 Long friend Rafael Isidoro, Isidori, sorry. Who has been speaking and discussing diversity in several forums. Original from Luxembourg, Carol Linger. Also a long friend who is known in the WordPress community for advocating for more diverse representation on WordCamps. And from Colombia, now living in Lisbon and the newcomer. Say welcome to the Portuguese WordPress community. Jamila Abuabara is a digital marketing professional with a large experience in public speaking. So the public is invited to join the conversation when invited by Rafael, of course. Rafael, Carol and Jamil, the stage is yours. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Obrigada. It's a pleasure to be here and it's a pleasure to welcome Jamil at her first WordCamp. So big round of applause. And Carol who is also, I think more experienced than me in WordCamps, but I have a little. So the way we decided to run this to make it interesting and not boring and not a lecture is that I'm going to first tell you a little bit how I got to be here. Well, a few years except three were kind of like canceled by other things. And then we're going to get some tips from Carol on how a community but even businesses can work to, you know, improve the, on their diversity and the advantages. And then also we're going to hear Jamil's story. But also, and she's going to talk about it later in her talk, how speaking, even at small events, whether our meetups or work camps or small, you know, local events can really help on from a personal brand perspective, but also from a personal perception of ourselves perspective. And to explain what I mean, I'm going to start telling you how I arrived to the WordPress community in 2016, taken by a friend. And I started contributing through the polyglots because I'm a designer and there was not a lot of design related activities at the time. And so I started in 2016. I started, you know, translating in Italian. And then I started helping with organizing some work camps. And at the end of 2017, my friends from Rome were organizing work in Proma. And so I said, Okay, I'm going to try sending you a talk, but please don't accept it just because you're my friends, which of course it's kind of like, you know, safe netting myself. So anyway, my talk was chosen and my talk was about branding. So part of my imposter was talking, but also part was my own bias about the fact that who's going to care about design or branding at a, you know, software development coding event, technical event. Well, as I found out, a lot of people did. So I gave my talk and people were like, Oh, we loved your talk. And I was like, Oh, really? You mean it? So I said, you know what? Next year, I'm going to apply to every work camp where a, I have friends, so I go to see them or I've never been. So I have an opportunity to go visit. And in 2018, I don't remember the number, but I spoke at either 18 or 20 events because my talks were light. And so I had my talk about branding and then I wrote another talk about design principles. And then I did a talk about mindfulness. So there were all topics that if I had self-limited it myself, I would have said, who's going to care? But in reality, people cared and people were happy that I shared my thoughts. And I had an opportunity to make friends and widen my audience. And though it wasn't business related, it certainly helped me get better with my self-esteem, shut the imposter up and sort of build a better posture, better public posture for myself and also, you know, devogate and evangelize about design, which is obviously my core topic. And this is, my story is just to give you a frame to look at what we're talking about. And to sort of inspire you in daring and do not think for other people, do not think, oh, but no one's going to care about it. Let other people tell you we don't care about it, which most often they're not going to tell you to you. Yeah, and I'm so happy you had your opportunity to become a speaker at Wordcom Roma because that made us become friends because in 2018, like I said, we bumped into each other so many times. And it's so great after the whole terrible three years of the pandemic that we are united again on stage here. Beautiful, which can be small. So what I would like to do is I would like to share a little bit of my experience as traveling the world with WordCams and also having been an organizer for WordCams in different countries. And I'm considering myself as an advocate for positive mental health in tech, but also for diversity and inclusion. And I want to start with actually giving a shout out to the WordCamp Lisbon team because what diversity and inclusion starts with, in my opinion, is awareness. And I love how the team was trying to make an effort to get a more, yeah, to get more representation on stage and then noticing, okay, we didn't manage to get where we want to be. And then like, hmm, that, we don't want that. So they were reaching out actively to more underrepresented minorities in our community to get on stage to share the knowledge, which is great. And then they were still not satisfied with the result, which is another important awareness, realization, whatever, language period. That's also something we have to talk about at some point. And then they were asking for help. They were like, hey, where are people that have more experience than we, than we have and what are people that are experiencing maybe bias or barriers to share their knowledge and how can they help us with their experiences in, in organizing an even more diverse WordCamp Lisbon or WordCamp Porto next year. So I love what they were doing here. And that's the, that's already the first advice I can give you. Like it starts with awareness and it starts with acknowledging that there is an issue and it is totally fine to reach out for help because we are facing all these challenges when it comes to representation, diversity and inclusion and nobody has the global solution for it. And that is another important advice. Diversity is multifaceted. Like diversity looks different in Portugal than it looks in the Netherlands, than it looks in the UK, then it looks in the US, then it looks in Africa or in Asia. So instead of just trying to projecting our own realities to other areas in the world, how cool would it be if we would just stay all open-minded, curious about other people's realities and learn from each other instead of bashing each other, right? Yep. So that's, yeah, that's the other important advice that I'd like to give. Stay open-minded and consider that diversity is multifaceted and yeah. It's also a resource, you know, that diversity is, it's really enriching and it's something that can, it brings value from so many points, you know, because someone that is not like us has a different perspective, has a different point of view. They can