 You probably people have noticed diversity has been a focus increasing diversity and inclusion in fedora has been a focus over the last few years and I tend to approach that from a It feels like the right thing to do approach I want to have a more interesting more vibrant Community with a lot of people with different perspectives and different Appearances and just different differentness in in what fedora is seems right to me Which is one approach to it? I happen to see this talk that Frederick gave at Lisa, which is my favorite conference that is not flock large installation systems administration conference and I was really impressed with I learned a lot from it and it was impressed with kind of the Data-driven approach to it I also as you know from my charts and graphs like data and I like that kind of the scientific Approach to you know why this is good for a project and I thought it would be nice to have that You know have this fourth through our community to listen to you and think about I so we asked Frederick to come Share with us. So welcome. I appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm gonna step off the stage here and Be you later Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right. Let's see if I can figure this out Supposed to share my screen I believe so can everyone see my screen Zoom so it's working. Awesome. Great. All right, and if you want to follow along there is a You can actually use that link in your own browser. So I know there are some questions around screenshots things that nature so Yeah, you can use that if you feel so inclined Thanks again for You know taking the time today to listen to me again. My name is Frederick Mitchell and what we're gonna be talking about Today this morning. I'm in the central time zone in the United States How math science and Star Trek kind of prove the value of diversity again I'm an American. I've been a part of a Different open-source community called Drupal Drupal is a content management framework for about 15 years So it's really awesome when I get to go to other open-source communities kind of learn a little bit about the community be a part of it and and just kind of you know Engage with all the different folks who are passionate about you know their space You know some other things that you know, I guess are tied to who I am as a person You know, I'm also a heterosexual black man and what's interesting about you know, that concept is You know, there are certain things that I may have some privilege on and other things that I don't and One of the things we're gonna kind of talk about today is You know, what does that mean your reality your perspective your the way that you kind of see the world is influenced Not only by you know, your experiences, but how the world kind of you know treats you and a lot of time Especially when people see me they think that this talk is gonna be about, you know race or they're good They're thinking it's gonna talk about You know, maybe societal things and and what I really want to focus on I really want to talk about today Is this really isn't about? You know Kind of going deep into those things what we're really kind of focusing on today is how can we approach this idea of what diversity is and If you have an open mind and if you're trying to really kind of again wrap your arms around How to place it within the context of your kind of day-to-day life, maybe this can kind of give you some ideas So it's kind of that's definitely kind of dive in So again What we're really gonna focus on In this, you know 30 35 minutes is something called mental models And if you're not familiar with mental models are they're basically are this idea that You know the world is a complex place and what are the ways that we can kind of understand how to Think about the world in general to help us simplify It's a concept that's used by a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of developers And it's probably something you've already you do all the time, but we're just gonna define a couple I'm not really focused on trying to convince you of something or you know, tell you that you're a bad person again We just want to kind of focus on positioning How can we think about some of these concepts and what are we really sort of talking about? So the first mental model that I wanted that I want to kind of throw out there that a lot of these concepts Revolve around is something called inversion, which is when you're presented with a problem. You're presented with an idea instead of really focusing on you know Can telling someone that hey that idea is wrong, you know prove me wrong that my perspective is right Maybe you inverted and say, okay. This is an idea What am I missing? You know, it's Taking a concept and inverting it to really kind of see is there a spot in there that that you may be missing So this isn't really about again when we talk about diversity and things that nature This isn't really about I have a position Tell me why I'm wrong. This is more about are there things in my current understanding that I could be, you know, missing The second mental model that this talk revolves around is something called the circle of competence and basically that just means that you know Is my goal of Where I'm trying to go am I just do I want to be validated? Do I want my perspective to be right? Do I want to say aha see I proved that that this is that where I'm coming from is correct or Is it really about? What's a success look like and how do we get there right and success can be defined by a lot of things Every time I you know kind of bring this up, you know There's usually a an interesting clip that comes back to me. So what if it means that me being right is you know My success and my response is well, you've kind of proven my point, right? The fact that you would put Being right ahead of you know, your definition of success is exactly why the difference between the two is really important to understand almost every decision and every Quandry that you will you know probably encounter in your life will always be about Being right versus being successful and really the goal of some of these ideas that we'll be talking about is really focused on the ladder Right what's a success look like and how do we have a successful open source for Dora community? All right, so let's kind of dive into this so this is again kind of Just a quick little map of where we are in the world, right? So the first is the diversity is a fact and when I say that let's just kind of talk about it from a dictionary perspective right the definition of diversity it revolves around the idea that Things or you know something within a particular context is different. So if we're talking about people Right, that's what we live in a diverse world There are lots of different types of people. I mean, there's I don't really know how Anyone can kind of argue that and you can slice that in