 Hi. Do you see me? Yes. Okay. Should we just get started? Well, joining still. Amber is also here. Welcome. And I think Rob has had issues with the color so he's coming back. But let's hope it works. It doesn't matter to me if he's colorful, it looks very happy. So, oh, there. Just me saying that's better. Rob saying hello. Awesome. Thank you. And first of all, so I'm very, very, very so excited. I cannot tell how excited I am to have this very first meeting. Oh, I'm getting emotional, which is kind of weird. And so I think everyone knows people who are who are here, because we have that meeting doc. I don't think you have met Josh yet. And so I'm going to share the doc so you can see everyone was here. They have done this little introduction. So you can meet them, because we only have 45 minutes. So we want to make sure that we can go through all the meeting points. So Josh, do you want to say hi? Oops, you're on mute, I think. Okay. I'm Josh Berkus. I'm co-chair of tag contributor strategy. I used to know a fair amount of ASL, but I've forgotten most of it. So hopefully this will be a chance for me to revive it. Cool. And I just posted the doc where everyone introduced themselves so you can have a look at that. And Rianne, do you want to say hi? Because I don't think you're on that. Hi, I'm Rianne. I am the tech lead for the mentoring of the tag contributor strategy, also helping out with mentoring. Rianne, you said you're helping with something. Sorry, I am the tech lead for tag contributor strategy and generally helping out in the community. Rianne, can we talk about tag and what it means, TAG? Sure, I'll just respond that one because he's been doing this forever. Yeah, it stands for technical advisory group. The CNCF has a number of volunteer committees that run things for the organization and set policy. And ours is organized around helping projects grow and get contributors and build good open source projects. And diversity is part of that mission. Great. Thank you, Zazian. This is Rob. Do we have any examples? This is Rob Koch here in case you don't know me. I wonder if there are any examples. We have a set up in place where you talk about diversity and how it helps. And what do you want the advisory committees to have and not have in the CNCF projects? Well, we have, I know there have been some diversity and inclusions initiative started but I think this is like the broader and bigger one, right? There has been some interest in that. But Josh, you know more about things that have, I mean, like we have a point of J here which has like the, we're going to talk about his Maori initiative and then, but like for disabilities, that's definitely the first one. I think, I know, I'm rambling. Josh, you know more, please help me out here before we get to the agenda. No, no, that's, that's correct. There's obviously been a lot of work in the code of conduct, but that's not under this tag. Yeah. Aside from that, our only organized work on diversity has been more general work on making new contributors welcome. But yeah, we can start by talking because we had that as there was interest in last time was asking question about Jay's initiative and so Jay has this amazing initiative with Maori youth and he is basically the inspiration for this group because we're thinking like, oh, this is so amazing. Let's do something similar with the deaf and hard of hearing community. So, do you want to tell a little bit about what you've been doing and what do you think maybe this group could learn from your efforts? Yeah, sure. My name is Jay. I'm from Basin Tauranga in New Zealand. I just gave a little bit of an intro in Te Reo Maori, a language just basically introducing about who I am. And my tribal connections and where I'm from, which is quite customary in our culture to introduce ourselves and start making connections with others, especially when meeting for the first time. Yeah, thank you for the intro, Catherine. It's a little bit nervous and very humbled that my work done here helped to inspire this initiative. I'm really excited about it as well. And yeah, looking forward to working with you all a bit closer on this. Just to be clear, because I've seen that there's quite a few things on the agenda. How long roughly would you like me to talk for? Because I've prepared some stuff for, I can just give a very high level introduction. I think it's fine because I think I put a lot of my talking. Basically, I'm going to, everything that I say, it's in there already, it's the meeting notes as well. That's why it's alone. So just go ahead and we can always do Slack later on. It's important. We want to learn from you, sir. Well, good. I'll try to keep it brief though. Cool. So a little bit of background. Most of my work has been with youth and career and community development. So I don't have a tech background at all. I was invited into the space by my friends and mentor at the time, Hifi Hacker, as part of IINZ, which is a small tech company based here in New Zealand. I also work alongside Rian with and because of my work to try and create meaningful career pathways for people into the space is, you know, I was invited to join. And I had never heard of open source before meeting Hifi, but I was really inspired by the culture and the values and the principles around being inclusive, being transparent and collaborative in its design. And I thought there was a lot about those core concepts that could relate well and benefit a lot of the communities that I work with. So I work quite broadly across areas of education and industry and local governments and different community