not know either what they exactly need so just be open to experimenting figure out what works because what works for one person might not work for everyone but as long and we are as we are flexible we we can be sure to find a path forward to where we can all be play and where we can all be contributing to projects in our own unique way that makes these different projects so strong because at the end of the day it's a collaborative effort that we all should take part of both minority and majority at the end of the day we just we're here to do a job to do open source either because we like it or because we get paid for it but at the end of the day just ask so in summary don't have too much pr if you're doing events or projects about diversity because that can also reflect badly it's okay to to advertise it but don't over like shine on it do it because you want to and just ask because it's a collaborative effort and open to experimenting and of course it can be challenging but as long as we keep a good communication we are sure to to continue to be able to grow diversity equity and inclusion cool so see we have a little time for questions if anyone have any questions they just ask out in the room yeah so um in that sense quarters are sadly still required um in the sense that we still do not have that representation that we want sadly in quarters in itself is not necessarily mean intended or negatively intended the difference become if you sit with a lot of resumes and you are looking and saying okay which one do I want to hire do I want to hire um this this person or do I want to hire this person because they're a woman would you basically a good test I figured out to do is if you remove the name and if they have pronouns on their resume if you remove their pronouns and name and picture would you still prefer to hire that person over someone else that's a very good tactic I've seen I've heard of companies and seen company use is they are anonymizing resumes when they get an initial initial viewing so they the gender bias and people of color like bias against that like those unknown biases that we have like culturally gets taken out of the picture yeah exactly so that's that's what I mean by quarters it's sadly still required because if not some some companies will just sit idly by but that's where reaching out to two organizations and groups that help minority groups such as women um could be a very good starting point just to say hey we are open to do it um and just tell about the diversity strategy that the company has in place such as again anonymizing resumes because just that alone can get get you very far annoying okay I'm not just getting hired because I'm a woman if I actually get a call back I know it's because of my skills cool any other questions you want me to share a story where they embraced my feedback or why they didn't embrace my feedback sorry well yeah have a story from uh she plus plus actually where happy where we had a feedback session at the end where they of course they asked us what we thought about it it was an open forum everyone could raise their hand and ask the presenters everyone that had flown in the entire team and I told them essentially that it really felt like they they did it because they wanted to the same kind of the same things I've had told today and I got uh the presenter he's they started crying because they they really wanted to send that message and they were really glad that it was received so well because everyone um was agreeing with my statements that they were really happy that it was received that well um on the other side I luckily I want to say I don't have anything yet but um I definitely don't look forward to that day where I feel like I'm just um at every city high I do many times where I have applied for a job and got an initial interview um and then they have just not reached out again or I've not gotten the job um and again that's where you start if that happens too many times in a row that's where you start to worry are they not hiring me because of my plan is or because I'm a woman or something else or are they not hiring me because they legitimately have better candidates I hope that's answer answering your question of course yes anything else on the closing thoughts well thanks for coming everyone I'm so happy that you all took part in my first ever conference talk in person I'm so happy to be here thank you for your time and yeah have a good rest of your evening I hope to see you all at the reception later