 Hi everyone welcome. Thanks for having me and thanks for joining today. I will talk about diversity in open source from an agent perspective My name is Imasa Ishida a staff program manager of Ospal open source community strategy at BMI So let me share the agenda First I will talk about why agent perspective that I've chosen other theme. I Will represent some data of open source participation and the brief history of open source in Asia I will then share a list of potential various and ideas to overcome Finally, I will close the talk with a summary of key points So let me talk about my journey to come here a bit long But perhaps relevant for this talk and my involvement in open source So I was born and grew up in Japan studied the mass physics and engineering at university I joined a global tech company as a Windows software developer for four years spending much time in Tokyo and Seattle Then I had an opportunity to lead the mobile phone protocol development in the UK At that time I led my English husband. I met my English husband and moved to the UK Where I led Linux and Android based tablet development as a software dev manager So this was my first contact with open source working on Linux BSP SDK SDK and Android Then I had a year out to look after my Sam To choose and then change my career from telecoms to cloud technology Then led multiple programs from cloud transformation information security compliance through to company acquisition program Moving up to date at BMI in the last three years I led the strategic alignment between the community contributions and the company's business strategies So is there any Asian? you from Asia Is there anyone from Asian country? Yes. Hello. Thank you So Asia is the world's most populated continent That's with a great potential to become a driving force of open source The continent is extremely culturally diverse Perhaps everyone agrees that open source presence is very strong in North America today and Its official language is English As many studies shows a variety of perspectives and experiences create a richer and stronger community and They produce more innovative solutions and The data shows that organization with high DI score are more innovative and 35 cent more competitive than the others Many countries try and many companies try to promote and recruit a variety of people to increase their diversity For open source communities, it is more complex Although many open source foundations run a number of great projects to improve the community DI status It takes longer due to its nature So today I'm going to identify Possible reasons that prevent strong Asian Participation to open source so that we can think how to overcome it The source of this data is from Octavas and the Linux Foundation DI report As the report says the number of Asian open source developer is high and growth is high But we hear very little voices from them in a Saturday On the ground Asian representation in open source communities are not very strong as I often hear many open source communities struggling to get strong Asian participation in the communities, especially in the leadership positions As of today many country community Leaders predominant from the US and Europe and many open source surveys show low or very low Asian participation So we have a great opportunity to reset the balance Additionally, if you look more closely, we can see the participation from Asia is predominantly from China and India The region consists of over 20 countries and they are positively engaged in open source Sported by organizations who recognize the importance of open source So open source history in Asia started with Linux Along with strong support by each national government By early 2000 open source was not well recognized in most Asian countries Japan was one of the early adopters of Linux and already started adopt open source With help from Japanese Ministry of Economy trade and industry Many open source organizations were set up in Asian countries as listed in this slide Funding from the central government triggered and accelerated the speed and increased awareness of open source in Asia and Today many open source conferences are held across Asia every year. I've shown just a few on the slide However, I'm sure many of you have already attended them and many others that are not shown here So now we know that the firm foundation of open source exists in Asia Next let's look at the geographical and social factors that could impact strong participation in open source I cannot talk for all over Asia But I've identified some key reasons that could explain their limited participation today In the last month I have interviewed many Asian colleagues ex-colleagues and community members and leaders In the next few slides, I'd like to share my findings so that together we can think of how to improve our participation Our ultimate goal is to have as many mature open source communities across Asia as There are in the US and Europe So time differences and the limitations are the significant factor in the participation with open source This is common to all regions and for some regions. It is a dominant factor for engineers in Asia Unfortunately and Unfriendly meeting times are strong variance barriers to community participation The research shows that more new members remain in the communities when they actively join the discussion Rather than they just commit code or create issues One of the steering committee members in India commented lots of projects in the CNCF space have meetings that are too late for APAC regions Personally I've attended some meetings at midnight when I was just starting out my career But I'm not able to do that right now Not able to attend meetings means that I lose visibility I'm lucky enough to have enough credibility in the community But for those just starting out their career This is not this is a huge barrier to growth There are also time when I've missed late meetings and walking up to see decisions have me already made without my input Although there is a challenge to organize the community meetings at sociable times for everyone We need to be mindful and