tell about us something that we cannot see. So even it's like accepting criticism in a way, you know, if we can go past the unease when someone tells us something that we kind of go, huh, you know, no, you know, I don't do that. And if we kind of make ourselves go past that and say, well, you know, maybe I do, maybe I don't see it. That's the awareness, you know, that Carol is telling about, there's a huge opportunity in that place where, oh, let me look at me or at my project or at my company or at my event from that perspective. That's, that can only bring value and it can never be damaging in any way. Now, also when it comes to, to bias, I do think that, yeah, we are all in this room and outside this room in our community dealing with unconscious bias and it would be so valuable to have these proactive conversations, open, proactive conversations happening about, hey, Raffaella, what did you encounter when you were organizing or speaking at WordCams? Like maybe bias that you've been noticing as somebody else pointed out to you and you were like, oh wait, yeah, I, I have prejudices in my mind and I want to be that person who evolves and work on them. And if organizers start having these conversations within their team, they will be able to identify and help each other to find out about those biases and working on them and removing them little by little. So diversity starts on the inside and having not only a diverse team that represents the people in our community as a part of the organizing team, but also having these open, proactive conversations about unconscious bias and how to remove that from maybe to speak a selection. Yeah, that would be, that would be really awesome and I do feel that we're sometimes scared to have these conversations. We are not, but yes. Yeah, we as a general team, yes. It's amazing that you have to experience Carol and Raffaella. We have different backgrounds. We are not technical, but we are here. And I think that all is about communication. Every person have one experience that this experience that we have can help to other person and we have to express. I am from Colombia. My English is improved and always I did, but I try to express myself all the time that I come. I am learning English and Portuguese in the same time. Wow. You're a hero. And I am here to talk and express myself because I know that a lot of people have a scare or a fear to expose and I think you have to face this fear that you have and make in courage and express yourself and explain what is your experience. And I think that is important because if you don't explain yourself, nobody know you. Nobody know what do you know? What do you do? What is your background? What can you afford to the sociology? And it's different about the diversity you have here. We are a different country. Lisbon is multicultural people. So you have learned to different experience, to different culture and you in ratio, you have more about the world and you have more knowledge. So I think that is important express and speaking public. If in Spanish I can speak better because I can find more words and I can talk more, but I am here to express myself and that's it. You have to express to be, you have a value. Everybody have a value than identify. You have abilities, skills and you have a lot thing to express to the sociology to grow up. Think one thing that diversity is like, it's not a cake that take the left for you. Game in which everybody wins, everybody it multiplies, you know, and it's an excellent point, the fact that if you don't make yourself visible, then it's okay. If you, I lost my thought, but yeah, whatever. It's something that multiplies and synergizes. And if you're, oh, that's what I was going to say. If you are not visible, you are not seen, which is like obvious, but it's not so obvious if you reflect on it. And so that's one part and it's about each one of us, but the other important thing is how much representation matters. If I see someone like me doing something, it even irrationally tells my brain that I could be that person too. But this is especially important for young people to see that or for whatever age people to see that and say, hey, I can do that. Hey, maybe just like I did, you know, I thought who's going to care about branding at a work camp and guess what they do. And, you know, anything that we can give to the community, there's going to be, even if there's only one person that you touch, that's one person more than zero and you may maybe not change their life, but maybe you can improve their life or you can give them ideas or you can give them the courage that maybe they were lacking. What I would also like to see more is that we have so many experienced speakers already in our community and I'm not only talking about work camps, I'm also talking about meetups and other tech conferences and how cool would that be if the people that know that they are really good at sharing their knowledge, that they would just become mentors for other people from underrepresented communities. How cool would that be if you plan your next talk? You would just think about, hey, I know this person who is also pretty, pretty great in design or in community work or in development and let's give a talk together, let's pitch them in or let's create a workshop together. And so that can come from each and every single one of us that is already sharing their knowledge actively with the community. But of course, word camps can facilitate that, they can find experienced community members in their own community to share with others how to become more confident going on stage, how to write a pitch, how to set up a slide deck. There's so many things we can share with other people to encourage and to empower them to become visible because like just like Rafaela said, representation matters so, so much. And yeah, mentorship programs and there is initiatives also like from the global WordPress community. There's a diverse speaker training program which is led by Jill Binder and there's the hashtag WP diversity where you can check out all these, all these things and I'm going to share that in the Twitter chat after, after our panel here and yeah. And there's companies supporting people traveling around the world and traveling to word camps within their country to share their knowledge if they identify as being part of underrepresented minorities within our community. So as, as you can see, I work with Yoast. We have the Yoast diversity fund. So as soon as my sponsors. So as soon as you manage to be accepted at a word camp, wherever it's going to happen in the world, you can reach out to get a helps in terms of funding your travels and accommodation to actually get on stage because not everybody is privileged enough to work for companies that are just going to sponsor our travels or