 These principles are universal, some are more focused on technology. Okay, there's a little bit about me, you know, my name is Tretia Cornelius, in case you didn't catch that. I didn't realise that I was from the adult with the Pelican brute eve. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram as TretiaWebs. And you can read my musings about life, the universe and everything else on blog.TretiaCornelius.coza. Okay, now when we're talking with something like this, it helps if we speak the same language. I am going to make all of these slides available on my blog and I'll send them to the organisers as well, so I don't know if they're going to be on the WordCamp Cape Town blog. Please don't worry about trying to make notes about this because there is a lot of content in this show. Okay, firstly, diversity. It refers to having a variety of people in your group with different characteristics. And your most obvious ones are things like sex, race, gender, but they can also be really, really simple. So for example, in this room we've got some folks who wear glasses and some who don't. That's a diversity marker. Okay, inclusion. This refers to how people feel. You don't get to decree that you have an inclusive environment. It's how people feel in the space. Okay, and I love this particular quote, which is, inclusion is not about a person changing, but rather about the environment shifting to accommodate those things that make each people unique. So ideally, if you want to have an inclusive environment, you shift and you make space for the changing environment. Okay, intersectionality. This refers to the inter-connected nature of social characteristics such as race, class, gender. And things like that, as they apply to either a given individual or a group regarded as creating interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantages. So for example, a black person from Kailiica has the simultaneous intersectionality of being in a less advantaged race, a less privileged race, and also being impoverished. A black lady from Kailiica will have a different challenge to a black man from Kailiica, but there will be intersectionalization. So marginalization refers to how you treat people. So it's the treatments of a person, a group or concept as insignificant or peripheral. Now microaggressions are subtle but offensive comments or actions that are traditionally directed at a minority or other non-dominant group that are often unintentional or unconsciously reinforced as a stereotype. South Africa has a bit of a unique thing in that it's not so much our minority that is the subject to, that suddenly got dark in here, that are subject to microaggressions, but it is the traditionally disempowered people in the country. So for example, because we have had systematic barriers placed in the country, there's a level of microaggressions that are directed. Okay, now this is a word that causes a lot of heckles to be raised. So let's define it. Privilege, it refers to the interconnected nature of social categorization such as race, class and gender, as they apply to a given individual or group regarding as, regarded as creating, overlapping and independent systems of advantage. Sorry, I've got the wrong definition here. I'll fix that before I put it in. Okay, but let's also look at what privilege is not. It's not saying that you haven't had a hard life, but it's saying that the area in which you are privileged is not one of the things that have made your life harder. And the other thing is it's not an indictment on your character. It's not saying you horrible, horrible person. I think that I stood on some things. It's not saying, oh, wow, you are white and therefore you are bad. It's just saying you have this characteristic and that has given you an advantage. Okay, now structural barriers are an issue that is beyond one's personal control that is part of the context or environment that is related to belonging to a particular group. So being in a rural area, being in a situation of poverty, things like that. Now, why should we even talk about these things? Okay, number one, this isn't a uniquely South African problem. Okay, it's very much global. Now, also we're not good at seeing what's in our periphery. And if you don't know about something, you're not going to act on it. There's a really cool video on YouTube that you can watch about the invisible, what they call the invisible gorilla. And it's a social experiment that they did, which was specifically to see how people responded to things on their periphery. And they went, okay, here we've got a group of people, some in black clothes, some in white clothes. And went, okay, your job is to count how many times the white people in the white clothes are basketball. And it turned out that it was 15 times. And then they would go, oh, by the way, what did you think of the man in the gorilla suit? And the participants would go, what? And in the middle of the experiment, because the people were busy focusing on the basketball being passed, they did not see the man in a gorilla costume walk across the stage and go, oh, look at me, and do the stereotypical beating of that. Okay, now, South Africa has an advantage. We are good at acknowledging and having these difficult conversations. And here the works of Brene Brown are really useful. She talks about concept in social work of leaning into the discomfort. Our challenge, however, is to not just talk, but then to act. Okay, and all of