flex where we can Another time related challenge is having time available for open source In fact most developers across all regions listed in sufficient time as a biggest barrier to contribute into open source projects The situation varies if you are allowed to work on open source during working hours or not Or if you can afford to spend time for open source outside of your core hours This will also touch the regional culture and other social aspect That will covered in the later slide Language barriers have been mentioned by nearly all the people I interviewed. It is probably the biggest barrier for Asian people Language can also a challenge for other countries where English is not their first language However, these those countries whose language is Latin based perhaps find it's less of an issue most people say Reading and writing is not a problem But it is still a barrier especially when you are busy as it takes extra time and work even with the dictionary and translation tools and Here real-time conversations in English is a real challenge When the spoken language is heavily accented when there is background noise or Poor the quality or more than one person speaking at the same time the situation can be worse While translating in their mind the speaker has usually moved on The diagram in the right on this slide is a good example in Japan 98 residents are Japanese, so we are rarely need to speak in English day-to-day I've been working in the US and Europe more than 10 years But it still takes some time to chew my ears To the sounds and vocabulary when I talk with someone who I met for the first time When I write documents, I still use an online dictionary to choose the best word so that I can convey the right message Quite often I have a clear logic in my mind, but struggle to communicate my thoughts as clearly as I would like So how about the other countries? India is known as the second largest English speaking country. Their business language is English However, this is not true for all Asian countries One of my Indian colleagues said that they've had a very few participants from other Asian countries outside of India in their community meetings One of the reasons quoted is that they might feel okay with written communication But uncomfortable with speaking in English in meetings In China less than 1% of residents Speak English. It presents a large communication barrier for many international companies One community board member in China have commented I have been working for an international company for over 10 years where our official language is English and Based on my experience Language is the biggest barrier for communication especially oral communication and It would impact personal development and team collaborations It is also the biggest factor stopping people joining open-source communities However, in recent years the situation seems to have improved many mainly for two reasons First one is more young people joined for more comfortable with English due to having exposure To English movies dramas from Netflix and Amazon Prime And auto translation tools or the subtitles provided by Zoom In China it is also known that many document and communication is Chinese only or some open-source projects Especially if the products are developed for the local market only There are some Asian countries who speak good English for example over 90% of people in Philippine speaks English But there also seems to be other factors behind language like confidence, shyness and fear of confrontation So it's a complex mix that can be easily resolved with technology and Translation tool itself. The effect of company culture This values and will depend on the companies their size national culture and industries VMI is a US global company and it appreciates the value of open-source It's a core part of our business strategy. So we have a strong open-source culture The companies have been working in previously were similar. So I'm comfortable to be in this environment Many of them tend to contribute with support and encouragement from their organizations. However, this is not the case for all Employers support is important In general many employees don't have the time and energy to contribute to open-source out of personal interest An Indian colleague said to me that there are practically no companies who are willing to support their employees to work on open-source in India VMI and other tech giant companies are exceptions But otherwise if someone needs to work on open-source quite often they need to work in their own time This does not scale well keeping work life balance constraints in mind This is a similar situation in Japan Unless a company values open-source concept many companies don't quite appreciate them Employees spend in time to contribute to an external community There's another aspect in Japan although Changing jobs is becoming more common, especially amongst the young people Lifetime employment still largely predominates So many people didn't find as huge benefit to build the skills and reputations in open-source communities as other countries and Building external relationships through communities was not so great value So gender equity based on the number of studies the major majority of people in open-source are thought to be male Gender bias is also one of the biggest factors that impacts the open-source environment Unfortunately, it is well known that Asian countries rank lower than the West for gender equity At the start of my career extreme gender bias was common throughout the workplace For example, when I joined my first company in Japan, we had a custom called the t-duty Where on the monthly rotation female colleagues and employees have to arrive early in the morning to make morning coffee for their boss Today's young generation cannot believe this but we never questioned it at that time I also heard an interesting story from a female PhD student in China Who actually participate in open-source communities? When they select colleague college majors and future careers Girls are always told that being a software engineer is very tiring and stressful job Also requires