contributions to the open source project, right? And that's part of diversity conversations as well. One thing that I want to support is if you want to talk and you are nervous the first time that I was speaking, I didn't prepare it about a mentality. So I will go on. I will stand in the public and I will talk about my project was in one company that was in Versor is 14 person around. When I was a son of them, I was so nervous. What my first time and my, my heels, my high heels stuck in the floor, I can't talk. My, the microphone like this, I, my both go. So in this, when I finished this, this exposition, I say, okay, I, I like to spread myself. I like to communicate whenever in what in language that I can, but I want to communicate. So I make some program like PNL. I don't know how in PNL and I try to improve how to take out this fair that I have and express myself because I know that I can help other woman and other person empower them to speak in public. Nobody knows about that, but they have to empower and they have to express and give to the community and the society all the better than they have. So you gotta push it a little. So you want to, are there any questions because we're running out of time? I'm going to need to do a talk show because I need to move around because that's the last microphone. Okay, are we going to like talk like that now? So anyone wants to chip in with any question? I have a quite personal question. So it's okay if you don't want to answer. Um, do you have, do you want to share all of you a moment in your life or in your public speaking career where you realize like, hmm, being a woman or being part of a minority is actually powerful, is actually an advantage for me that I want to talk about it. Do you have like a story around the moment of mind blow where like, hmm, being a woman is powerful. I kind of tell that myself every morning, but you know, I'm sort of training myself to that. It took me more than 50 years to get there. So, you know, I'm happy that you can kind of get there sooner. Quickly, no, if I understand your question, I never had the feeling that I was particularly fortunate by being a woman in you know, it's like, oh, what a privilege. I'm, you know, in fact, I would say I've often experienced the contrary. On the other hand, I remember the end of my first talk in Rome and the reaction from the people. And I remember that moment has been very empowering. And I remember people coming up and say, oh, wow, what a great talk. And I just felt like, oh, I have value. I have things to say, and these people are happy that I've told them. So that was fine. I don't know if you're bad. You're in soon. I, I think this is a really people to join. So really. Okay. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, you go ahead. Okay. So I've been speaking for a while, and I've seen also as a developer, I've seen a positive discrimination and actually going to the other way. And I don't like it. So I'm interested in your opinion about that. You're meaning that to create more diversity on stage or on panels or in general, that women would like have an advantage because they would be like chosen because of the gender to Yes. Yeah. I, it is, it is a very, very good question. And to be very honest, I was more on, on, so I was sharing your view on things like two or three weeks, two or three years ago where I was worried if I would apply to become a speaker somewhere, for example, if they would accept me because of my gender, because not of the quality that I would deliver, but to have more diversity on stage, you would be part of the diversity quota. So that's what you mean, right? So I do think that that is part of the imposter syndrome to be very honest, which is, and I'm not saying men don't have it. Men have that too. But I see it's so much more common within my female friends in this community. And I just stopped myself and I didn't allow myself to think that anymore because I know I have quality to deliver and I know that I'm good at what I'm doing. So I won't let anybody either discriminate me because of my gender or keep telling myself if that is not happening. It is only because I am a woman. So I don't think that women deliver less quality. And I know that's not what you've been saying here, especially because you are brilliant at what you were doing as well. And everybody knows that. So I do think that women deliver the same amount of quality as men can deliver, but often are already struggling with imposter syndrome when they are starting to write a pitch for a talk because they think I'm not the expert in this. Yes, you are. If you can teach others what you're doing, you are the expert in the room. And there's always going to be people who know a little bit more, but there's also going to be people who are so thankful for everybody sharing their knowledge on stage, especially free at work camps. I hope this answers your question a little bit. So we are running late, but we will take one more participation. Anyone? So, uh, thank you for helping us with this. It's really inspiring. It changes mind. So it's it's not exactly a question. I want to thank first Rafael because in 2019, she also, uh, made a great effort so that we could be more aware about this this issue. And I want to thank you three of you to help us to be more aware and have some. I think we are in the organizing team. We are real, really aware about about this issue and we are the greatest problem we have is that we need the actions. So we need to know how to do it. So we are aware that we have like a few few women saying, yes, when we when we do the call for speakers and and we have a lot of we have a few a few minority representatives in our in our community. And so what we need is is to see how we can act on it and we have we it's it's it's been really hard for us and I want to thank you for helping us to be more aware and be more active in trying to do correct it. So thank you. I'm going to share a document with you. So I'm going to put it into a Twitter threat like right after this panel. It's already prepared and I'm going to share the document with you. So this is like my personal view on how to improve things. But also there's lots of resources where you can actually go and have conversations with other people and find out about how they've been improving their situation. Thank you. Thank you. And I also think that what you're doing as a community is brilliant like Carol said just reach out and ask and you know and just that's that's really the core of it. Yeah. Thanks for doing something and say I can pretend it's not a problem or I can see it's a problem and try and fix it. There's no magic fix but it's it's a path. You know it's a progress that rose an organizer. I think and I hope we are improving on that. You are. Thank you everyone. Thank you.