organizations. So I just start quite broadly trying to understand. Oh, sorry, just to back it up a little bit. And I was invited to be a part of the mentoring working group to try and create a mentoring initiative for Māori as a pathway into the space. And I later became a co chair of the mentoring working group alongside Nate and a few few others. And working part as part of the tag contributor strategy group as well. And yeah, because it was all new territory for me and I found pretty quickly, it was new territory for a lot of others as well. And not many people I interacted with in schools or businesses had even heard of open source let alone cloud native or Kubernetes or any of these sorts of things. I tried to go quite broadly to try and get an understanding about if there was even a need or an interest for it first before trying to create a program that might not necessarily meet the needs. I thought it might be easier as I'm talking to two things to create a bit of a visual. So is it possible to share my screen for a couple of minutes and just give a bit of background. The only thing is with the interpreters will be a lot smaller. So I don't know how does let's ask. Does it does the screen sharing mess up things or is it can you still see it in smaller. This is Ian depends on your computer if you have two monitors like I have then I have the interpreter up there on a large screen screen. It really everybody it depends on everybody's setup. Okay, I can I can just talk to it that's fine. Yeah, so. Yeah, so just high level I guess we started to have a small project team working with me. And so there's a quite a big research phase is to try and understand what it was and how we could communicate it. Kubernetes for instance which was our primary focus we found was like a very high skill set required. Although there's you know lots of good guides and documentation found that engaging with young Maori for instance, it wasn't necessarily going to be consistent with their learning styles. And you know some of the way that the ideas of even community and things with frames might be a little bit confusing. So we sort of went back to scratch and started to develop some basic learning resources. We started creating and getting involved in different events around career pathways to try and test. You know just introducing them to concepts like open source, giving examples of different open source software and platforms, and trying to sort of show the continuum and the scope of all the different opportunities that are available and trying to understand about what might be the best way to help make things. Yeah make a little bit more sense to people so we're also working alongside local tertiary providers is a local Institute of Technology where, you know, one of the tutors for instance had a bit of experience and had even created some entry level programs to support some of the things like what introduced people to like. Raspberry Pi is an open source but because of again the lack of awareness and understanding that had never been able to be implemented. And then gradually started working alongside local council and local tech businesses. We're also interested in encouraging more people into the space and trying to have a bit more of a collective approach to it so currently in New Zealand, there's about 4% participation from Maori and the digital tech spaces in general and about 2.5% for Pacific Islanders so yeah it's quite a universal sort of challenge. And gradually it sort of branched out so yeah we'll be running a series of events running redevelopment workshops with local youth providers. And currently I'm working with a mighty economic development agency and we're working with about 20 schools across the region at the moment to try and introduce the technology as well so in the months we've had an intern with us that started. Also we had two students that were starting with us one became our first mentee under the LFX program, which was a good understanding in terms of what other barriers you might need to navigate. And another one, our intern who's currently, or he's just started to work with me in the schools as well to start delivering that information directly so yeah things are expanding all the time. And it's been good to more recently connect with Maori Tekken and digital collectives to again try and approach this. You know these barriers, a bit more collaboratively and a lot of it is about the cultural consideration as well in terms of we were to bring our people into the space. So how can we do that in a way that doesn't just offer them great development opportunities but is also culturally safe and consistent with our values as a people too. And yeah so also working now with one of the like universities we've got an indigenous data conference that we're planning for next month. We're working with about 25 different steam providers to try and support with tech pathway developments and working with another regional council that we've got another event to create pathways for just outside the region. So all these sorts of things are starting to branch out and the idea is is that once you have a broader sort of understanding as a whole about what the need is and what is going to be the best way forward. Then we can sort of narrow in and you know create a program that might be, you know where it might be similar to existing like the LFX program with the 10 week format for instance, or something that is a little bit more consistent in alignment with the way that our people best learn and you know want to want to transition into the space at all whether it be micro