 My name is Stefka Dimitrova and I'll talk about including voices and perspectives that often go unheard. And I will start with a brief introduction of myself and you will learn more why I am sharing about myself and how that's related to the topic and to the presentation. So, I'm currently in VMware's Osponsor's Program Office being a program manager working with communities, community strategy team and I've been in tech industry for about 10 years. I've had previously a background in business and economics and had done different types of work and I'm also passionate about outdoor climbing, outdoor education, mountaineering, I'm a mountain guide that I do as a volunteer work as well and I'm passionate about improvisational theatre and playback theatre and you will also learn about it and how it relates to the topic. So, in all of these different things that I do, I find inspiration from one area to bring into another area and to grow and to learn and to help me improve and help me also share that knowledge with others because it's sometimes when I'm stuck in one particular topic or problem in a certain area that I only can move forward when I found the solution somewhere else. And I hope you will be able to get some inspiration as well from other areas. And starting about talking about including unheard voices and it also starts with a personal story and that's why I shared a bit about myself as an introduction and I'm not an expert in this and I don't think I'm like the person who have found all the solutions but I'm on my way and that's what I want to share it. And it all starts with just sharing that with my first career which was about 15 years ago that's how I looked like at that point. I was the junior consultant in a financial company, being the only woman in the group, being the most junior and not really allowing myself to share any thoughts, experience, feedback. I just kept silent, I mean in team meetings, in conversation. I thought I'm not experienced enough to speak up. I probably missed some of the information that others know or I just am not worthy enough to speak in conferences. It's not possible to share but to just even share internal messages. And then slowly I was being able to gain more confidence, to work hard, to work really hard into being really acknowledged and to grow into my career. I moved into a technical job in the tech industry as a consultant and it was a German company so besides being one of the few women in the group, again pretty junior, I was also the non-native speaker in the room usually which added to my unwillingness to really share so much about myself and about my thoughts and my experience and my knowledge. And I'm not sharing that to complain about being underprivileged because I'm in the privileged group in many other aspects because I've never experienced really any racism or I've not really been in a disadvantaged position in terms of nationality culture besides some biases about Eastern Europeans violence and Eastern European women. Sometimes I also don't have any disadvantages so I'm in a privileged group in many other aspects but I wasn't really aware for a long time that I felt being not worthy enough and that's what I didn't share so much about myself. It was not until I got into a management position that I was responsible for other people that I realized I needed to fight for them to be recognized, to allow space for them to speak, to share, to get feedback, to take seriously in their career and I found my way at that time. My way was to work really hard, cost some burnouts and I thought that this is the normal way for a professional woman to be recognized, to really need to prove much more than maybe my other colleagues needed. And then sharing that and this is a framework that I really like reading through a paper and some articles. It's about different layers of power and less power. So Pamela Hayes describes this cultural characteristic so in some of the areas we might have more power. For example, like being junior at work we'll be in the group of having less power then we'll grow into the career and then we might go into the other way where this is also called besides power dynamics it helps recognize, understand the complexity of the identity so just think about areas where you might be underprivileged but then having other areas where you have more power and just think about your own examples in different circumstances depending on the different groups and this is just one framework of course but what I want to share with that is that regardless whether we are in the underprivileged or privileged group we can do some things about it. Otherwise we all lose. So in a way if I don't share my feedback and I will feel that I don't really belong and I've done that for a long time that I don't belong to that group then I might be less motivated to do my work which will lead to less creativity and less really flexibility and willingness and desire to complete my task and that I call some burnout or maybe I don't have good connections and relationships with my colleagues or my company will lose the added value that I could bring for that and in the end there are more partners, customers other people, the wider community losing my lack of willingness to participate or to speak up and to share my feedback or my knowledge and this is related to costs and I've just tried to find some research on how much does it cost, how much does the exclusion cost and you can see here that there are estimated loss from different research and some of them are old so I guess that the amount will be even higher but there are really huge loss and this is estimated you see 160 trillions, that's a loss in human capital wealth due to gender inequity you see as a research for homophobia in India and how much does it cost as a percentage of the GDP or how could the GDP grow 4-6% in US that's a huge growth that