the way you want right short tall Different physical attributes different perspectives different experiences different realities, etc So the differences amongst among us are not really in dispute that is a fact I think where things kind of get tripped up is maybe This next two points, which is what do we do about that and what does what does what a success look like? The fact that inclusion should probably be a practice that we do. How do we do things to include more? perspectives include more people To ultimately get to what success look like which is equity, right and equity is an interesting kind of concept Sometimes folks, you know kind of confuse that with treating people treating people equally and Those things aren't necessarily the same. So like a good example is you know If I were to give someone who was poor $10,000 and I was to give someone who was really really wealthy $10,000. I may be treating them equally But equity was not achieved between the two, right? So treating someone equals not the same thing as treating someone the same and you don't necessarily get to the same goal if you, you know, don't necessarily parse the difference between Equity being a goal and and just kind of you know doing things treating people equally and it's a it's a it's a nuance But it's a really important kind of difference and the reason why that's that that difference is so important is when you look at the kind of graph below We talk about are you here folks kind of talk about, you know, why is this important? Why do I care? and the reason is because you know if If you're not invested in the goals above again, what's a success look like? Are we trying to be right versus successful? then, you know You might necessarily achieve what you're trying to get on on the right, which is growth and you stay inside of neutral well, unfortunately the opposite of Growth is inertia and the opposite of Trying to grow and bring more put people inside is Segregating them and separating them and saying well, they're not they don't belong and The folks who are able to kind of do that are those with privilege all different kinds of privilege and The folks who are not able to do that are not able to be included and ultimately feel oppressed And so again just kind of putting the map out there of neutrality is a position it's a position that anyone can take and You know if that's the position that you take that that's fine But what we're kind of focusing on today is how do we kind of move from maybe the neutral position to the growth position? And that's what that's a that's kind of dive deeper into the some of those ideas All right, so quickly. Let's play a game so you have a young woman who's three years old when she started to read books and The game is guess her college GPA So you have a couple of options, right? You have You know she in the middle This is assuming a 4.0 scale for those kind of a traditional GPA, right? Is it is it high? Is it low and As you kind of think about this, you know and you make your guess I think the most important thing to note is There really isn't a way to win This game and I apologize for tricking you but basically what I'm trying to kind of put out here is What you just did by connecting, you know a previous understanding of someone's point in life and then trying to project that out to a future prediction is what we call bias like that's What bias is and even though that Technically typically has a negative connotation The point that I'm trying to make is this is how human beings work We have evolved and we create shortcuts in our mind For that very reason to understand or try to you know connect disparate concepts so that we can make better decisions and when we overindex or take different points that we can familiarize with to make a conclusion that is technically what bias is and In a technical community, especially open-source community with a lot of different technologists who pride themselves on Objective thinking and building technical, you know outcomes Sometimes we get enamored with the idea that we are not biased that we are objective We're not subject to emotion and the point that I'm trying to make here is you know, that is impossible We are all human beings and and bias even if it's most innocuous form is just how how we go about things So if you're open to that and you kind of take that as you know a nugget Then we can start to talk about okay Well, what does that mean? It was the implication of that especially when we talk about the mental model of circle of competence Focusing on all right Well, if I have biases are the actions that I'm doing focusing on being right and confirming those biases Or am I doing things again to focus on being successful? All right Two more definitions that I want to add to this piece again because you know We are technologists and I want to make sure that we have the right terminology because we all know terminology is really important in our world The first is perspective and perspective what that means is you know, how you kind of look at a problem Common perspectives come from imitation, right? So when you're a part of a group, you know Your perspective is informed by what others in that group have done So if you live in a different part of the world and you have different, you know Customs you notice those customs and your perspective is shaped by that So you just kind of imitate what you what you've learned and that and that's okay Your perspective also comes from the need to communicate the fact that you're trying to make connections with another person, right? So it's hard sometimes to connect or communicate with people if you can't come from the same perspective or at least communicate from a similar perspective and a lot of times when you're surrounded by Certain group of people for a long period of time, whether it's where you live or you work etc You tend to adopt or absorb those perspectives because again, you want to communicate where social beings That's how we get things done and the other thing is, you know, we just have this natural desire to conform You try to find your tribe. You've heard it as tribalism, but even in the most innocuous kind of definitions right your perspective is shaped by this desire to feel comfortable and that's okay, too But I think it's just important to note what perspective is and and the most important thing again is it's it's how you look at a problem That's what perspective is The second thing we want to kind of talk about is heuristic and heuristic is How you end up searching for a solution, right? So, you know, and the most simplest terms if you are a farmer and the problem and the perspective that you have has been through the farm and you know, you you're familiar with you know, have your machinery or planting or raising life's architecture, then if you have a problem such as You know, hey, I have a leaky faucet or I You know, I'm trying to