these topics come with baggage. All of us have baggage about them. And when you talk about them, you have to kind of confront your baggage. Okay, now, this is what diversity and inclusion is about. It's a big world. There is room for everyone. Okay, now, you want to increase your skill pool. Unfortunately, there isn't data readily available for South Africa. But in 2017, there was an estimate that in 2020 in the United States, there will be one million unfold coding positions due to a lack of education, which is good for the devs in the room, except maybe not because then you're so overworked and underemployed. Okay, now, the other reason why you want to care about this is money. So who here has not since received a please call me? Yep. Do you know why that came out? There was a black gentleman at Vodacalm, and he kept having a fight with his girlfriend. And they were going, what? And he was like, I can't call you. I don't have any time. And she's like, nonsense. And so as a result of that, he came up with a please call me. If he didn't have those structural barriers in that context, we would be on an entirely different plane and there would be no please call me. Okay, the other reason why you should care is in South Africa, it's actually a legal requirement. If you want to chat to me afterwards about the legal implications, I will. You will, but I'm not going to go into them any more than this. But South Africa is a pretty unique constitution in that generally your constitutions are regarded as vertical. They govern the relationship between the states and individuals. South Africa's constitution has both vertical application and horizontal. And what that means is that depending on certain things like the nature of the right, you have a legal obligation to make sure that that right is for fault. And one of your rights is your rights to equality. So I'm just going to quickly quote, which says here, you may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on any more or any one or more of the grounds including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscious belief, culture, language and birth. And so that's where we actually have a legal obligation to care as well. Okay, now quite often people go, oh, we don't read, this doesn't matter. So this is a pretty typical quote. You like diversity when it's about stuff that shouldn't matter. Gender, skin, colour, sexual preferences, but less so when it affects something that should. And unfortunately, that's a very common attitude. And ideally in an ideal world, it shouldn't matter. But in the real world, it does. And if you speak to any person who's in any form of less powerful group, they will probably have stories to tell you. So if you have a conversation, one of the most common ones now are the Me Too stories, which are about power and sexual relations. But there's also stories of racism and things like that. And here quite often people go, oh, come on, it's not that bad. So here I'm going to quote some things. We've got a bonus definition which is gaslighting, which is basically a form of psychological manipulation, which says, oh, you can't trust your own mind. It didn't happen that way. Okay, and this is a really good illustration here. And the lady who has subsequently left take and came back and is now very happily employed by Automatic, well done, is, says where she went, being called AC was far less damaging than everything else, because I knew that was inappropriate. Everything else was much easier to internalize. I thought a lot about leaving, because how do you not think about leaving when some dude believes you for a year and then calls you AC and nothing happens? Yeah, he still works there even now. And HR used the fact that you were sexually assaulted to gas like you. So that's one of the examples. Another one from, these are examples that I didn't look hard for, by the way. Netflix earlier this year, they had a meeting in which they keep marketing, they refer to certain employees as a six letter word beginning with N. And in context, Netflix has a reputation for firing swiftly and brutally. Generally, if you mess up today, gone tomorrow. But Jonathan Friedman, who was the second offence in that, was, he used the word in a meeting in February 2018 and only let go in June 2018. Now this, I resonate very strongly with Karen Willrundt, because she is also someone who started out in law and took a different path. So she was the lead counsel for a million dollar software company and she was asked to be in a meeting because of her expertise with software and other technology. She walks into the meeting room and there are two men already having a cup of coffee and two men having a conversation and one of them sees her and says, hey honey, could you get us some coffee? Thanks. And then a bonus example is at one of the JSE listed companies in St. And a lady there was asked, hey, thanks for being here. Please go make us the tea and coffee. So these things happen. Now, how do you change this? You make sure that you have a clear statement of your vision of what you want your organization to want and values. So your transformation vision is a statement of what the ideal environment in a space will look like. So for example, if your space has 100 seats, who are those seats taken up by? How do people there? And this is not what is, it's how you want it to be. This is what you're working towards. So with things like this, you will obviously look at the demographics