 So far away. Get in there. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Oh, you're so very quiet. So I think you're half asleep. Hello, Dee. So it's no secret that in the tech industry and in other industries across the across all the professions diversity is an issue. We can all agree with that, right? Yes, no, you half asleep. That's fine And as an organizer of tech events Diversity is important to me. It's something that I am as Carol said Very passionate about and on my travels. I mean, I've been to a lot of work camps and especially in Europe I've seen many events tackle diversity in different ways When I took on the role as work on London organizer, I Had an opportunity to lead the event Diversity was something I was passionate about but I Didn't want to tackle diversity The thing about diversity is It puts the emphasis on the minority to come up and make themselves known and I don't really like that Being someone who is part of that minority it always makes It's always like as if I have to do the work for the rest of the majority and I just don't like doing lots of work So instead, I kind of thought about inclusivity. I wanted to focus work out London on Making it the most inclusive event possible But first thing is first How do you make a Community inclusive? The answer At least I thought it did Was accessibility put an accessibility at the core of the event What if we made it as easy as it could be For more people to come to the event so that every excuse someone came to me with on Why they wouldn't come to a work out. It was already dealt with what happens if that is the goal If instead of looking at diversity, we looked at Inclusivity and in to do that. We made it easy for people It would mean that the minorities become the majority so what happened at work out London two years ago the Tweets that we got afterwards included some of these Thank you work out London the most inclusive accessible and supportive community I have had the privilege to be a part of Honestly reading these tweets makes my heart just I'm so proud of the team Back in Sussex after a phenomenal weekend at work out London Thank you to everyone for making our first work camp London Amazing and accessible and what the amazing thing about this particular tweet is the lady in the tweet Was a first-time speaker at our event too I was skeptical of life captioning but super useful amazing to watch but we'd experience as a speaker Fair play for that play Enjoying the quiet room at work out London to do some light reading would love to see this at more conferences Not enough characters to describe what an amazing conference work out London was loved friendliness captioning and quiet zones especially I Think those tweets really show how Put an accessibility at the core of the event was the right call So how did we do it? How did the team of work out London? 2016 and 2017 do this first and foremost I Made sure that we had a hundred percent organizer buy-in everyone on the organizing team Agreed this was the goal for work out London. It meant that we were all Aiming for a common goal a common focus and it meant that we had a cohesion in the way We thought about what we were doing for the event And the way we did that was to think Does whatever it is we're discussing Make the event more accessible less accessible or the same Every single thing we did this question came up Sometimes it was obvious what the answer was and sometimes it wasn't so obvious Now if the answer is number one more accessible great, it is a clear win for everyone. It's a no-brainer. Let's do it If the answer is two less accessible Okay At least you know there was going to be some issues at least you are aware and conscious of the fact Whatever it is that you're discussing has potential problems We had a situation like that at work out London the venue We were using had a particular spot where we wanted to put the teas and coffees Stands during the event the problem was there was only staircase access and To the coffee and the tea And now as all of you I'm sure realize coughing tea is kind of the bloodline of events So not being able to access that is kind of a problem There were two solutions to it At least we figured there was two solutions to it They might have been more if you know of more solutions. Let me know later The first one was to put some volunteers out of the front of the staircase who could run up and down and get coffees for people That was a easy solution for us We could get more volunteers just make sure they were on the rotor at all times and the other option was to just tell Everybody that there are going to be particular locations that they could not access So they ahead of time knew that they had to go to another coffee station instead By telling people ahead of time they can make their own decisions our attendees aren't stupid They are smart people so if you tell them we have a situation. We're really sorry But this is the problem if you have any ideas on how to help us fix this We would love to hear from you. They will respond in a very positive manner and if the answer is number three That's cool. It's neither better nor worse. It's just different and that's absolutely cool So some of the solutions that work out London did included childcare One of the attendees from 2015 tweeted at us asking if we're gonna have any plans for a crash Think the British word for childcare Some things I learned when I said yes to this Was a don't do it yourself. I don't want to be responsible for other people's children bad idea Find professionals Make sure you vet them not just that they're professionals, but they have the right credentials as well for your particular country Have a parent that you know talk to them who is potentially going to use this service Parents have this like radar because they have to pick schools and nurseries and stuff So they can kind of read these things better than I can so trust them and get testimonials and check through Life captioning it helps with catching missing words and accents. I usually speak a lot faster than this So live captioning is usually a very good idea for me But do consider in particular locations. You might need extra AV considerations There is a TV up there that we had to put into place and chairs and tables stuff that you wouldn't usually have at the front of a room space planning Things like multi-faith rooms lactation rooms quiet rooms break out spaces overflow rooms Places where the TV shows a live feed those can be useful if you have the space theme signage if You have theme signage. It helps your attendees and everyone be self-supportive. They can work out where to go themselves One pointer you will need more signage than you think and the other pointer Please please please if there's anything else you learn from this put signage above head height Because at 5 foot 2 it's I'm a very short person and Looking over 6 foot people doesn't work Scheduling considerations things like this the room change and the turnover times telling people how long they've got to go from A To B it's very useful It allows people to plan their time Accordingly whether the bathroom line is too long or too short have they got enough time for a good quick coffee Things like that allow it to be easier for people to decide how they are going to spend their time at your event It also allows people to digest information that they're thinking about Life essential boxes which are basically these boxes that we put in every single bathroom They have tampons and towels in different sizes and we put them in all the bathrooms men's women's and the Disabled bathrooms just make sure you check the amount in them and refill them during your event There are plenty of other things that we did as well, but I want to leave you with some takeaways Accessibility does not have to be expensive. Some of the things I mentioned they were completely free You need to think about your audience the community that you know about the people that you see every day at your meet-ups But also the community that you haven't met yet as well Make every decision a conscious one whether it's a better for four words At least you know what the situation is and fully understand it Be transparent in communication tell people don't be shy about it you're all volunteers at work camps and Therefore like people don't get mad at you when you don't do something as long as you tell them and With that, I just want to remind you we didn't look at diversity as a team We looked at inclusivity and with the way we did that was to make it in the event as accessible as possible. I Want you to think about what you could do to make your event more diverse more inclusive and more accessible Milly messy Thank you. Thank you so much Jenny