make my my child feel better The way that I would solve that solution or the way that I would solve that problem is likely going to be informed by not only my perspective but you know the context of where I came so how I search for that solution is is Definitely going to influence, you know, ultimately where I come to Why is that important? It's important because when we think about our open-source communities and I apologize I don't know why keeps going back that way When you think about our open-source communities, right? We have to be cognizant of the fact that different perspectives ultimately come to different conclusions And so again Focusing on the idea of what success looks like Can help us kind of work through the and respect the fact that everyone has kind of a different perspective a different heuristic when they're approaching different problems And so come some quick stories in science that that reinforces point, you know back in the 1930s There was a farmer who you know was trying to figure out why their calf kept getting sick and it turns out that this particular calf on their farm was eating a bunch of clovers you know little clover plants and When he went to an animal doctor and took took his calf to the animal doctor What they found was that these clovers have a byproduct called Cumorin which essentially thins the blood and because the calf kept eating the clovers, you know Their blood was thinning and they were you know had low blood pressure and it ultimately kind of affected the cats the cats of the cats health What was interesting about that Man this thing is really kind of sensitive. What's interesting about that is That innovation even though it took 40 years right Was discovered within the context of farming and started with you know a calf being sick But it ultimately end up being a key ingredient in something called cumadin Which is a blood thinner which second to you know penicillin has been the the central drug that has saved the most people in this world right and again what the story sort of illustrates is this idea that you know when you approach different problems or when you had different problems with a new perspective and a new heuristic it can be repurposed and Reused to maybe solve existing problems and the only way to kind of get there is to have different perspectives Which ultimately inform different heuristics so a problem or a disagreement or I don't really see that I don't necessarily agree for one particular person or specific group could be an exponential solution For different group which can ultimately kind of help us all right and we have these kind of scientific Stories these these facts that kind of exist out there with one of them kind of being the invention of blood thinners Another example and there's actually a recent article that just kind of came out that even changed this was You know this picture right here, so for the longest time for those who are old enough. This is how we were taught you know Reproduction happens you have this idea that you know you you have a single sperm that Impregnates an egg and that sperm is the one that one and it you know dominated all the other sperm and so you know the the most The most dominant one wins and that's that kind of frame some of our thinking of how we think about You know what we should prize and what we should value in our society Well, it turns out you know that Once we started as a society allowing women to become Scientists within this world the real story actually kind of looks like this where it's not one sperm, you know kind of Trapezing through and deciding you know, hey, I'm the I'm the superior one and you know I'm the one that made it The the actual real picture is more something like this where you have an egg and the egg actually chooses From you know a plethora of lots of different sperm that end up making it and again that just changed how we taught health and part of that was because You had different perspectives in the field of science, right to Take a deeper look at something with a different perspective of different heuristic to literally change our understanding of how reproduction works and Again, it's just one of those things where you know I'm reinforcing this idea that that that that that different perspectives and different heuristic have already proven and already kind of Move us forward from our neutral and you know a neutral and inertia state to our growth state How we learn how we how we you know learn new things All right, so what does that really mean for your team Your community right because I'm sure you already sort of feel like well the people we already have you know are good enough My team our community already has superheroes. We're doing we're doing pretty good and that may be true right you may feel comfortable with the folks that You already engage with there's nothing wrong with that. I think again what we're sort of trying to talk about today is Given What currently exists in your current kind of context? What does that mean to? Include more folks and to make sure that you actually want to run towards making sure you know diversity is a big part of Your experiences every day so the first thing we want to kind of do is make sure we understand what diversity is in general Because I think it gets oversimplified The first thing to kind of know about the definition of diversity is that it's not simple It actually is very fluid and there are different types of diversity, right? So the one that typically is brought up and is used as almost like a cudgel Depending upon whether you're pro or I don't know if you're against but just you know Let's just say argue its priority is demographic diversity, right? These are things that we see someone's gender someone's race someone's sexual orientation These are identities, right? These are these are identities of origin There are things that most of the time people can't really control. There's just how they're born It's something that sticks with them for the rest of their life And that's again, that's just one part of what we're talking about Another is something called experiential diversity, right? And this is based on and this this kind of comes from What our groups are what our affinities are? What our hobbies are? Things that nature and this is more organic there isn't really You know Defined by others that you kind of get to define what your experiences are And and that's really important, you know The fact that that we're all kind of associated and a part of the fedora community is one of those examples of experiential diversity, right? I choosing to be a part of this group I've organically kind of found this and I want to be involved and that's that's a great thing too and the last thing That you've probably heard of before is something called cognitive diversity And unfortunately in this day and time it's kind of used as a weapon against the first one Anytime