could be possible if the racial gap didn't exist or if people with disabilities were included then we would avoid such a growth cost in terms of loss in GDP and I told you that I have a financial background so I was really interested in finding real numbers about the costs associated with unheard voices so it's not only me who will be suffering from that it's not only my group of people and my company but it will be a global loss and I shared just a little example and I said I'm not really into most of the un-privileged groups but many others are and so this was the purpose and my idea when I started to think about this talk is to recognize the blind spots to recognize the blind spots that I have to have some awareness about that to share that with you and also to motivate you to speak up to be an ally for someone else to provide space and I will do that by providing some examples and hacks from other areas as I already told you and that can be applied in our work with open source communities and the inspiration is everywhere and I found it doing some work as a hobby and improvisational theater called playback theater and I started it as a way to improve my presentation skills and be able to speak up here in front of public without shaking and losing my voice and it ended up something that I really love and like doing and playback theater is an improvisational form of theater where a group... where there is the audience like you and then performers, actors, musicians and a facilitator which would be we call conductor the role audience share stories which will be played back by the actors on stage and it starts with some small stories, small sharing but then this helps the group get connected and it's a work used a lot in social and I've drawn here some similarities in terms of common principles and values but I will share first a bit more about playback and then I will come back to share the similarities with open source and because it's art and I wanted to present art in some more artistic way which will be hard to be like a solo performer so I just combined some videos of different groups some of them that I know personally so that I can give you a little bit of an excerpt of what's playback theater and then that will be easier for me to explain what are the hacks or what are the tricks that I want to share taken from the playback theater as an example so here is the video and I hope we can hear it well Experience where people from the audience share stories or moments and then through the generosity of the performers it's retold for the audience in a way that is really enjoyable Do you hear the voice well or we need it a bit louder It's just brilliant I don't know how they get the energy for all those creative ideas it was such fun You have kind of like an idea of what they might do and they always do something bigger and better It touched me on an emotional level and I think it's really good that we can see that coming out of theater I love that you never know what you're going to get So it was a part of everything that I either experienced or it was remonted all It was fantastic It's a form of applied theater where actors, musicians and dancers take stories from the audience and then on the spot lay them back as literal interpretations, metaphor or allegory using music and movement Playback theater is improvised That doesn't mean it's always funny Our shows often flow smoothly between drama and comedy and even tragedy as our goal is to honor the teller and their story We begin each performance by being a little vulnerable and by demonstrating what the audience is about to see Hi, my name is Naya Each player steps forward and reveals something about themselves and then the rest of the team plays it back This helps set the tone for the program and lets the audience in on who we are Then we begin by asking our audience how they're doing with a few low stakes questions I started out feeling a little bit stressed I'm solo-parenting this week So I felt a little bit better once I transitioned Okay, so let's watch And this is my playback company in Bulgaria They're built as human beings to communicate through stories This is Jill Follis She's one of the co-founders of Identity It's how we construct our sense of history It's how we construct meaning So Playback Theatre is about stories but not the stories of fictional heroes and heroines not the stories of distant celebrities but stories of yourselves, of ourselves of neighbors, families, friends, strangers ordinary people Okay, so after each voice after each one we would play back what we heard in a short movement improvisational theatre piece one voice at a time and after a little while when we felt there was a connection we would invite someone to come and sit over here with me if I was the conductor and tell a longer story and after a while we'd hear several of those stories and act them out and after an hour or so you the audience, we the performers we would have co-created a kind of tapestry of stories we were crazy enough to embark on something completely unknown this was in 1975, I don't know if I said that that was a very fertile time for new ideas we did keep going and after not very long people began to do this in other parts of the world Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Asia Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East in theatres, schools, prisons refugee camps, government departments there are people with stories everywhere so this kind of versatility can make it a little hard to categorize what can be the purpose of something so peculiar and to me the ultimate purpose really is about dialogue a kind of non-cognitive embodied dialogue that invokes creativity and imagination and builds dialogue builds understanding respect, connection, empathy and change the world needs dialogue clearly and we can offer what we know we know how to make a space