credentialing or other things too. So yeah I think that hopefully gives a little bit of context. I think I think overall a lot of it is around education. What ways can we better communicate these ideas. What way is can we better get people involved in creating the educational resources and again telling not just the technical skill sets but understanding holistically and consideration of our whole order or entire mighty well being what is going to be the best way to do that. And I think this basic framework connected something to support our people not just into tech but into any industries with a bit more of those considerations in place. So yeah, that's me at the moment thank you. Thank you. That's really cool. And, like, the great thing is like about creating this different initiatives within the CNCF is that we can all learn from each other right like whatever, like I'm sure there like things. Yeah that that Jay has implemented like, we really want to have kind of create that kind of more, we can ask questions and learn from each other and hopefully we'll have more and more initiatives like this, trying to, you know, get more a more diverse community and open source and cognitive. And one thing that I wanted to mention I put it at the top of the agenda it's like, if you added this meeting to your calendar with the CNCF calendar. It is recurring it does not make it recurring you have to do it manually so I just wanted to mention that so the next one will not be there so you have to automatically make it. Yeah, so you don't miss our next one. Unfortunately, I don't know it's kind of weird that it needs that manual step. But okay so just going through the agenda and again like anyone at any time can add points there are the agenda is pinned to our channel I will make a little note before the meeting starts a day before whatever you want to talk about this is our meeting. Shouldn't be a monologue so we all participate we all drive the agenda so feel free to add whatever you think we should be discussing here. I have a few things because I think we have the Google Doc, and the, the issue. And I think the goals were kind of like broken down by audience but I think based on a post that that Rob road and like and I don't know I was like thinking basically I think they're like three goals and I wanted to kind of define those goals like like the first goal or they're not prior in priority like three different very different goals like one is get more deaf and hard of hearing individual and cloud native and open source. Right. The next one would be ensure that deaf and hard of hearing are more visible without within the cognitive community, and can participate in public discourse. Right, and then I think the other one is like encouraging more employees to hire deaf and hard of hearing individuals and including like educating them what does it take and then like of course, all of that with with the help of the I think that was all in there but I thought like just creating those like kind of summarizing in them and those three overarching goals. Again, just put them there like if you disagree or if you want to tweak but I thought like it would be good to have it more like summarize and like three 123. I think like it sounded like it was kind of like where we're going. Going with but So question in the agenda. You see. We've got two different ones. One that's labeled CNCF tag contributors. And then there's the other one that was deaf and hard of hearing. Yes, there is just one dog. No, two documents. There's two documents. But two documents. Yeah, one is the agenda. Yes. So which one are you looking at. Oh, people have been posting. So I don't know. I think to clarify. To clarify when I loaded the document with the first agenda. There was it all the meeting. It had a link to a There is no documents all the drop. I think There's nothing in this all drop both quickly. Breaking up a little bit. I don't know like the internet. Oh, so I don't know which docs. I'm just put like agenda. Then we have a brainstorming doc. I see the one. Well, the one with the agenda document. That's the one that you're talking about. That's when you're reading from us. Yeah, the one that exactly. That's the one that we're going to be at the meeting. And then people can add their names and then. Yeah, that's where we discuss what we'll talk. About, right? And then there's the other one, which is a brainstorming doc. Right. That where we have like our goals and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Lots of documents. I don't know. Sorry about the confusion. Okay. So now we are. Oh, I think it just helps. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just juggling a lot with, you know, the documents and the zoom and, and yeah, just wanted to make sure that everybody was looking at the right place and being able to follow the discussion. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, and yeah, there I kind of posted the three. The one in the brainstorming doc that were more broken down between audiences, but I thought like maybe just like summarizing them and like putting, because they all, I think go. Like if we kind of put them down there, like. All kind of. The overall, like the overall goal is like, can be a defined under one of those three points here. Okay. Yeah, I think like right now our top priority. I don't know if it's that much top priority now, because we have like a kind of nice, healthy, like group size of people. I mean, I think like, especially for a working group having like 30 people is not really feasible, right? So, but I think we still want to identify more deaf and hard appearing to join our effort, whether to kind of be active contributors or just know that we exist. That can provide feedback. And so we can reach them, right? So I think we should still continue to do that. So we have awareness activities. So we did submit a lightning talk for Kubecon. And it's lightning talks are five minutes and the idea is to talk about this initiative and say like, this is there, please, please get the word out. And then after John and I submitted it like Ian said, that they would be there. So like if we get that, of course, Ian would have to be on stage as well. And then we also have the Montana track, which is a talk that I'm pretty sure we're going to get that because it's a different, it's a different category than their regular submission. And Josh proposed a really great topic called welcoming all contributors. And so Jay would be there as well talking about his initiative and Ian what present like whatever we're hoping that we will have made some progress. So and the idea is to present what this group has worked on because Kubecon is in November. So there's like some time to do stuff. So that will be great as well. So we're still doing the coordinated social media campaign, we should continue to do that because we have found many of you because of that. So definitely something we should continue also working with the CNCF PR team. Congrats again to Rob for his interview. That was really cool. And yeah, this also like the PR team is super excited about this initiative and that really helps. I want to keep them excited so that they become our allies and want to kind of push and kind of help us get the word out as well. And then I think like reaching out to organizations, right? So I reached out to RIT and got a very excited email but then kind of it was dead. So I'm hoping because of the holidays, but the question is here like, do you know any other organizations we should kind of talk to, right? Like who else can, like, it doesn't, like some people may want to really participate, some people may just want to kind of get the word out, but anyone who is, who works with the deaf and hard of hearing in tech specifically, like they can help us get the word out, right? So do you know anyone have any context? So if so, please let's reach out to them because the more people know about the better. Yeah, we're actually going to be reaching out to a deaf professional Slack group. Oh, we already have. Sorry, that was the interpreter. So a lot of people are here from that. So it was because of the deaf professional Slack group. And having that connection with them has made it so that when things start happening, we can spread the word there. So we do have relationships there, which then would be different schools, different connections there. Yeah. Yeah. There, yes, there is one we've reached out to Gallaudet and also Dr. Raja. I believe we've reached out to him. Yeah. I think that was me, right? Ian. I think it was me. Yes, I think it was. Yeah, I wasn't sure if someone else also reached out to the same person, but it's like, because I know I talked to Roger. Yeah. And I think another thing, and that's like me as a marketer speaking, right? Because it's like, so whenever you have like, you want to raise awareness or something, it's not a one off thing, right? It's not a one tweet. It's not one. So I think Ian, that's exactly right. So as we do, like we have to create excitement, you know, like as we have like action items or did something mention it to that slack group, hey, we've done this, you know, maybe like our video, like so that people can see progress is made and get that excitement. So people join because it takes time sometimes like several touch points until someone actually decides to come. And then like in that like awareness kind of bucket things that we could do as well is I would love to create like occasional CNCF blog posts where we talk about why this initiative is important, maybe like feature one or two of you about your background, why you're in tag, what are the challenges that you face and why you think and put like, you know, like little things that are like about people and and that's very engaging and then continuously kind of push that story out, you know, that so that people see about like the importance that it isn't the value that you're bringing to your organization. So same thing. The CNCF has live streams. I would love at some point to have like a we have to organize with that we have interpreters and some but like a panel discussion with some of you where you talk discuss about people being deaf and tech the same thing like challenges and why like it's always like kind of the same theme different people different but it's like repeat, repeat, repeat, we need to repeat it until people enough people see it people remember right so it's like always repetition is really important. Anything. Any comments or questions regarding that. Yeah, just in regard to reaching out to other organizations or people in general. Sorry, sorry. Go ahead, Jay, Robert saying go ahead, Jay, and then I'll go next. Apologies. Yeah, in regard to reaching out to organizations or others in general. Is it worth developing. Perhaps some vision or mission statements that are really clear and concise so people can understand what our intent is and how we hope to work with the with others. Because like for instance I've just connected with a national deaf education provider here called Kotaku. I think I mentioned them to you in our comms recently. So we had a really good meeting. But it was it took quite a while for us to