we talk about diversity sometimes people use the idea of cognitive diversity to say well that's what's more important than demographic diversity and cognitive diversity is really about again how we approach problems, it's really you're trying to parse people's perspective and heuristic and The the the point is that you're you're you're trying to say was longest people think differently Then that's what's important. I don't want to necessarily focus on how they look etc And a lot of times what's involved with cognitive diversity is This aspirational concept that you know, I'm different and I have this different identity and again That's okay I just the goal of this this slide is really for you to understand that it's not a singular thing diversity is A fluid concept and it's just used as a classification To take something very complex and kind of try to simplify it But the more you understand that the idea of diversity is not a simple concept that it's a fluid thing And there's all different types the more you can maybe hopefully be open to Some of the the scientific facts kind of rooted within within its premise The other thing that I want to kind of stress is again one is not better than the other And it's and it's you know, again if we focus on Trying to be successful and what success looks like as a community we can kind of appreciate all of their different Their value points as we kind of work through the challenges that we have together All right the other part that's just kind of Out there, but I think kind of gets overlooked when we talk about these things is You know the science of biology Right and evolution in general biodiversity, right? We kind of sort of know this But I don't think we take that concept and really kind of Bring it into this conversation So this picture right what you're looking at is obviously a frog and what's interesting about the concept of biodiversity And just evolution in general is it's it's it's a scientific norm We kind of agree and understand, you know that if different animals don't evolve as things change You know those particular types of species will die off, right? It's proven in the concept of You know a frog with a sticky tongue and an insect with a slippery body if a particular species of frog doesn't continue to change and adapt to have a more stickier tongue and You know the the food that it relies on let's just say these particular insects do evolve With a more slippery body than that particular species, you know Will likely not continue to survive the same is true for the insect as well, so they kind of play off with each other But we know through evolution, right that the cross-pollinization the idea that you know the sharing of in this case just DNA strands create different types of you know species and The different factors that are brought in from that perspective Ultimately create a different context for both of these species to live and the cycle just kind of keeps continuing and Again, what I'm trying to stress here is this idea that at the end of the day like momentum is going to keep going and We constantly have to kind of you know continuously evolve and so there's there's there's some truth here With this kind of example So let's kind of go to Star Trek and for those who may be a little disappointed I am going to talk about Star Trek Voyager instead of these pace nine or the next generation But essentially what's what was interesting about Star Trek Voyager was the fact that In this case it was the first, you know Star Trek that had a woman as a captain in a major You know television series which sounds kind of weird now in 2020 But at the time it was you know very you know progressive and a little bit earth shattering But the premise of the the of this particular Show was this idea that you had kind of these two factions a rebel faction and Starfleet and essentially those different People were thrust together in a impossible situation Where they were thrown 70,000 light years from the Alpha Quadrant and they basically had to get through their differences Adopt their differences in order to eventually figure out how to get back home together So this is this concept that all these different perspectives people with different points of view who actually were warring against each other Now are in a situation where they have to figure out how to be successful and the first character You know that was really important was you know Captain Janeway for those who have seen this picture before You're probably thinking isn't that the person from Orange is the new black and the answer is yes This is Kate Mulgrew but in this particular concept. We're really talking about a character who was bullheaded Who was very stubborn who was curious, you know Constantly curious. She was a scientist by nature But she was also a leader and as a leader, you know, she had her sayings the fact that she wanted to keep things You know, you know uniform But she was fiercely loyal to her fiercely loyal to her crew and that was really important again as she She thought about it Given the definition of success success in this case was getting back home and we all had to kind of you know be there together And one of the things as a leader that I think is really important When you're trying to figure these things out is the question, you know, are you open to unorthodox thinking unorthodox? Concepts and this is where we start to introduce some some newer things, right? So this this difference and this this comparison between kind of two things IQ and ecu So or a lot we're familiar with IQ You know your intelligence close in and and that really focuses on Your ability to learn something not necessarily what you know But think about the difference between velocity and acceleration, right? What is the pace at which you learn new things? What's interesting about IQ is that it really doesn't change After a certain age, it's just kind of one of those fixed things Which why you have IQ scores and I think that's one of those things that we as society really kind of over index on We have this other concept though called ecu, which is really about emotional intelligence Or emotional quotient and what that is is that it's your ability to recognize Not only someone else's emotions, but also your own Right and what's great about ecu is that it's not fixed it changes over time It's something you can constantly improve upon Why is this important? Because if you understand the difference between the two then you're able to kind of again separate and really and try to really hone in on okay Um when things break down when we're trying to have conversations when we're trying to again get to whatever success metric We are as a team as an open-source society Um, what are the things that are the most important and what are the things that I can be doing to make sure that we You know kind of get there Is it about just having really smart people