logical thinking skill that they lack for As a result many of them won't choose to become a software engineer Even if they have pursued the master degrees But they will still enter this industry taking up products or operation rules She also said that the societies to expect women to take a more responsibilities within a family like childcare, especially Gender issues a sensitive and complicated topic in the current society and the large barrier to overcome Social environment and culture are also important factors. I Think character characteristic tendency at the national level is one of the key factors in open-source community as its culture is unique Here I'm not trying to as drug stereotype. We have different risk So I'm not trying to stereotype this and we have all different personalities But we are influenced by the cultural behaviors of our nations as a collective It's often said that people in eastern Asian countries are hard-working Shy feels uncomfortable with conflict, especially in English communications This is not always the case for those who are born and grew up in the US or Europe or other countries The environment that naturally forms the culture One big factor is that compared with the Western Asian feel more uncomfortable in a very confrontational part of open-source development culture Asian people tend to prefer to maintain or seek harmony rather than risking conflict Especially when communicating in their second or third languages In these situations, it is often said that a person who speaks loud loudest who takes the credit With the more modest and humble contributors being overlooked There are other social factors for example education and political inferences Education There was an observation that the many schools still do not actively teach open source concept if open source Participation is not an evaluation criteria for courses or further education Students won't invest time in it Also, there's no standard approach or curriculum on how to collaborate with open source in the public domain Political inference must be also considered The research shows that despite the large number of github users in China There's a hesitation to contribute to external platforms As they use their own platform Like github which is China version of github A community member in China commented one of the important drivers behind the impression that they are not That they don't hear many voices From Chinese participants in the international communities could be their different platform usage habits and network barriers Though Twitter X Stack overflow and slack are common across the world Many Chinese developers use their own tools As per the octopus report developers in China were noticeably creating and consuming Open source project on github, but still they still seem more Hesitation, hesitant to contribute to the repositories Although the data shows seven and a half million github users are based in China More than eight million users also use githi In other words half of Chinese open source developers prefer to use their local tools instead of github Due to performance and cost githi users are actually increasing There are also some political reasons behind government So it's very sensitive and complex topic Finally, this is a more subtle point observed by a few members regarding the community elections They commented that they've noticed that More chances of someone from the US and Europe getting election in open source election over folks from APAC region For example despite the very active contribution numbers in open source There aren't many stealing committee members elected elected from APAC as they could not get enough votes so diversity is complex and Defined by a combination of multiple factors including geographical and social factors Open source is a community itself and it is strongly influenced by social behavior We cannot ignore that people who create a community are influenced by their own national behavioral tendencies Relying on community support from a specific regions only like the US and Europe will affect project scalability and sustainability Open mindset is a key We must welcome diversity and actively embrace our differences collaborate respect be curious and Change has to happen at both end Asian people also need to make additional efforts They need to be role models for open source culture and to lead others So don't be scared of making mistakes be brave and find positive rather than negatives Appreciate the differences and this applies both those to include and to be included For real global participation, we need to seek real inclusive cultures so that communities can actually Benefit with a real value add So now I'd like to invite questions and also I'd love to hear how your community Approach these challenges today or hear about other factors that could impact participation Thank you Please Barriers yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. That's interesting so Does anyone works in the community that have a limitation from their company IP proxy in This room because I'm not engineer. So Don't you have any thought? Do you know anyone who has this problem? The company's proxy is limited and then you're not able to contribute to some of the But this is a work isn't it work related. Yeah Yeah, so you got to change the environment Even more strict. Yeah controlled This is probably the biggest Yeah Yeah, it is a challenge Mm-hmm Yeah, good question Yeah, I am I had that same question in the previous or one before and Having all language, you know, because we don't have Not everyone has a common language, you know, English is the official language But actually it's not their first language for everyone But having everything translated is you know other way around it's not friendly for the other So I think I think it's a this is why the community culture comes very very important if you Creates the culture of welcoming and respect each other We understand the differences and we you know be a bit patient and then and they also don't be too shy And then let's just make a mistake because my English is not you know plural and singular is forever