sort of work through exactly what our intent was and I explained that I was a new and developing initiative and you know by the time I've given a bit more context about open source and CNCF and things in general. It took a little while to sort of get to the core of what we needed to discuss. So would it be worth developing some consistent messaging in terms of how we like is there something different between how we approach organizations as opposed to individuals in general via the social media platforms. What's everyone's thoughts. So basically like a pitch right like how do you pitch the initiative to someone right. It's kind of like how do you how do you make it appealing or like explain what it is depending if it's like a if it's like a like an educational institution they matter. They will care about different things. How do you explain what this is and why they should participate right for different audiences. Yeah absolutely I mean it's some I just want to be respectful of in general part of that conversation for instance came up that they don't all some of their staff don't like to use the term hard of hearing because there's some sentiment that that comes from like a deficit perspective and that's the first time I'd had that conversation or heard that feedback myself so it's just trying to understand. Yeah what is what is going to be the best way to approach and discuss this initiative going forward that considers those sorts of things. Yeah so we had a discussion about how to call it. Yeah right and then or how to actually how to abbreviate it but I think like everyone here was was very was didn't seem like like hard of fear deaf and hard of hearing seem to be like what a lot of people seem like everyone was using so I didn't know that some people found that kind of offensive because it's a deficit but I didn't hear it here. Yes very popular. Oh me neither and this is Ian. I think that it depends if you're in the US versus New Zealand there may be different perspectives. And there are people from France who there may be people from France and I don't know what language they use. This is Rob. Just like sign language is different all over the world so the terms are going to be different that the language use will be different labeling will be different perspectives right all over the world. Yes. And how do you plan to incorporate intersectionality. You know where we have you know we get all we all get together. You know we talk about minority or underserved populations. You know are we going to have a big event with the whole group coming together. Like a conference. You know we want to make sure that we're going to we get together while we overcome the perspective that we can't. You know talk about things that we cannot do. Thank you Manuel wanted to say something. That's my question is there a plan to have an event. That's my question. Oh so there was sorry I was like so I mean this is our very this is our first meeting. So I don't know this is our group. Rob you're part of the group so this is we can you know if that's something that we want to do. Maybe I would love for at some point people to say like hey let's meet at Kubecon and do some of the things that we want to do. I don't know if it's there or somewhere else you know like a specific event I did not think about that but why not but it's like those are like I think these are things that we can brainstorm here. Think about how could we make it happen. And it's up to us to kind of see what we would need to ask the CNCF to do and it's like I would love for that I would love to meet with you. So I think the sky is the limit we have to just come up with ideas see that enough people are interested of course like if it's just two people interested it's going to be a little difficult to say like let's do an event. But I mean I would love for us to say like okay we'll have let's say in six months it's very I don't think that's very feasible but let's say in six months we can do like a poll and say like hey we would like to do a meetup or something and then people say yes and want to it's like yes I would love for that but it's difficult to say now if we don't know who the community if we cannot reach it we don't know you know like we need to kind of build that community see the interest and more feasible I would think just like one quickly before a CNCF event like like KubeCon say like okay let's try to have several people who want like who is interested let's meet there do something within KubeCon and then kind of grow from there. I fully agree with you and I'd like to also pose the idea that we need to be reasonable because there's going to be a lot of work. We have history of doing this work in the past we have DEF CON we had a group of six to ten deaf people that went to this conference every year in the past we had enough people that went enough people that would provide we reached critical mass thank you we reached a critical mass we reached critical mass people were compelled people were interested we started from there if we start there more people will join we could see who's interested in going and then we can check in with people who's going to be going to Chicago to KubeCon and then go from there too to KubeCon I agree with Ian critical mass is key if we're visible and people are interested people there at the conference see this opportunity they see this group of people that will keep us in mind if they're working or when they're communicating networking they'll keep deaf and hard of hearing people in mind I agree more visible we are the better we are it's almost like marketing it is