for stories we know how to create an atmosphere of authenticity and trust and safety we know how to embody a story so that the teller knows that she's been hurt the audience knows what she has lived yes, so in a way this was one of the co-founders she and her husband founded that 58 years ago 48 years ago and what they did is they gave it for free to the world like open source in a way there is no franchising because there are some regulations about trainers and accreditation for trainers but besides that everyone can practice playback and it's done in 70 countries now around the world and also it's a community thing so it requires community engagement it's a collaborative event you know it doesn't it doesn't happen if there is no collaboration between audience and the artist and it's improvisation so there is a lot of adaptation transformation also starts with almost transparent sharing and that's invites for real human connection with spontaneity and creativity and these are the things that I've taken out from Playback Theatre I work there, I'm passionate about there and then I try applying it everywhere else including especially in open source community how to invite voices how to invite people first is creating a safe space and in Playback Theatre you've heard a bit about it but there are certain rituals they are designed to create a container where people would feel safe enough to share to be vulnerable to be themselves there are code of ethics the code of conduct and we do that in open source whenever I share about Playback Theatre feel free to relate to your work and take some examples and it's not always possible to have safe space and you'd probably just think of examples where there is a really hard conflict and some people feel hurt or not welcomed or not really safe enough so then we aim at creating a soft space and I like this term in terms of that's a space where it's not completely safe from falling down and hurting but it won't be but it will be soft if you fall down so you won't hurt much you have a mechanism to heal, to protect to provide help even if it wasn't so safe and I try to relate to that and especially when Playback Theatre is done and is hurt in prisons it's done in and I've worked also with refugees and it's really hard to really allow everything to show up there but it's worth doing it show vulnerability and this is on one hand done by the introductions of the actors at the beginning but it's something that we can always do when we want to approach people to show vulnerability and share with some honest sharing and then just think of when I started this presentation I shared about myself and my personal experience and you don't have to tell me but you just think of whether you trusted me more after I shared that or less or how do you felt about it so this vulnerability is essential for developing the trust and building this safe space and in this way we lead by example we can support only when we are also allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and show up and allow ourselves to make mistakes at some points Sociometry is used a lot in playback theatre and this is a technique a method that's been developed for from the founder of psychodrama Moreno and is used to discover and to describe the existing relationships the social status between the people the structures that exist so it can be simple as asking some questions like who in the audience comes from from Spain or who comes from different regions then it can be also developed in a way to recognize what are the existing relationship with the people and this helps to to extend the to come from the unconscious to the conscious because there are some unconscious thoughts of feelings of being accepted to reject it in a group and with this we help them show up and then it's much more easier for someone to approach and say I see your friend and you know each other from working together previously maybe I can now ask something and I can be in that group as well because whenever people gather we make choices and as I said they might be conscious or unconscious but we always make choices whether we like or dislike the people where we trust them or don't trust them and making some of the small conscious will help us building that trust provide opportunities for dialogue conversations in small groups so one thing that I really like when get to do that in the performances is to invite the audience to share so they have five minutes to find someone in the audience that they probably didn't know before which would be the best to find someone that they really wanted to get introduced to and get to know each other but it could be also just sharing to the person next to you and this helps again invite people who might never feel safe enough to speak up in the larger audience but they could share at least something personal to the person sitting next to them and I've applied that in meetups doing breakout rooms providing different opportunities to really speak with people in smaller groups for people to come together and to share in smaller groups before they are ready to really share in a larger audience and this all needs training so training to be to listen actively to listen empathetically and my dogs doesn't listen actively or empathetically right now maybe actively because I was just met about them running in the rain but I'm having a picture of them because I said training because this is constant trying and maybe doing some mistakes and maybe stepping on some shit and this is a props here this was an exercise to to help people to help your group not step on shit but sometimes it happens and whenever it happens recognize it early enough and try your best next time and train to be better and understanding and inviting others and to use your creativity and imagination and art in that and art in this way I mean also really providing the opportunity to not