of the country. Et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Now your values are the things that you actually do. And this is how you behave. And so you can say your values are things that are mentioned, for example, in your code of conduct, like being non-discriminatory, welcoming regardless of race, gender, economic class, intellectual capabilities, things like that. Now, one of the things that people will say is, oh, should there be additional spaces for people who are in a less powerful group? And the general consensus is yes, there should be. But they should not be a replacement. So it shouldn't be, here's WordCam and here's WordCam for women. And the two-shot should never be over. It should be, oh, here's a space where women in WordPress can get together and have a conversation about specific things that went down. The reason why you want to have that is because it gives places for people in the background to discuss their experiences. And it's very difficult to, in the same space, have a place where people can educate and go, you know, the comments of where you called me a guy. See, not to look cool, but, you know, this is why you should do better next time. And at the same time, you won't believe it, it happened again. So that's why you do this. Okay. Now, the importance of this adventure, I'm going to refer to, say, at this point, that not everyone in a position of power is a leader and you don't need to be in a position of authority. So this is where the leadership is talking about. Okay. Now, group identity refers to how our group refers to itself. So, for example, here, if we go, oh, these are all people of WordPress and specifically the one to attend, WordPress. Okay. Now, a group identity is built by its actions. And that is both a positive and a negative. So if you've got harmful behavior from one member of the group, it hurts the entire group, and harmful behavior from one member can boost that group. And a lot of people go, oh, we don't need external oversight or things like that because we self-please. And so the reason why I've got that term there is so it says, this is an organization. An organization does not just incorporate it to any group. So, for example, for a group of three people, you do have a group identity and a level of organization. So it's responsible for its own compliance to legal safety and ethical standards. And if someone in the group misbehaves and you need to go, am I personally in this group happy for that to be responsive, to be associated with that? And if your answer is no, personally, I don't want to be responsive, associated with that, then you act against it. Okay. Cool. That is a good work. Systematic barriers have been put in place for years. Power structures exist for years. It's not your fault that the power structures and barriers exist. But we are responsible to respond to those actions. Okay. People are both very simple and very complex. And so we just need people to help us feel safe. And you also need people to monitor. Okay. Now, this is one of the things that you must remember when you're in the group. People are watching you. So this is what Miss Neavote was referring to, where she was saying that in terms of a one-star review, it's people aren't, you no longer interacting directly with the person who your interaction is with. People are saying, how do you handle this? Okay. People are looking. How do you interact with newcomers? Are newcomers welcome? How do you interact with people when there's an agreement? How do you interact when there's a power differential? And this goes to intersectionality and complexities and things like that. How do you handle it when there's a violation of boundaries? So for example, we've got some very good things in my five minute warning. Okay. So I'm going to get this up. So going over time. Does that include the extra time that I was getting because we went to the mic? Okay. Cool. No. Just asking. So Paradox of Tolerances says, oh, but surely we can't kick people out because they've got a different opinion. And actually the answer is you can. If someone is using racist, sexist, homophobic or other downright offensive language, you absolutely can kick them out and do them what you should because there's something called the paradox of tolerance, which basically says if a society tolerates intolerance, the tolerant will be driven out and you will only be left with the intolerant folks. Okay. So things that you can do to make people feel welcome. As mentioned, people want to feel safe and included. Have your rules. Be explicit about what's allowed. And make sure this is really challenging because people have gotten to leadership roles and position power in a community because they are valuable to the community. So this is where you need to go. The good of the community means that sometimes we need to take a little bit of a hit. Okay. Then you can assume report violations of code of conduct and things like that are true. Investigate. There are false reports. Make sure that you do get the other side of the story. But remember that false reports are rare. And investigate can't end thoroughly. Okay. Watch out for boundary pushing. If they generally to pack reasons why boundary pushing happen. One, people are a bit clueless and don't mean to. And if they get called out and they will change the behavior. Or these are the ones that you need to watch out for. The people who enjoy pushing the boundaries of others and get