You know, I keep making mistake, but you know, but most of the case people understand You know people pick up the terms, especially we're talking in engineering terms. I think we understand so I Think it's both side that we understand They don't understand our language and the other side thinks they are trying to communicate more patiently each other so that we can eventually and so there's no There's no quick Solution for this, but I think creating the this sort of community culture is really a key To overcome, you know, you don't agree Yeah, I know it's a challenge Yeah, exactly I Yeah, I understand communication is really hard even I'm talking with my husband and then you know, just we still don't understand You know misleading and then complaining each other's language, but yeah, I mean So yeah, there's no straight answer to resolve this But I think we have to sort of make you know what works You know we can try written works better or you know How about we communicate in this way or you know using this tool or something like that so that you know It will be read by little Improves our communication issues never never be hundred percent good, but should continue making improvement Thank you Yeah, any other questions, yes, please Yeah, and Australia is just so I mean we you know the growth is ground and you know we never worked in the same time zone, so I think Yet some compromise like in the last conference I got for example Sometimes you set this meeting time sometimes friendly to this area and friendly to this area. I know it doesn't work very well I know that because I have been working in them, you know global company for many many years But I think there's some sort of sort, you know respect each other thinking each other that Triggers the others, you know people working in the region They don't think they are the you know, they are suffered all the time and then I think that will help to sort of make the community You know think about each other and you know find the better solutions I think that you know again, there's no straight answer, but I think bit by bit. We need to sort of Talk more and then what's the real issues for example? I know that I'm from Japan and I was working until You know 10 11 o'clock used to and then you still do in Japan and This is why that we still awake and then we can talk with the people in Europe and America about It's not a normal and you know we need to Meet each other or the conference like this and then you know talk So how is it in a real world and what is it a real problem? You know, it's not a problem you know to have more opportunity to communicate I want to or you know want to To understand each other. I think that also helps as well rather than just a writing email chatting I think meeting in in person and talking also helps based on my experience Sorry you I I Kind of yeah The second question So Yeah, thank you it's very Thank you, and there are lots of Yeah, very good point and then there are lots of good things Yeah, yeah, it was yeah, but yeah So there are many so diversity is made of many factors And it's not just the things I listed up. It's also that you know like economic frustration and social situation and country situation all these political situations that is really complicated But if we work in the open source and it's a common sort of common Subject and then we at least know that community is so important and respect is important building community is one of the key thing and then If we understand at least the differences between us, then I think it's really important It's a good start then, you know, there's no such thing which is resolved with everything, but I think First you know as a first step understand the difference and then start to sort of get closer each other is Definitely the key and thank you for your useful tip, and then I really find it's useful. Yes, please Yeah, I think so And yeah, I think so But again You know, I haven't been I don't know many many communities and then you know, they all run differently Most of the project I know They're doing very well and they're working really hard to sort of make everyone happy happy contributor happy users, but You don't need to extremely Worry about, you know how to but I think you already have a data How many people from which region and which type of people joining in a community and then sometimes you have a occasion occasionally you have a Opportunity to look at the data, you know, and then what's missing because you know, there are lots of project like chaos You know, they provide lots of metrics and then we know how to make a good healthy Community and then if you look at the data and numbers and then think oh, what's wrong with this and then that is a good start So regularly maybe it's worse Assessing the health of the community I think that is a good start and then not all the project have to have a equal number from proportions from all the regions But if there is some Tendency found and if it's you think it's impacting to the project growth, then you can get started, I think Yes, please upstream culture Something Yeah We I mean ideal world I think you know if the company especially they rely on the project and they should get enough Resource and budget and you know that they should encourage people to contribute But the reality is really hard and then we had a similar discussion this morning And then there's the okr and there's a projective and companies go numbers and so it's really hard So it's a definitely a hard question And then I want to see the person who can answer to this question in this conference But yeah, I agree and yes, definitely company should encourage But depends on the situation company situation and the leadership idea strategies. It's really hard But it is again. This is why I keep talking about how important the company is to contribute and The time and budget for the project if their business is real, they can't be free, right? But they have to be a part of it. So I think it's definitely an important thing. Any other questions? So thank you so much again for your time and have the rest of the nice conference. Thank you