be only in our conscious brains but also get connected with on an unconscious level and so there will be a an ideal scenario where if I go and talk to you or talk to someone new or a new colleague in my company then I'll be happier and feel more motivated to work have more creativity which will be a greater benefit for everyone around me not just me personally as well not my colleagues as well more happy faces around and a happier and inclusive more inclusive world and this sounds ideally but it's really just as most steps that we can do on one hand as allies or as people of privilege in certain cases but also being also aware of some situations or areas where we will be the underprivileged and we wouldn't think that our opinion matters to think about that it does matter so to wrap it up some of the learnings from the playback theatre that I'm applying and trying to really consciously do on a daily basis in my work is creating that safe space or at least soft space something I didn't mention but it's a really key for improvisation theatre is saying yes and and this doesn't mean that I will be that I will agree with everything that my colleagues will say but I will allow a space for that so in improvisation it's whenever the colleague is offering something you don't say no that's stupid think you add to it so in a way just allow that space okay maybe I don't agree with that but let it just let not react to that let just have no biases to that and just allow it to be and then add my opinion to top of it but not necessarily as a conflict show vulnerability be honest and share I already said using sociometry to relate and to build these empathetic and state also provide opportunities for dialogue and sharing in small work groups that's also something that that I think we can all think of ways to to find such opportunities and and just to think of areas where I said where you wouldn't pick up in a large audience but we might find the one-on-one conversation with someone and invite that person or yeah approach them and use art imagination and creativity to connect on a deeper level and of course that's not always easy giving day-to-day job that's really focused on providing outcomes and results but we can all be creative about it and then really have some other activities and I shared my way my way is by doing different things that inspire me in each of the other but you can have your own way to really train yeah this is a train all these all these methods and also in this way not only being active and empathetic when listening but also have a way to reach to your deeper resources and we all have these deep resources that we can apply when we have the inspiration we have the encouragement to deliver our best so why not we start it right now and there's an invitation to that's there is never a best moment to plant it free so it was the best moment was like 30 years ago but the next best moment is just right now so the same is yeah I shared some of my learnings and I've definitely find my ways back then I would do that on the front right now but I couldn't change anything and I don't really need to I have my learnings and now I can find my better approach and by sharing you these thoughts and these learnings I hope to allow you also that safe space and imagination and creativity to find your way to include voices and perspectives and share your voices and perspectives and I'm thinking you for using that because I've been to so many great presentations these days and I I go to listen to more people and to talk with more people in these events and I'm really happy that this is such an opportunity and this is for me also that's why I choose that as a really good venue to show you and tell you about my passion and I invite for any questions that you might have or sharing yeah there is a hand my dogs yeah that's my real picture ah no this was props that was props on the floor you mean this picture no no no it was just for their plastic no that was plastic yeah I will find it somewhere but yeah okay here but really looked real so I was really making my best to not step on it yeah question you mean after a performance what's or for me yeah for in my work yeah yeah I can yeah yeah I just realized that there is no microphone so the question was after after I started doing playback theater what was the benefit and how it influenced my work so on one hand it's yeah having to trust myself more because working as an actor or conductor I mostly conductor which is the facilitation role it involves a lot of active listening a lot of decision making on the spot and trusting my intuition because in many cases people share and I need to recognize the emotion because what with an actor sort of group playback we will play back the emotion of what they're sharing it's because we all heard that like the example in the video was like a person stressed out of being a solo parenting for a week but then what she really wants to tell in some cases might be I need support I need understanding I need someone to take care of me in other cases it would be something else and just listening for that message and then I can apply that at work in my personal life everywhere to really listen for the emotion what people are really telling me by telling me that story and that helps me a lot and after a performance usually what happens is that the audience stays together and wants to talk for half an hour or an hour later so this is so inspirational that you have a group of complete strangers that after an hour of a performance or an hour and a half they can chat as close friends so if that's possible in this setting then it's possible in all the other settings and I'm much more optimistic about people and humanity and our world because of that so that helps me being more motivated thanks for joining and thanks for appreciating your time and happy to talk with you after that thank you