who can solve problems really quickly or is it about or and I didn't say or but and Is it about folks who you know feel this sense that it's really important for people to feel welcome that You know, they recognize what different emotions are recognize different biases, etc Especially within a group context It turns out that there's a bunch of studies that basically have proven That the efficacy of a group is actually more dependent upon The group's emotional intelligence of its individual members then it's you know the individual IQ of each member And the teams that actually develop great emotional intelligence boost their overall performance again going towards success And what's interesting about these particular studies is that There are certain concepts that Reinforced this point So the fact that the members amongst that community or that team feel like they can trust each other The fact that they have a sense of group identity The fact that they feel that they're you know That they can get things done as a group Becomes a really important part of the success of that group And you know as I've learned more about the fedora community the fact that you know you we have these you know Really rapid release cycles that we're focusing on you know User experience in terms of you know the way the website looks and the mission that's projected out there You know, I was looking at some of the sessions yesterday and listening to you know The fact that we're making it easier for certain things to be deprecated for certain packages to be you know To kind of be let go how we're changing how we're you know We're doing our authentication mechanisms with kerberos like all those different things Right are are reinforced and other fact that the group as a whole is focused on success and People when people feel like that they can be a part of that group that they get are trusted as a great member then Those success metrics those things that we all kind of want to happen are are increased And that's really important and it's really goes to the heart of the fact that In order to get there you actually have to focus on your emotions You have to be able to focus on the ability to listen to make people feel like they're included things of that nature All right, let's go to our second character Tuvok Tuvok was Is a vulcan and for those who are unfamiliar with kind of the star track ecosystem You know, it was bandied about I guess it may be more of a fan fiction kind of thing that that vulcans were essentially the Evolution of human beings, you know far into the future. They could live, you know, three four hundred years old um, they were devoid of a lot of You know kind of emotional, you know kind of trenches. They really focused on logic um, they tried to remain calm, but they had a lot of different rituals that they went through to, you know, really center their society on the Overreliance, I guess of logic And their kind of modus operandi was we want to keep peace, you know through wisdom experience and vitality Um What was interesting about the character within again the context of what voyager was going through because remember, you know They were thrust 70,000 light years away from their home And they're all trying to figure out different ways to kind of get back there Um, Tuvok's role was was very interesting because as a vulcan he always appeared calm He always appeared like he was unflappable at all the different challenges that they have And he would constantly remind, you know, his teammates that um, you know, just because something Looks like it's easy doesn't mean it is right that the fact that You know You can see it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be easy to solve And a lot of times I think this manifests itself in this idea that when we have, you know Disagreements or when we're trying to work through things we tend to try to You know kind of push back on each other and say well, what is logical solution? What is the thing that just makes sense to me? um And when you focus on this thing your perspective and kind of validate your perspective and say well This just kind of quote-unquote makes sense to me You tend to kind of get into this area where you break down the effectiveness of the group because the individual um Gratification becomes, you know paramount and there's a bunch of studies that have shown, you know, that The most important thing when people feel like that That was a group that they want to be a part of and not necessarily that that individual person Was, you know, really really smart or that they just admire that person. But the fact that they felt hurt um, and and that's You know may seem straightforward, but it is something that's a little bit hard to do Um, especially when we all you know are very bright and we have different perspectives You know as as necessary And this is where we kind of get into some again some more realities out there so What i'm kind of focusing on here is the fact that, you know There's been a bunch of social studies Um and the ones that i'm referencing and again, I apologize to the members of the community who identifies non-binary What i'm really trying to communicate here is the studies that i've kind of looked at are have focused on You know the binary, uh the genders in this case but but the overarching idea is this idea that There had there have been correlations to The gender identities of the team members and the effectiveness of those teams I'm not saying there's a direct causation, but there's a high correlation to the number of women within a particular group um as it relates to the effectiveness of that group and Even though we know that gender is not limited to two choices. I just think it's a really interesting kind of scientific point to to point out that correlation because again We're trying to get to success We're trying to to validate and and try to have these conversations with each other to really focus on How should we understand? You know the different types of diversity the the fluidity of how diversity is defined while also looking at You know the rigorous scientific studies that have existed to say, okay How do we get to this because what what have other successful groups done? and so again the the key factors here are group satisfaction group cohesion and group motivation And and and there's there's a correlation here that I think is really really interesting and I and I would I would Encourage everyone to kind of keep exploring. You know about that part um Obviously, this is kind of manifested in different ways. Um, if you haven't seen this comic before I think that it's a really interesting um kind of Perspective in this argument, right? So this this idea that even though, um I may have a particular perspective and I'm surrounded by people who share that perspective Right? This is this comic is obviously an exaggeration of of that reality, right? But it's still