marketing too I know a lot of people say it's like we are the better but I want to emphasise it's a part like it lays within this group with people we need to grow the group we cannot do this without people who want to make change who are saying we want to show up so people see us especially for the visibility I would love to have KubeCon talks where you have deaf people talking and not only about accessibility I think it's important to talk about accessibility but you're much more than that you're also technical people about all the topics as you said Rob you can only be top of mind if you're visible I think one of the goals is to make you more visible by being at conferences by talking to media by participating in panels but for that we need a critical mass engagement and make sure everyone is working towards those goals but I think it's all feasible it's time to start badgering my company to send me there it would be awesome quick question to the both interpreters do you need to leave at 45 minutes or do you need to stay Amber can you stay I can stay and now is a good switch time since we kind of paused awesome then I kind of made a proposed action plan awareness is really important just as important as all the other aspects then talking about PR opportunities panel discussion conference talk continuously pushing through social media making sure that in our community deaf and hard of hearing we're here it's not ongoing we need to make sure we do that we need to have a social media calendar the goal is to have one person tweet whatever social media you want to use per week at least once a week if we have something new we can do more or anything we have to announce we want to put your names down there it's a good way to make sure we don't forget and we continuously push again the CNCF is super on board the media team and PR team so they will repost so let's do that and then I had a question are there any deaf and hard of hearing tech events specifically we probably talked about I don't know if there are any events specifically thought on my desk also I wanted to make really clear deaf con that shut down unfortunately there was a conflict with the conference it made it deaf people weren't gone it's done he says cube coms are back up I also wanted to make clear the difference between being part of the team and community of course we want to have a team who are actively participating willing to do some work join the meetings we don't expect everyone to be at every meeting and do all the time it doesn't mean you have to attend every meeting some team members will turn into people of the community you always lose people who have less and more time and then the community that's what we need to grow I would love for the Slack channel to become that meeting point because we need to reach people we need to find out who is going to cube com we need to find out who is interested if people know that a group is going that will make it more attractive to go we can do as Josh suggested something within at cube com where we can do something for the community not everyone has to do the work we also need people to be there if we create an artifact do you have any feedback if we all work on it it would be great if 20 people could look at it and have more eyeballs in it maybe we need we have a survey we have 20 people who are interested we are not just asking the CNCF for certain things but we can say here there are people interested in that I think it is important to grow that community not everyone has to be part of that I would love that more people are involved we need to have a critical mass there just to do more and provide specific guidance any questions or comments on that thank you I feel like we will get indicated we will get going and it will go smoother monthly that is the we just set this whole thing up I know I think it is great so far absolutely agree thank you so much for your support really with everything really just very much appreciate your support it makes me really happy okay that is the awareness thing we need to grow the community always be out there talking about it is not important we need to develop the artifacts I linked in the doc with the audiences we need to look at it we need to look at it to brainstorm ideally we have the issue I will link there we don't need to look at it right now the issue once we are happy with something we put it there we do have all these different audiences and we agree those are the right audiences and the goals we want to do I would suggest that the people individuals of each audience should target work on the audience they belong to we don't have anyone in academia yet but it would be great to find people in academia who can focus on how or create a recommendation what does the university need what tools do they need if they want to teach this to students and then we have people who are in tech like deaf and hard of hearing in tech I got to run too we are after the 45 minutes I think everybody is starting to drop off we can continue the conversation on Slack as well we had a little bit more with the initial kickoff but we are going to continue on Slack if we have people who want to participate in different areas then we will take it from there Josh has his hand up sorry Josh just to continue do we have a dedicated Slack channel for this group I will get on it I will ask my remaining question let's stick with the 45 minutes because that was the time for the interpreters we want to keep it by that too because we don't want to abuse their kindness either thanks everyone great for speeding thank you Catherine good to meet you