that. Okay. Make sure that you can replace everyone. Okay. And this is where sometimes people go, oh, we don't have a hierarchy and that's why they can't be harassment. There's a problem with that because people do deviate to hierarchies as a gravity to hierarchies as a rule. Which is why you want to have an explicit hierarchy and have a process for people to complain about the people on position of power and have a process to deal with that. Okay. The reason I want to have policies and procedures is so that you know what you want to do with the situation before it arises. So you're not on the back foot. And also you just want to be flexible with your procedures. Because quite often when there's a violation, people won't necessarily report directly to the person in power. They'll report to somebody they feel safe and they will take it from there. Okay. Now, one of the things that you often hear is be an ally. And the reason that allies are so important is because it's easier for an ally to act because they don't face the same repercussions as a marginalised person for speaking up. So your privilege can be used for good. And here we've got an example in this room. Dane is wonderful in terms of sharing his knowledge and expertise. So he'll share his skills and networks very nicely. Other people will go, oh, you should speak to so many things like that and other voices. Okay. There's a difference between being a bystander to an event and witnessing it. A witness will acknowledge and validate the other person's experience. Yes, that thing happened. It was inappropriate and you're not overreacting. And what should you do when it happens? Call out the bad behaviour. So this is where you go, this thing that you did was wrong. So you don't say you are a misogynist when someone says so-and-so was a C. You say it was completely wrong for you to call so-and-so a C. It's not acceptable. Don't do it again. It doesn't open the argument where they can go, oh, I'm not a misogynist because I've got a wife and a mother. Okay. Now, when you're in a situation where you see the palm list, note the narrative commas, racism or sexism or whatever. How do you respond? Practice your simple responses. Go, oh, awkward, not cool. Be simple. Keep short. Don't try and make a joke of it. Play to your audience. So go, look at how it is in the room. And sometimes you're not necessarily educating and calling out the person who had affected, who committed the violation, but to everyone else in the room and also going, look, we don't accept this in our space. Now, this is one where you need to pay attention to the dynamic because sometimes it's all powerful and you need to read the room and you need to go, as Sammy said, other times you need to go, oh, not cool and not amplified. Speak for yourself. Say, I do not want to be associated by this racist condo. Pick your battles. Sometimes you're just too tired and don't have the energy and that's okay. You don't have a naughty badge for being a good person. So please don't expect praise and credit for fighting inequality. And if you make a mistake, apologize, correct yourself and move on. So please, my call to action here, if you do one thing, be a person that makes others welcome in your space and when you do get it wrong, because we all do, remember that your impact is important and don't say things like, but you must understand it wasn't meant like that. You are taking this too seriously. You are blowing this out of proportion. The injured person, as the person who gets to decide what the impact was. So if you've broken my toe, it doesn't matter if it was an accident or not. I still have a broken toe. So your intentions are irrelevant when it comes to impact, but intentions do matter. So if you deliberately trot on my foot, I'm going to respond differently to you accidentally tripping and standing on my toe. Okay. It doesn't matter how you mess up. It matters how you fix it. So apologize, learn from it and do better next time. And this is actually a really useful guide on how to apologize. Take responsibility, go. I'm sorry that this happens. This is not a programming loop. There is no conditions. There's no ifs, there's no buts. Make amends. If there's something that you can do to mend the situation, do it. And remember the best apology is a change in behavior. Okay, cool. So that's the end of the talk. Thank you so much. And so there's some resources. That's unexpected. One of the things that I can't recommend highly enough is a book by Nene Malafi, who is a South African diversity and inclusion advocate and has a huge amount of experience. She's got a book called A Journey of Diversity and Inclusion in South Africa. And it's 245 round for the e-book. You can get the e-book or you can get the physical copy. You can have a talk with me. I can show you the book. As I said, there will be, I'll make these slides available. There's a video called Anti-Operation 101, which is just going back to the basis and reminding. A lot of these concepts that I covered and things that you can do is a blog post called No More Rockstars. And then even the ADO initiative has closed down. It still has an active website. And it's got a encyclopedia of policies and incidents and things that can be handled and things like that, because the truth is we're now in uncharted territory. So this is where we need leaders with a bit of grace and humour. So thank you so much. And let's try not to be stereotyped with this. Thanks so much.