an important concept this idea that in order for us to be more effective as a group. We have to be open-minded to um, You know The differences the different perspectives, you know and the way the diversity is defined Which can ultimately to the question. Why is that the case? Why do diverse teams outperform teams that are not? and There's a couple of things that kind of come out of this the first is when you're in a team with different people I'm just to kind of oversimplify it, right? The members tend to then focus on the facts of what the person is saying because they're not necessarily looking to um Blend their perspective into kind of the group's social majority, right? If I'm in a group where a bunch of people are kind of maybe have similar kind of backgrounds perspectives, etc Then I tend to I necessarily don't want to upset the apple cart, right? So but if we're in a team where different perspectives exist You tend to want to parse what that person is saying a little bit more careful about what they're saying And you process what they're saying a little bit more Which means that the ideas that have gone through the scrutiny tend to kind of float to the top And those are the ones that ultimately, you know can lead to the success of that group Which is really interesting. The other thing that kind of comes out of this is Those different perspectives initially, you know create more innovation, right you tend to just kind of dodge those pitfalls of conformity And because again, everyone is different. Everyone has a different way of their how they're looking at it so there's nothing really to conform to And typically when you are I mean, I'm sure you probably have this experience if you Are in a group where you're trying to conform you're trying to appease or trying not to upset the apple cart You tend to maybe hold back You're not able to kind of push through that different innovation So there are there is evidence of why why this is the why this is the case that different diverse teams outperform And and again, if you kind of think about it, you probably know that you know, you Can kind of identify with some of these, you know, bullet points Which kind of leads me to my first bold statement, right There's really no such thing as as common sense common sense reinforces this idea that there is a quote unquote common perspective that everyone should just kind of know and if you Maybe disabuse yourself of that notion Right, you can maybe kind of open up your mind say well If I let go of the idea that's that that there is a common perspective and actually everyone has a different perspective And those perspectives are informed by not only their demographics, but also their experiences Then I can start asking the question. How do I weave and include Those different Experiences and the different conclusions to ultimately give to the success of our group and ultimately get to where we're trying to go What could I be doing? To facilitate that that conversation that innovation or even asking the other question Are we Do we have a community that facilitates that? You know, if I look around again just demographically and I and I don't see people who again From the demographic diversity perspective that that don't look like me, you know, are we actually Able to get the most innovative, you know, kind of conclusion The next character in the series is is is the the chief security officer. Belana Torres What was interesting about, you know, her character within the series was She Was half human and half Klingon She was very tough Very brash She was driven driven by a combination of this innate sense of honor Right from her kind of her Klingon culture, but also guilt from the fact that, you know, she was a human being But also her tenacity and and what those kind of things kind of bring together One of the things she kind of talked about was, you know, she wants to constantly feel things Right. She wants to have these experiences that feel things And I think the the big lesson that comes out of this is, you know, how do you evaluate how do you evaluate talent? How do you To be quite honest judge others, right? Sometimes we tend to be defensive When someone is coming from a perspective or has an experience that's different than ours And then they and they project that experience through how they communicate And a lot of times you may miss the potential of that person because of that defensiveness One of the books that that really kind of speak to this is One from a professor scott page What's interesting about him is that he kind of blend the idea of complex systems math as well as political science and economics And I encourage you all to kind of take a look at that But essentially what he kind of revealed is that progress and innovation may depend less on really again like loan Brilliant thinkers with enormous iqs and really it kind of depends on diverse people having the ability and and and the and the opportunity To capitalize on their specific individuality, right? The fact that they come to a particular situation different than others Is there a medium? Is there a space for them to capitalize on that unique perspective to contribute to the to the to the bigger goal one of the kind of Phrases that are thrown out there to really kind of blunt This reality is this this this phrase of well, I just want to hire the most qualified person I just want the most qualified thing And there's really nothing wrong inherently with that question, but there is something that's being missed and The part that's being missed that's in that statement is okay How do you? individually define Most qualified and are you recognizing? The perspective and heuristic that you're bringing to answer that specific question and is that perspective and heuristic limited to write your own experiences um in your own You know kind of peace Again, what is your perspective and heuristic right which kind of leads to the second bold statement of You have to change your perspective to arrive at a new heuristic right and remember heuristic is how we solve problems So in order to solve a problem that's entrenched we actually change our perspective and only way to change our perspective is to Right include different perspectives And when we do that we ultimately get to something which we all want Something called right innovation So what are some examples of when that doesn't happen? Right people have called it a branded innovation, but technically probably wasn't right. What are those fails? What does that look like and we when we have real what examples of what that is? The first is you know the drug ambien when ambien was first introduced when they were doing drug trials Instead of actually testing different dosages with with women. They just assumed That smaller men were good enough and they ended up having a recall because That wasn't the case How how did they how do people who are brilliant that come up with different drugs not kind of see that obviousness and again? Right the perspective probably, you know was very similar. There wasn't a different perspective say hey Maybe we probably shouldn't do this Another quote-unquote innovation that was out there when apple first revealed their health kit when it was first introduced into the world You know seven or eight years ago. It was branded as a new revolution in how we track our health What was interesting about That announcement at the time was that didn't have period tracking and so How is it that something that's supposed to be revolutionary innovation somehow excludes half the world's population? To something that just you know happens naturally and and is a key part of you know Our biology How you can be innovative while excluding half the world? I'm not necessarily sure how that's possible but again If you don't have different perspectives To come to different heuristics You may have what's called false innovation, right? You may Be think you may think you have something that's great, but it could be missing something, you know that that's very very large The same is true for the institutions that we laud, right? what's interesting about You know harvard's admission practices is that as much as You know that it's been lauded as this great, you know place and i'm not saying it's not As it was investigated and went deeper into how they actually admit their students It turns out that you know 40 of the folks admitted to harvard were just Come from people who had went to harvard before so wasn't necessarily that The the most brilliant people are the ones who get in you know The innovative process the innovation that's typically associated with a top two university actually May not necessarily be as innovative could be because of their current practices are we just want the same perspective It's kind of over and over again based on how we you know Admit people into this particular institution In my last one which i've always just kind of found shocking And i'm sure Those in the audience who identify as women kind of know what i'm talking about Is i've never really understood and i didn't know the fact that you know the fashion industry has really focused you know for for the longest time on The visual appeal of their clothes versus the function of you know Just kind of living simpler and easier lives and so there's this whole kind of thing within women's fashion That there are a bunch of clothes just not made with pockets And as a heterosexual man, it just kind of mystifies me because i don't understand how You know in all the innovations that exist within our world how we can kind of continue down this thread of you know um Kind of denying the most kind of basic You know essential kind of tool that is associated with our clothing But for whatever reason it just it just it just has not been a part of you know What's kind of going on So i know i'm running out of time and kind of kind of go through these last little points The last kind of character will we'll kind of talk about seven of nine seven of nine was a character that was both Borg and human she was an assimilated human borg Is is a really interesting kind of concept of itself can probably be its own talk But essentially the borg was this race that essentially assimilated every particular species Thought that they could be a superior species by taking the best parts in their minds the best part of a species Assimilating that into their giant kind of hive mind and then discarding the rest What was interesting about seven of nine's character is that she constantly, you know kind of dismissed all the different human aspects of her team because she thought they were irrelevant And the allegory here is that that's sometimes Similar to what we do with each other right when we're in a technical community and we want to talk about You know different ideas different concepts We tend to want to dismiss those things as not being relevant maybe political or whatever that is And um, I think there's a kind of a broader concept here that we need to be open to Which is you know, what is it exactly that? Make someone care because if I if you introduce this concept into you know this this realm that I necessarily want to be in uh, you know this technical realm And I don't necessarily agree with that then People who are like me won't care about this anymore. So therefore we should introduce these concepts because I don't think this is important So the first question we need to ask yourself is what does make someone care? And it really just kind of comes down to you know, four simple concepts vanity, right? How does it make me look? Virtue, how does it make the world better and those two things are, you know, very powerful But there's really kind of two things that I really want to focus on and I think it's really important for For for our community to focus on to really understand that drive people in a particular direction Especially when we talk about trying to get a successful inclusive community and that's fear and profit right When we talk about the challenges that we have as a fedora community bringing in younger contributors improving the user experience Making our documentation More easily searchable usable so that people can onboard faster Right. We want to make sure that we focus and we Focus our energies to these last two things, right? How do we unpack what people are afraid of these differences? And what would it mean if we are successful? I mean imagine a world right, what would it mean If a door is more widely used and it's a lot more context. Does that mean more jobs? Does that mean more prosperity? Does that mean more innovative? You know features does that mean a more open world right? How do we get there? How do we profit from that particular idea? So now we need to go into the math of what of how we get there and The last thing I'm going to introduce as I kind of wrap up is this idea of The diversity trump's ability theorem And this particular theorem is derived from but a specific paper But it does require certain conditions The first is that the problem must be be hard right Each solver who's trying to solve this problem must have their own kind of local optima to that problem I eat, you know some sort of expertise within that bringing them together An improvement must always be able to exist Right, so we're not talking about solving something that has a definite solution and that's it We're talking about a constantly improving thing And then we also need to make sure we have a large pool of solvers to have this kind of decent size collection right So if those conditions are met then the theorem holds essentially that Diversity will always trump the individual ability of the members when trying to solve that problem It could actually be represented via mathematically equation and essentially what you're looking at is You have this idea that okay Given a whole bunch of people And they're each making their own prediction of what should happen Right, this is when you're in those group conversations. Well, I think we should do this. I think we should do that right And then you kind of average the predictions Of everyone right the crowd prediction in general The theorem essentially holds that the error of the crowd Equals the average error of people in the crowd Minus the diversity of those predictions So think about that for a second basically in order to have a more accurate prediction or an accurate outcome Right. We're talking from a math perspective It's the ability minus the differences In the categories that we create which means that if we don't create more perspectives right the difference Is Bigger and so The ultimate accuracy is smaller because the collective ability of that group Is detracted from the fact of Okay, how do we take all these different perspectives and ultimately come to a most Accurate prediction on the other side So the only way to Get that collective accuracy is to have a disparate number of Choices a disparate number of ideas that ultimately affect Right the crowd's decision whereas if they're all coming from the same perspective Right the ability to Have a more accurate crowd prediction is decreased What's interesting about this theorem Is that again, this is proven. This is a mathematically proven perspective, right? This isn't a feeling diversity is not a feeling. This is as the fact It's like the Pythagoras theorem, right And you can definitely take a look at this and look at all the mathematical simulations that kind of prove this out With any kind of theorem, there's a counter Right theorem, which is great because in any type of discussion you want to be able to have, you know A countering perspective and even in that perspective, there's a counter to that too So I encourage everyone to kind of look at that and look at it from again I think a curious scientific mind of you know, these these particular concepts So what this model tells us right and the purpose of these formal models Is that we want to think of people as more of like a collection of tools Yes, we can subject them for kind of empirical testing But we can also use them to change how we think about the world, right? So if we include different perspectives, we can use that as a way to kind of sharpen our ways to think about the world in a different way The individual's ability is a reflection of the applicability of those tools right given that set of problems So again when we talk about improving UX when we talk about you know making documentation better Getting younger contributors into our ecosystem Right, there's this idea that the more people we include Is actually more of like is our tool set robust enough so that we can tap into those different abilities to apply those tools to Initially solve the problems that we have Right, and this is again reflected in that mathematical paper. It's actually called The Hong page perspective heuristic model Again, which forces us to think about people as a collection of tools and their individual ability as a reflection Of the applicability of those tools Which leads me to my last bold statement Right the pipeline problem of talent in a lot of places not necessarily that their Talent doesn't exist. It's usually because there's not an incentive to go and discover that talent Um problem solvers with diverse perspectives, you know tend to have a hard time communicating with each other And so there's this kind of weird kind of feedback mechanism where The reason why we don't include other people is because it's hard to communicate with people who are different than us So how do you solve that problem? How do you solve this kind of chicken and egg thing? And the answer is right Emotional intelligence This is kind of a representation of that all three of these things do the same thing But when you're looking at them you may see them as you know Different ways of solving the same problem and essentially what you're looking at is a carabiner The first is created by human The second is actually created by AI and it's 75 lighter than the first one And the third is actually an AI Generated carabiner, but it's actually 3d printed So even though they all solve the same problem, right? Initially you look at them and you may say, okay, they're so different I don't actually know what they do Even though they technically are kind of going in the same direction. They all fulfill their definitions of success So again, what is that tool? What is that thing? that will help us Be more cognizant of different perspectives so that we can include as many people as possible to ultimately get to that success And again that thing that work that we need individually Is something called ecu right because if we focus on improving our emotional intelligence Right that we can ultimately Recognize what are the things that we're doing to neuter our own collective success as a group and how do I make sure people feel that they are A big part of this group that we're trying to do so that we can solve these bigger problems so my genuine hypothesis that I want to leave you with is Open source will make the world better by requiring equity right the goal And using emotional intelligence as an integral part of its interoperability and I just You know want to make sure that I've connected all these ideas together because at the end of the day Yes, we're all technologists But us recognizing that there are things inside of us to ultimately make people feel included And and we recognize that diversity is a very fluid concept If we recognize the things that are kind of blocking us from getting there Feeling vindicated, you know feeling threatened those emotions that trigger those those those things if we're intelligent about that We can ultimately kind of get to that success, right So how do we grow we focus on our mental models, right? We go from prove me wrong stances to what am I missing? And we again ultimately ask ourselves, okay when I'm contributing or when I'm Being a part of this group. Am I focused on being right? Or am I focused on, you know being successful? So in conclusion the way we can solve difficult problems Is we want to make sure that we look at people as a set of tools and the diversity is essentially the distinction of those particular tools And the way we can only Use those particular tools that we have to efficiently collaborate and the only way to do that is to continuously develop our emotional intelligence There are some additional stories that I would love for you all to kind of take a look at To kind of look at what that manifestation looks like Especially from a gender-died entity perspective, especially when we talk about including more women into our open source groups But at the end of the day, thank you for listening and I really appreciate it